Props for Pitman

Andy, I’ve been reading and re-reading Dr. Pitman’s reply to your letter and to your recent editorial chiding Spectrum for descending to gesture towards “Wilsonites.” Your editorial was, as intended, provocative, provoking in most of us correspondingly focused and exercised responses. But Dr. Pitman’s response was not that.

Of all the polarizing issues Dr. Pitman could have centered on, he looked only at your mutual awe of nature, and consequent moods and reactions. Clearly and unashamedly, as I read him, Dr. Pitman receives the awesomeness of nature as evidence of God, as religious, rather than as impersonal, academic reactionary morality. To him the distinction is crucial.

Dr. Pitman can be all-out polemic when he needs to be, believe me (http://www.detectingdesign.com/), but in his reply to you – and there could be no more fitting occasion – he demonstrates, I think, that extraordinarily thoughtful and thinking SDA academic Gensis-1 creationists – yes, Virginia, there are not a few – can be religious and sympathetic and courteous, forbearing of adjectives, in debate.

Wes