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Mar. 19, 2006 Ordinarily I am a believer in Darwin's "theory of evolution." However, my faith in that theory has just been shaken a bit, by the latest issue (March 13, 2006) of the widely respected magazine, "Chemical And Engineering News," which is the house organ of the huge American Chemical Society. Letters to the Editor are not usually printed there unless the facts have been checked by expert specialists. On the few occasions when those letters have been about subjects within my own scientific specialty, I have agreed with the claims. (I am a physical chemist and engineer.) Therefore, I tend to take such letters seriously. Starting on page 6, three letters were published in that issue, claiming that Darwin's famous book, "The Origin Of Species," is mistakenly titled. The claim is that the fossil evidence only shows stepwise evolution within a given species. However, the letters say, whenever a new species has arisen in the disttant past, the fossil evidence only can demonstrate that the new species popped up fully formed, ready to go. Later genetic changes within the species were indeed small-step evolutions, possibly caused by random mutations. But there has never been any fossil evidence for small-step changes to an entirely new species, according to these letters. It should be noted that a given species cannot mate with another species to generate fertile descendants. Thus, even though various animals might all have horns, cloven hoofs, and eat grass, they are not necessarily of the same species, and there are qualitative differences such as the ability to mate successfully for reproduction. (I have to admit that I am not an expert on this subject, and I am just going by what I have been reading recently.) The letter writers say that Darwin's book did not show the "origins" of any "species" whatsoever. It just presented evidence for stepwise small changes within a given species, and all the newer evidence is of the same type. Also, there is no real evidence about the origins of life itself, even simple bacteria or viruses. They just seem to have popped up, ready to go, from whatever we can analyze in ancient fossils. I am only talking about quite indirect evidence regarding "intelligent design," --- not any direct evidence of it, and certainly not any "proof." But I do think we ought to keep things straight about the fossil record of evolution. By the way, you can look at that magazine in the website http://pubs.acs.org/cen/currentissue.html, but you can't read the actual letters unless you are an ACS member. Well, it's something to think about (and maybe argue about), anyhow. ------------ About the author: Dan Shanefield is a retired engineering prof, who worked at Bell Labs and then at Rutgers University. He wrote the book "Industrial Electronics for Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians". Visit his website or email: shanefield@ieee.org Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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