LETTER: Creationist column uses old ideas only

To the editor:

I grew up in a strong Christian, or at least in a strongly Christian household. In my endlessly and exuberantly inquisitive youth, fortunately encouraged by many of the adults around me, topics of philosophy and theology were not just idle musings to me. They were subjects of intense, yearning study, in my own fumbling and limited way. They promised to me knowledge and understanding that I craved, needed as strongly as I needed water and air.

   Though some topics, mostly theology, for example, have since become more akin to hobbies than driving forces in my life, I have never forgotten what I learned, or lost my fascination with and interest in those questions.

I tell you this so you might appreciate just how disappointed I was in Richard Winters’ article “Debating the ultimate question.” After a lukewarm introduction, he tells us that he plans nothing more than to share a few thoughts in a “rational and logical manner,” which is generally a good cue to expect anything but. He then goes on to regurgitate the same old, tired and tiresome creationist and ‘intelligent design’ arguments that have been rehashed and recycled for decades, replete with citations of philosophical authority that demonstrate only the most cursory, and in some cases distorted, familiarity with the things they actually wrote. He expresses nothing more engaging, insightful, edifying or uplifting about the divine, our relationship to it, or our place in the cosmos than one might expect at a Kent Hovind, Ken Ham, or Ray Comfort presentation, if such exercises in professional lying might be graced with the term.

John Cronin