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Paleonetters: I refuse to cringe in horror over the impending ID doom hovering over us. There are worse things. In Israel a non-Christian, ID-type of creationism is alive and well in all the religious educational systems, including the state supported ones. There is no constitution, bill of rights, or separation of 'church' and state to hassle them. The religious kids simply don't learn about evolution. That's right – they skip it, and nothing happens. The system could of course be improved, but it produces loads of reasonably good biological scientists, chemists, physicists, doctors, mathematicians, social scientists, artists, businessmen, academics, geeks, etc. and even a few, albeit second rate, politicians. A similar private system in the US even produced me, a geologist, paleontologist and evolutionist. On the other hand, in state schools where they do learn something about evolution, it doesn't seem to have left much of an impression. For those of both groups who get to the university and study geology, I don't see much difference. The point is that I haven't found ID and creationism in the schools all that threatening. I have been invited to talk about fossils and evolution in these schools lots of times. My main point, that knowledgeable scientists seem to think that evolution explains things rather well, usually goes over quite well. We have spirited discussions, although the students (and their teachers) tend to remain skeptical. That's probably quite OK, because they seem to be skeptical about a lot of stuff they learn. How about lightening up a bit? --CB Professor Chaim Benjamini Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences Ben Gurion University of the Negev P.O.B. 653 Beer Sheva 84105 ISRAEL Tel: +972 8 646 1289 office +972 8 646 1369 direct Fax: +972 8 647 2997 (day) +972 8 647 7655 (after hours)
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