Letters to the Editor
Taliesan
Published Letters: 868 Editor's Choice: 16
-
rupert_c
[Read the article: The evolution of creationism]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]@Carlton
The Law of Gravity and the Laws of Electromagnetism are demonstrable, repeatable and verifiable. They follow precise mathematical formulas.
Evolution does not meet those requirements.
You are comparing dinosaurs with winged fire breathing dragons that talk with a Welsh accent.
And you believe in both of them.
Where is your science now?
-- rupert_c
Evolution can be and has been demonstrated and tested throughout human history. We call it animal husbandry or hybridisation.
That is how you have species of dog bred for specific purposes, how you have race horses and cart horses, how you have hybrid plants which produce superior yields to the vanilla origin species. Heck, google Liger and you will see it.
We even have species of fish which could never survive in nature, because we tampered with their evolution to produce them.
It is the heart of biological warfare, the problem of pesticides hitting a point where they don't work, and why you don't get miracle drugs. Things evolve.
Oh, and as to your earlier assertion that a part of a system might not work unless it evolved as a whole: Actually nature is full of incomplete systems that work fine.
Tape worms have an "Eye" that can only distinguish light and dark, eagles have eyes far more developed then our own. Flying squirrels have the same basic principles in their gliding as bats have in their flight. Part of a wing has indeed proven very useful to them.
In short you are claiming shortcomings in evolution which simply don't exist. Perhaps its that you haven't read up on the subject beyond creationist propaganda, perhaps its that you have never actively thought about it, but the truth remains that your argument is not based on fact.
-
rupert_c
[Read the article: The evolution of creationism]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have a BS detector that goes off whenever a creationist claims not to be a creationist. You sir, are trying to bullshit us.
A bats wing is based on webbing between a bats front and back legs, much like the webbing of a flying squirrel. This shows how the evolution of that bat's wing probably started off as a gliding device as opposed to a flight device.
As to speciation on farms: While we haven't seen outright speciation, we have seen the results in mules, what you get when you mix a horse with a donkey.
We have also seen it when we mixed closely related seperate species such as lions and tigers, which while they are inter-fertile, tend not to produce fertile male offspring.
Further, the very concept of animal husbandry, or breeding animals for desired traits, wouldn't work without evolution being a fact.
Evolution is in essence the exact same process occurring over a much longer period in nature, and as such that we have proven able to direct evolution to give us cows that produce more milk, horses which run faster, and dogs which suit a variety of purposes (From hunting rats to bears) shows that experimentally, we have proven evolution.
-
rupert_c
[Read the article: The evolution of creationism]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]No, but it shows that two species are closely related enough to actually interbreed thus showing that speciation occurred reasonably recently in those species. Hence my statement that while we haven't seen outright speciation on farms, we have seen the results.
Further you have failed to demonstrate how our consciously directed evolution of other species, which has produced a wide variety of different breeds within species, doesn't qualify as evidence.
Indeed while I doubt that believers in a magic sky fairy will buy into my arguments on the subject, that is more due to the fact that they believe in magic sky fairies then that they have a relevant, strong counter argument.
-
This call will fail.
[Read the article: Mind your manners online]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Good manners is a battle that we are going to lose repeatedly because we live in a society where violance, thuggery and stupidity are glorified while politeness, peace and intellegence are termed weakness.
We live in a society where unpleasantness is mistaken for straight talking, and being good is seen as being insincere. We live in a society where actions that are aimed at benefitting everyone, are instantly viewed with suspicion while the public gladly bends over for those whose only aim is to worsen the lot of others.
We live in a sick, strange world where economists, those practitioners of a science which has proven about as accurate as reading tea-leaves, have their opinions weighed as being equal to those of people who actually work in the fields the economists are commenting on.
We live in a world where we are still paying for the last appeal for good manners, political correctness.
-
rupert_c
[Read the article: The evolution of creationism]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Evolution is the product of those small changes over a long period, driven by and ocassionally sped by mutations and weeded out by natural selection.
You don't go straight from one organism to another, but rather through a long series of adaptions which, though minor to the point of being almost impossible to note in and of themselves, eventually culminate in a new species.
Hence you end up with species which are similar enough to interbreed, but not similar enough to produce fertile young.
-
rupert_c
[Read the article: The evolution of creationism]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Oh, and as to whether I dare call racial differences evolution? Yes I do dare.
Because ultimately those variations come with advantages suited to the areas where humans lived. Does this mean that some people are inferior to others?
No. It simply means that different things proved to work in different areas, like how dark skin works better in high sunlight areas then pale skin does.
-
Anonymous
[Read the article: The evolution of creationism]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks for the information.
-
rupert_c
[Read the article: The evolution of creationism]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Since when is hybridisation not evolution?
Can you explain to us how it is not evolution?
Can you explain how breeding for desirable traits is not evolution - seen as evolution is simply a wild variant of that?
Because the more one argues with you the more one is left with the impression that you are ignoring all evidence and proclaiming it all phony without actually presenting a counter argument.
-
Absolut Carnage
[Read the article: The evolution of creationism]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The moon is termed a lesser light to the sun in genesis.
As the moon landing proved, the moon isn't a light source.