Evolution

Your article of Oct. 28, 1996 on the Pope's support of the "theory of evolution" contained some inaccuracies which are worthy of being put right.

Evolution is not a theory. Evolution of life over a very long period of time is a fact. If we go back through the fossil records, if we look at the evidence gathered from geology, paleontology, molecular biology and many other scientific disciplines, we cannot ignore the overwhelming amount of facts pointing to the existence of evolution.

What is misleading to the general public is the opinion that evolution and Darwinism are taken to mean the same thing. Darwinism was, in the past, the sole theory that sought to explain evolution. However, adherents to this theory must realize how difficult it has been for geologists to place the fossil records in some kind of rational order, as the earth's rock strata are convoluted in the extreme, resulting from the upheavals associated with continental drift.

Evolution as is nowadays taught in virtually all colleges in the Western world means the teaching of the synthetic theory, a combination of Darwinism, Mendelian inheritance and the mathematics of population change. With such apparent unanimity in the textbooks and the classrooms, it comes as no surprise that -- (already) more than a decade ago -- the Pope's own Pontifical Academy of Sciences had put it well: "We are convinced that masses of evidence render the application of the concept of evolution to man and the other primates beyond serious dispute."

It may truly be said: The Pope's stance for accepting evolution is evolution.

G.B. LIK

Jakarta