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From: lonetto@phri.UUCP (Michael Lonetto)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: A new voice.
Message-ID: <308@phri.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 4-Jul-85 14:34:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: phri.308
Posted: Thu Jul  4 14:34:23 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Jul-85 09:49:08 EDT
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Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 53

>  This is just not so! The central hypothesis has been attacked over and
>  over. When it is, however, netters change their tune and claim that
>  evidence against evolution is NOT evidence for creation.
> 
>  Mutation has been shown to be a poor mechanism for Evolution. Transmutation
>  has never been observed and most all mutations have proven harmful. The
>  variations within species are predicted by the creation model. Even
>  Evolutionists have admitted the problems involved with Evolution occuring
>  by chance mutation. Natural selection has serious problems as well.

As a biologist I find these objections ridiculous.  Looking at the the second
paragraph:

1) WHO has shown that mutation is a poor mechanism for GENERATING DIVERSITY
(no one ever said mutation=evolution).  HOW was it shown?

2) That 99.999999...% of mutations are harmful is both expected and appreciated
by current evolution theory.  This property is often useful in the laboratory,
where a desired mutation can be obtained by generating random mutations and
setting up conditions where only certain mutants will survive.  The original
strain and most other mutants die.

3) WHAT creation theory predicts current diversity and relatedness and accounts
for all the extinct (also related) species of the past?

4) Once again, no one ever said that mutation and evolution are the same thing.

>  It has been stated that N.S. predicts everything, therefore it predicts
>  nothing.

5) Those who believe that natural selection is a tautology are treating biology
as a mathmatical discipline.  Close reading of the theory and thought about the
CONCEPT will evaporate those objections.  Biology is an essentially historical
discipline.  Often things could have happenned several ways, but only one of 
them actually occurred.  Why?  Good question!  If you just apply natural sel-
ection you say "There must have been some advantage to having things happen
this way."  This is tautological.  It also ignores the fact that the organism
in question was chugging along just fine up to this point and had a lot in-
vested in keeping things as close to the same as possible.  Just because the 
amateur evolutionist on this net don't have a full understanding of the theory
and mechanisms of natural selection (and complementary but less well understood
means of change, such as genetic drift) does not make the concept irrelevent.

>  Evolution really has more problems than you are willing to believe.
> 						 Dan

Creation really has more problems than you are willing to believe.
-- 
____________________

Michael Lonetto  PHRI  NYC  (allegra!phri!lonetto)

Do you think it's REAL?