Latest update December 2nd, 2024 1:00 AM
May 06, 2009 Letters
Dear Editor,
In response to Kaieteur News letter on intelligent design and evolution (09-04-30) it must be noted that the term evolution must be used with caution for it has a variety of meaning both technical and non-technical.
Many in the science community have been using the term evolution rather loosely mainly because of an agenda to promote Darwinian evolution as a scientific fact when we all know it is merely an unproven theory.
The term Evolution as it relates to change is very scientific but is highly controversial and even unscientific as it relates to Darwinism.
The term viral evolution may not be an appropriate designation as viruses do not evolve in the Darwinian sense but rather they mutate.
The rapid adaptive mutations observed in viruses are quite interesting but they are many difficulties in relating this to Darwinism, (the same old problems with gaps actually).
However to begin with it should be noted that in the science community there is an old debate as to whether or not virus have life.
In Darwinian biology a life form is a cell-based organism, viruses as is well known are not made up of cells and needs to be attached to the cells of a host organism in order to exist.
More importantly, in all the generations of new viruses we are observing we have never seem a virus become a living cell this would truly be evolution in action, in evolution species transforms from lower to higher life-forms.
When one virus changes into another virus due to genetic alterations even though it is very different from its parent(s) it is still a virus and this is not evolution it is more akin to mutation (strictly speaking mutation is concerned with living things).
The old frustration of trying to find demonstrable evidences that mutation is a mechanism in the evolutionary process still lingers on. Mutation is an observable scientific phenomenon while evolution is a theory, and most importantly, after 100 years we know of no link between the two.
What is ironic in all this is that Genetic science which gives us this insight into viruses is at the same time giving us breath-taking insight into the intricate, orderly and stunningly complex arrangements of the microscopic world, something that would have made Darwin abandon his theory had he known.
In fact Genetic science is one of the main catalysis that has been driving the current Intelligent Design movement (ID). ID is a beautiful system of taught that many atheist and serious academics finds interesting even to the point where it has been voted to be included in some US school curriculum.
ID to this point is not a provable science but there are strong argument that neither is evolution, with all its millions of years of gaps and countless other weak points it may take more faith to believe in evolution than in ID. One area of interest is the use of mathematical models to analyse design data and make prediction based on ID postulates at which point ID would crossover from theology and philosophy into the realm of hard science.
A. I. Gafoor
Dec 02, 2024
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