March 28, 2016

A recent letter writer advocated the inclusion of “the opposite viewpoint” in the celebration of Darwin Day. He says, “I do not believe in macroevolution, and I don’t believe I am stupid.” There is not enough data in the letter to support or deny this assertion, but there is adequate evidence of the writer’s ignorance of the science involved.

He begins with the claim that we should doubt evolution because “50 percent of your readers do not believe in ... evolution.” This proves nothing. There was a time when everybody believed the Earth was flat. They were wrong.

He then lists a number of questions he believes are problems for the theory of evolution. I don’t have room here to answer them individually, but the first three were related to the origin of life. The theory of evolution is an explanation for the diversity of life. It does not address the origin of life.
His next three questions are just iterations of Michael Bebe’s irreducible complexity hypothesis, an idea popular in the 1990s. It has been repeatedly refuted.

His last question refers to the Cambrian explosion. There is ongoing research involving the rapid development of species in this period and there are questions about how, but not whether, evolution functioned in the period.

He then makes the claim again for equal treatment of unsupported creationist viewpoints. I guess we should also teach the stork theory of reproduction. It is at least as valid.

His final claim is that Darwinism has somehow led to atheism, which, according to him, says that “without God, all things are permissible.” To put this another way, he is saying that the fear of God is the only thing stopping religious people from being rapists and murderers. I like to think religious people, as a whole, are better than that.