Intelligent Design rides in on swine flu

May 07, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,
Sometimes I don’t know if Pastor Daniel Singh is serious or if he is trying his hand at comedy. In his letter of May 6th (GC) he declares that evolution and mutation are two different things.
As we shall see, another letter, this one published the same day in the Kaieteur News shows the game being played.

Pastor Singh informs readers that the swine flu virus “did not evolve, but rather mutated.”
“There is a big difference,” he says. “Mutation has to do with adapting and changing at a much rapid pace than the evolution process.” This is an incredibly misinformed, if not comical, statement. I expect Pastor Singh will soon claim that water is not wet.
As every high school science student knows, mutation is the means through which evolution occurs; when mutations crop up evolution happens. Mutations can occur at a slow or a fast rate and so evolution can happen slowly or quickly. The differing strains of yearly flu viruses are fast pace evolution.
Viruses do not “stay ahead” of the evolutionary process, as Pastor Singh claims. Rapid virus mutation, the way in which it changes and produces differences, is evolution in action.

Carl Zimmer writing in the NY Times this week says “the current [swine flu] outbreak shows how complex and mysterious the evolution of viruses is.” I urge readers (including A. I. Gafoor) to look up his article at the NY Times website. It is titled: 10 Genes, Furiously Evolving.
Gafoor, in his suspiciously similar Kaieteur News letter says that, “Mutation is not evolution”. He is labouring under the mistake that evolution is always about upward mobility; about the transformation from a lower to a higher life form, as he puts it. This is not always the case.

Natural Selection is actually the drive that chooses adaptability. Organisms that evolve “higher” functions are selected for (able to reproduce more) in an environment of higher complexity (this is called survival of the fittest). In a stable environment, organisms feel no pressure to evolve and so they simply reproduce with little “upward” development.
So, to say “in evolution species transforms from lower to higher life-forms” is to have an overly simplistic view of the process. Gafoor has mixed up evolution which is just genetic change over time, with Natural Selection, the method of determining whether those genetic changes give a reproductive edge in a changing environment.

Gafoor also says that evolution is “highly controversial”. But to whom, to proper scientists or to Christian and Muslim religious fundamentalists? Here, Gafoor reveals the true agenda: Intelligent Design! The game’s afoot – exploring creationism in disguise.
“ID is a beautiful system of taught (sic)” Gafoor says, adding “it has been voted to be included in some US school curriculum.” He didn’t say which American schools and so I advise him to google “Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District” to get an update how soundly his ID/creationism ideas have been rejected as a violation of US constitution.

By the way, I should let him know also that readers are on to the religious propaganda of the Discovery Institute in the USA and so repeating what he finds on their website as science in the Guyana newspapers is really a futile exercise. As Pastor Daniel Singh says, this has been done before, so spare us.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation, a body headed by scientific experts says that people must remain vigilant in monitoring “the evolution of the H1N1 virus”.

It is believed that the virus could, by using mutations and other means such as genetic reassembling, evolve into a more threatening strain.
Pastor Singh ended his letter by saying that “we should also pray for God’s protection and use our common sense.” Indeed, some folks need to pray really hard especially regarding that bit about common sense.
Lutchman Gossai