I HAVE been reading the letters about the Creation with some amazement. I thought this subject had been put to rest years ago. I remember, as a schoolboy, searching out apparent discrepancies and contradictions in the Bible of which there are many. Genesis was our happy hunting ground as the first story in Genesis seemed to contradict the second.

Now that I am a man, an elderly pastor of a Congregational Church, I think I can now make sense of what seemed nonsense. The first story is about a Creator and a Creation. The writer is not a scientist, he is a poet, with the insights of a poet, which are often nearer the truth than science, and his writing is marvellous. He doesn't care if the world was created in seven days or seven million days; all he says is that the world is wonderful, so there must be a wonderful Creator. As the finite mind cannot understand the infinite, he gives the Creator a name, God. And why not?

The second story, written around 500 years after the first, is about the Creator and his relationship with men and women, leading to the story of Adam and Eve, a rib-tickler if ever there was one. The writer asserts that, when men and women depart from the ways of God, disaster will follow. There is plenty of evidence of that in the Bible and in the world today.

Is all this too simplistic for the remarkable scientists and philosphers who have been contributing to this debate? I just hope it might be meaningful to ordinary people like me.

Fred McDermid,

8 Boghall Street, Stonehouse.

THE real controversy between John MacLeod and his critics is whether physical processes alone can account for the genesis and development of life. Both sides refer to Karl Popper. Popper believed that although evolution may describe the development of life it does not explain it.

The critics of John MacLeod ask for open-mindedness. The believer in God can be quite open to the view that evolution did happen. Those who reject belief in God cannot be open-minded. They have to believe that physical processes alone explain the origin and development of life - whatever the evidence. They have no alternative.

Yet it could never be shown from physical science that only the things which physical science examines exist. In fact the more science advances the more mystery is discovered.

In discussing the development of life, both sides would do well to heed a warning of Daniel Osmond (Professor of Physiology and Medicine at the University of Toronto) who writes: ''I do not wish to build a 'God of the Gaps' argument built upon gaps in evolutionary knowledge. This would be dangerous because science has a habit of filling gaps, sooner or later. My point is simply that, in the presence of such huge gaps in knowledge concerning their most important theory pertaining to biological origins, all scientists should exhibit a more realistic, humble attitude. With such huge gaps staring us in the face in the empirical domain, we should refrain from usurping other domains, not accessible to empirical study, with an air of arrogance or superconfidence''.

Howard Taylor,

chaplain, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh