MADAM –It is difficult to know what to make of the Christian Comment (SNJ, Feb 18) submitted by Rev’d Penny West who self-identifies as “Biomedical Scientist and ‘Semi-Retired’ Anglican Priest”.
Rev’d West suggests that “physical, living things can exist in other forms not just physical but also spiritual”.
She concludes this from the well-known duality of subatomic units (such as electrons, I assume) which can be regarded as either particles or as wave forms.
Penny writes that this duality results from “quantum physics, a development in recent years”.
My own degree (Botany, 1961) is far from a “recent development” but I recall us being taught something of the work of Max Planck (1900), J J Thompson (1897) and the slightly later elaborations by Einstein.
Penny is also I suspect rather confused about what we know of cells when we look at them under the microscope.
Of cell specialisation, she asks “how could this occur in the first place?”
I’d humbly suggest she might do an internet search of “mutation,” “natural selection” and maybe even “evolution”.
If Darwinian evolution/natural selection is not to her taste, the Rev’d. West might look up some of the American creationist websites; “Discovery Institute” and “Answers in Genesis” provide some boldly constructed stuff, some of it quite hilarious.
John Ricketts
Gloucestershire Humanists
Cheltenham
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