As both a Church of Scotland minister and a zoologist, I take issue with John Mason MSP in his assertion that the belief that God created the world in six days cannot be proved or disproved by science (MSP in crackdown on the teaching of creationism, News, February 8).

Insofar as science works by carefully considering all the available evidence, which in this case is overwhelming, a six-day creation can indeed be disproved.

It is certainly true, as John Mason states, that other belief systems exist. There are people who, as a matter of faith, oppose the view that our planet is the culmination of geological processes stretching back billions of years and that life on earth is the product of millions of years of evolution by natural selection. For them, no amount of scientific evidence will suffice. Their belief systems are not based on scientific enquiry, nor on any form of human reason. However, to quote Harvard Professor Steven Pinker: "Evolution is true not because the experts say it is, nor because some world-view demands it, but because the evidence overwhelmingly supports it."

For all I know there may even be some who believe that the earth is flat, or that the sun, planets and stars revolve around it, but believing something does not make it true. So, in the light of all the evidence to the contrary, these are emphatically not "valid beliefs for people to hold", and certainly not views which schools should teach "without taking sides". So far as the Bible's story of creation is concerned, I suspect that its writers would never have expected their creation story to be taken literally. They were interested in a different kind of truth from that eventually revealed by scientific enquiry.

Rev David A Collins,

Broughty Ferry

I wonder if any of the opponents of creationism have actually looked at the different theories surrounding it, many of which are quite compatible with present scientific teaching. Evolution itself is subject to different interpretations. Naturalistic evolution, which appears to be the main evolutionary view espoused, has no place for God. Thomistic evolution, from Thomas Aquinas, pictured God as the prime mover in creating the universe, working through evolution. Some modern-day evangelists like Strong and Orr, accommodate evolutionary ideas while still involving God, and Henri Bergson's emergent evolution allows for the intervention of God at different points in evolution.

Creationism also has a number of different expressions, each with its own fairly scary title, but broadly mean that the six days of Genesis may be literal days, may be figurative days ("day" means "age" elsewhere in the Bible), or may be literal days with long periods of time between each one. Maybe at the heart of creation there is not a God particle, but God.

There is ample room for interpretation of the Bible's statement on creation, and it disturbs me that in all the criticism of creationism, only the literal view of six literal days is considered.

I applaud John Mason, Richard Lyle and Dave Thompson for standing up to those who want God out of Scottish life. Julia Pannell

Arbroath