Editor:

Mr. (John) Baumgardner, in his letter to the Monitor of 3/14/97, seems quite disturbed that evolutionists cannot present step-by-step chemical reactions which can lead to DNA and life as we know it.

I've been reading an interesting book called "In the Beginning" by John Gribbin. He presents significant evidence showing that the universe formed some 15 billion years ago and that the indications are that "life" (in the form of bacteria) appeared a little over three billion years ago.

This means there were over 10 billion years for molecules to form from atoms and for more and more complex molecules to form leading eventually to living things. It does not seem surprising that processes which took several billion years have not been reproduced in the laboratory by people who rarely live 100 years.

Rather than castigate the evolutionists for not being able to describe in detail the chemical processes leading to life formation, why doesn't Mr. Baumgardner present a detailed explanation of how he thinks living objects were formed? I presume he will say it's all in the Bible.

Llewellyn H. Jones