The farce of Intelligent Design

May 17, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,
Pastor Daniel Singh is at it again, repeating a tiresome debate creationists lost in the letters page of this very newspaper in 2004.
He says macroevolution doesn’t happen because he cannot witness it (Guyana Chronicle May 13th).
This is the same as saying that he does not believe in breathing because he cannot see oxygen.
But scientific knowledge guarantees that we breathe air and has figured out how we use oxygen from that air for respiration.

In the same manner, scientists have built a solid body of knowledge showing how the four basic evolutionary mechanisms (mutation, migration, genetic drift, and natural selection) can produce major evolutionary change if given enough time. While some of us may have grandfathers who are prehistoric tree monkeys like a certain pastor claimed he has, most of us do not witness macroevolution because this process has been accumulating small changes for 3.8 billion years, which is more than enough time for these simple evolutionary processes to produce its grand history.
Microevolution happens on a small time scale – from one generation to the next.

When such small changes build up over the course of millions of years, they translate into evolution on a grand scale — in other words, macroevolution! We can decipher this pattern using several lines of evidence, including geology, fossils, and living organisms. Pastor Singh is betting that these subjects cannot be fully explored in the letters column (as this space is not a text book or a science journal).
So it is quite easy for him say simply “God did it” than it is for a scientist to explain the details and methodologies of investigating macroevolution in a letter to the press.

Seriously, I can’t be bothered with the scientific backwardness of religious fundamentalists who seem only to provide comic relief to the tediousness of the daily news. So this will be my last letter on the subject.
Like the typically over-pious religionist, Pastor Singh is instigating a debate only as a ruse to link his religious ideas to scientific fact and everyday reality. He badly wants credence and respectability for his beliefs and this is his technique for getting it. I don’t intend to entertain him.

Readers who are further interested in the facts of evolution can Google the words: HHMI evolution lectures. The first link is to a series of very informative videos. There is even one dealing with the farce of Intelligent Design.
Lutchman Gossai