News and Views

7 responses so far ↓

• 1 Don // Dec 22, 2005 at 10:54 am

  Where’s the link to the article? Some of use can’t get the East Valley Tribune as we live in less civilized areas.

• 2 Daryl // Dec 22, 2005 at 11:03 am

  Unfortunately the EVT doesn’t post letters on line, or at least I can’t find them.

• 3 Richard // Dec 22, 2005 at 10:15 pm

  So paste it in here. Inquiring minds want to know, and some of those minds are nowhere near the East Valley.

• 4 Daryl // Dec 23, 2005 at 11:18 am

  OK, by popular demand here’s the original letter I sent to the editor. Parts in italics were omitted in the published version.

  (Re) Mr Donald Eiken’s letter on Wednesday stating that many things refute evolutionary theory is typical of the response from someone who has learned just enough about a theory to be able to poke at it around the edges. It reminds me of the reaction centuries ago to the round-earth theory — “If the earth is round why don’t people on the bottom fall off?”.

  To briefly answer his objections:
  1) The fossil record is filled with intermediates, though one can always ask for ever finer intermediate steps.
  2) The second law of thermodynamics only applies to closed systems where no energy can enter or leave. The earth is clearly not a closed system, since massive amounts of energy come in from the sun and other radiation goes out.
  3) The theory of evolution makes no claims about the origins of life, only its development from one form to another.
  4) There are still areas under research in biology as there are in all other fields of science, but they by no means spell the failure of evolutionary theory. For example, the helical fine structure of some of the rings of Saturn was unpredicted by the theories of gravity and motion and is difficult to explain. But no one reasonably suggests that there must be an intelligent force pushing them into that shape. Everyone is confident that further study will reveal the mechanism and that it will be completely natural.

  There will always be areas outside the boundaries of scientific understanding, but it’s foolish to say “We don’t know how it happened, therefore it must have been done by an intelligent designer.” This is a cop-out. The more we learn about the universe, the more clear it becomes that everything happens through natural processes. Evolution is one of those natural processes, as well established as the theory of gravitation and the theory that the sun is at the center of the solar system.

  Daryl Lafferty

• 5 Richard // Dec 23, 2005 at 7:39 pm

  Are you saying they edited your letter? That just does not seem right. Instead of your letter to the editor they publish what ever part of your letter they feel like which could completely change the intent of the letter. I’m not sure the left out parts in your letter hurt that much, but it’s the fact that they censored what you wrote and then put your name on it that bothers me.

• 6 Daryl // Dec 23, 2005 at 9:45 pm

  I think they do that more often than not.

• 7 Don // Dec 24, 2005 at 1:08 am

  I’m pretty sure it was George Bush’s fault that the letter was changed. Who else would do such a thing?

  Ok, I’ve had a few LTTEs published in the LA Times(name dropping here) and they have changed my letter a little bit both times. They call it “editing”, whatever that is.