John Peloza and His Teachings Are Taken to Task

Here we go again with another round of Evolution vs. Creation: “O.C. Teacher Files $5-million Evolution Suit (Oct. 1).

You’d think that in the 100-odd years since Scopes, someone would have pointed out that the two are not mutually exclusive theories, but simply different ways of looking at the same reality. Inherent in the theory of evolution itself is the recognition of at least the possibility of a creator: Science can take us back only as far as a microsecond prior to the “Big Bang,” at which “time” there existed an infinite amount of mass compressed into a single point.

The logical question is, where did this infinite amount of mass come from? Evolution simply tells us that the world (universe), including the species homo sapiens, ultimately developed from the origins of stardust. This material could have contained a divinely imbued potential to become today’s world.

The only remaining obstacle to reconciling creation and evolution is the creationist’s insistence that potential isn’t enough: the Bible “says” that God intervened directly at each stage of creation. The educated theologian answers this problem by pointing out that the Bible (divinely inspired or not) is a literary document, and thus subject to the same rules of interpretation as any other.

J.B. JOHNSON, Santa Ana