Here is an op-ed piece in The Toronto Sun at:
http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/coren.html
which is sceptical of evolution. The layman author Michael Coren makes
some good points about evolution, although I do not agree with what he
says about the Big Bang.
Nor do I agree with him that evolution should not be taught in schools. I
agree with the consensus ID movement position that evolution should be
taught in schools but *honestly* with all its philosophical assumptions,
weaknesses and disagreements laid bare, so that students can make
an informed choice whether to believe it or not.
I understand the article has been widely syndicated. There seems to be a
growing understanding on the part of the media that evolution has *major*
problems in its own right, and that it is no longer good enough for the
Darwinists to point to weaknesses in the young-Earth creationist position
in order to shield evolution itself from scrutiny.
I like his closing line:
"...people who might one day have very red faces should not accuse other
people of having very red necks".
Steve
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August 19, 1999
Survival of the faddist
By MICHAEL COREN
Sun Media
Prepare to see Kansas ridiculed in smart circles from Toronto to Texas.
The reason? The state's board of education has voted to remove the subject
of evolution from the list of compulsory course requirements for students
to pass mandatory tests.
Evolution can be taught, probably will be taught, but unlike English and
math it will no longer be essential. And a good thing too.
You see, evolution is at best a theory and at worst a hoax. We do not have
any concrete scientific evidence proving how we arrived at our present
state, only ideas. The beliefs of the creationists, those who follow the literal
truth of Genesis, held ground for centuries. Then, in the 1850s, Charles
Darwin came along and wrote of evolution. Darwin was a great man but he
was not a particularly great scientist.
I am not a great man at all and I am a useless scientist. But I am rather
good at being skeptical, especially concerning the wisdom of the
establishment. Let me throw a few thoughts into the pot.
Even with all of our scientific knowledge and with the millions of examples
of living things, we are no closer to creating independent life than were our
ancestors. Even the most basic organism, the prokaryote bacterial cell, is so
detailed and sophisticated as to baffle the greatest minds. Each human
being is filled with literally trillions of cells as complex as this little critter.
Those who believe in evolution and the Big Bang theory of how we arrived
here believe in chance. They claim primitive organisms developed by need
and environment into men and women. Yet in the entire history of
biological research we have seen no change of species. There have been
tiny changes within species but this is to be expected. It's common sense. A
blind man might develop a special sense of smell, but no blind man has ever
grown a new set of eyes.
Until very recently school science textbooks often contained photographs
of something called the Peppered Moth, resting on a tree trunk. With its
colour and behaviour the moth was supposed to be one of the best
examples of natural selection.
Last year, however, quite a scandal was caused when it was discovered
such creatures do not actually rest on trees and that 40 years ago a Dr.
Kettlewell had glued two moths to a tree to take his famous photograph
and prove his point.
If creationists had done such a thing they would, rightly, be condemned as
frauds and their place in the school system would come into question. Not
so with evolution and its followers.
Then there is the alleged development of the horse. We all remember
pictures of a tiny horse, getting progressive larger as time went by. This,
again, was apparently a proven fact. Not so. A fox-like skull fossil was
discovered in 1841 but it took 40 years for anybody to suggest it was a
prehistoric horse. Nor did they mention that the fossil, and others like it,
are found not deep in the earth but quite near the surface, indicating they
are the results of relatively recent burials. They are also sometimes found
next to the fossils of full-size horses, proving this was not evolution at all.
More than this, even today we have horses ranging from mammoths like
the Clydesdale to the 17-inch Fallabella.
"I admit that an awful lot of that has gotten into the textbooks as though it
were true," says Dr. Niles Eldredge, curator of the American Museum of
Natural History. "That is lamentable."
Finally comes the Big Bang. The term was coined by English astronomer
Sir Fred Hoyle, who came to doubt his own theory. Advanced telescopes
have recorded more than 2,000 so-called big bangs in the last 30 years, and
none of them has resulted in very much at all, and certainly not in the
creation of a new world. Even opponents of creation are admitting they
have to find another alternative explanation.
I don't really know the answer to all this, but I do know conventional
science does not provide many truths. And that people who might one day
have very red faces should not accuse other people of having very red
necks.
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Michael Coren is a Toronto-based writer and broadcaster
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com.
[...]
Copyright (c) 1999, Quebecor New Media Limited Partnership. All rights
reserved.
http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/coren.html
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"Through use and abuse of hidden postulates, of bold, often ill-founded
extrapolations, a pseudoscience has been created. It is taking root in the
very heart of biology and is leading astray many biochemists and biologists,
who sincerely believe that the accuracy of fundamental concepts has been
demonstrated, which is not the case." (Grasse P.-P., "Evolution of Living
Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation", Academic
Press: New York NY, 1977, p6)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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