Letters to the Editor
sunspot
Published Letters: 351 Editor's Choice: 43
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High density
[Read the article: The believer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]>Since evolution is in no way scientifically testable and is
>therefore called a THEORY um... well.
Wow. How much ignorance can one pack into a single sentence? You seem to be attempting some kind of world-record!
Natural selection is most certainly testable, and has in fact been tested and validated repeatedly, antibiotic resistance being an obvious example. The particulars of how natural selection plays out on organisms and the environment over time are still open for scientific debate. Evolutionary theory does make predictions relating to what we should expect to discover in the fossil record for example, or what genetic analysis of various organisms should reveal. So far, the theory has held up nicely.
You don't seem to have the slightest clue what the term "theory" means in science. I'm a layman, and even I know better than that. Theories are most certainly testable – that's sorta the point. A theory is an attempt to model or explain a set of observations that's able to predict future observations and can be falsified by the same observations. A theory isn't necessarily a fact, but it's also not a wild guess or even a hypothesis.
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Evolution
[Read the article: The believer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]>Which merely proves what no one disputes: that
>you can have adaptations within species, but
>this is not proof that one species can turn
>into antoher.
See http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html, for numerous examples of speciation. Really, this stuff's not hard to find if you bother looking.
As for the bacteria, what did you expect them to evolve into after a few hundred generations? Giraffes? They're life, but they're pretty radically different from even a simple multicellular form, like a flatworm, let alone our immediate ancestors.
That's not to put the bacteria down. They've had about 4 billion years to evolve into something else, and possibly did mutate into or contribute to the development of multicellular life at least once in the history of the earth, but as they represent some enormous percentage of all biomass on the planet I'd say they've proven reasonably successful just as they are. You can pretty much divide all life on earth into bacteria and everything else, with everything else being pretty much totally dependant on bacteria.
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Conscience?
[Read the article: The believer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]>Then why does the child instinctively hide the
>cookie he just took out of the cookie jar long
>before he's of an age to have been trained?
To keep anyone else from stealing it? I mean, why not - that's as good an assumption as any other. Whoops - so much for 'conscience'.
Anyhow, where's the study that describes such behavior? And what do you mean by "trained"? As I recall, even infants have been shown to possess some ability to read the emotional state of those around them. Clearly children can pick up signs of displeasure in others, provided they're paying attention.
Beyond that, who's to say such behavior isn't hardwired. Mammalian mothers are generally hardwired to care for their young, to some degree anyhow. Clearly other behaviors have a biological component as well, empathy being one obvious example. Why drag god in to explain a behavior that can pretty clearly be explained by biology? What's next? The fall of every sparrow is attributable to the hand of Zeus?
The sound of your axe grinding is drowning out any point you could have possibly hoped to make.
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Murder
[Read the article: The believer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]>The argument is that they will avoid at all
>costs the charge of and penalty for murder.
Given that the typical penalty for committing murder is either imprisonment for a very long time or death, what kind of an idiot *wouldn't* try to avoid such a penalty?
All this proves is that most people aren't crazy as a run over dog or dumb as a box of rocks (though there are certainly plenty of exceptions!).
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Occam Here
[Read the article: The believer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Who designed your designer?
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Simple reason?
[Read the article: The believer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why do you assume that "simple reason" works outside the framework of the universe in which we exist? Were there no universe, would causality as we know it also hold? Why make that assumption? And why do you assume the universe didn't *always* exist in one form or another?
Sorry, asserting that some "god" set the universe in motion doesn't make any more sense than either asserting the universe has always been around, or that it set itself in motion. In fact, I'd argue it's worse, since now you'd have to explain what set this "god" in motion or assert that "god" is uncaused. If "god" can be uncaused, why not the universe?
Beyond that, if you knew anything about modern physics, you'd know that it's loaded with oddities like particles that pop in and out of existence, a quantum froth in the vacuum of space. Stuff is being created out of nothing all over the universe all the time. Not only does this not break any laws of nature, it's how nature apparently works.