I'm intersted in your reply. Can you explain it?
In the meantime to use this space:
Is the opposite true?
Let's see if I have this straight: A great many people insist that the world was not created through intelligent design. Then the opposite must be true -- they believe that this highly complex world was created through unintelligent design. The quality of their thinking seems to prove their point.
DAVID A. TOMKO
Butler
Evidence against
In a Jan. 6 letter, "Hidden Agendas," Ted Massalski asks what is the scientific evidence against Darwin's theory of evolution.
Darwin called his theory "descent with modification." He believed that all living things are descendants of common ancestors, modified primarily by natural selection acting on random variations. Evidence that is inconsistent with either universal common descent or this mechanism of modification is presumptive evidence against Darwin's theory.
Everyone knows that common descent is true within a single species, but are all living things related by it?
The evidence has convinced some experts that we do not share a common ancestor with bacteria. And although common descent implies that the major anatomical differences between worms, clams, crabs and fish should have evolved gradually in a branching-tree pattern, the fossil record is inconsistent with this pattern. Instead, those differences appeared at about the same time in what some scientists call "biology's big bang."
Similarly, everyone knows that variation and selection can produce minor changes within existing species. But no one has ever observed the origin of new species -- much less new anatomical features such as limbs and eyes -- by Darwin's mechanism of modification. The evidence points to limits for variation and selection, not to the vast creative power Darwin attributed to them.
A good science education should teach students not only Darwin's theory, but also the most important evidence against it, and why it provokes scientific controversy.
JONATHAN WELLS
Senior Fellow