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I wonder if David W. Clark looks upon the Dark Ages as the good ol' days. A time when church dogma ruled the day and when anyone with a different viewpoint would be a heretic. In his June 12 commentary "The Bible v. evolution," Clark looks to pass judgment on Francis Collins' statement that "one can believe in both science [i.e., evolution] and God."

Clark presents many well-known historical figures as both scientists and creationists to demonstrate his point. Unfortunately, many of those he uses (Copernicus, Galileo, Boyle, Kepler) were dead long before Charles Darwin's day, while others were not biological scientists (Faraday, Pascal, Newton, Kelvin) who use evolution as a fundamental principle.

The mention of Galileo is especially interesting since the church considered his support of the Copernicus Theory (note the word "theory") that the Earth revolved around the sun to be a challenge to Scripture. As a result, Galileo was forced to recant and was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.

We can only imagine what would have happened to Darwin if he had proposed his theory during this same time. Fortunately for humanity, enlightened minds followed the scientific facts, and today we know that not only does the Earth revolve around the sun, but our entire galaxy is merely one of billions in an ever-expanding universe.

To Clark, the Bible is absolute so there is no need to think or wonder. Anything it says must be true and anyone who does not believe every word is not only wrong but also is not a Christian. In his world, a man could live in a fish, the Earth can stand still, and everything came about in six days regardless of whether scientific evidence or common sense proves otherwise.

The tragedy of Clark's viewpoint is his inability to see the larger message of the Bible of helping the poor and social justice. In fact, there are more than 300 verses that mention the poor, but none that bring up the words "evolution," "adaptation" or "natural selection." I would think that a God who was "outside of time, space, matter" would have specifically warned us of these abominations.