Quote:
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“Is the Brogan planning to host future exhibits on palm reading and astrology?"
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He should have been laufghed out of the room.
Mind you I offer no other solution here. Fred Reed (one of my fav columnists) merely dares to ask scientific questions re. the
theory of evolution. And have you noticed that no one objects to it being called that, so long as you don't insist it's only a theory?
The Metaphysics of Evolution
By Fred Reed
The frequent shifting of ground bothered me. If we knew how life began, why did we have so many prospective mechanisms, none of which really worked? Evolution began to look like a theory in search of a soup. Forty-five years later, it still does.
Questions Arise
I was probably in college when I found myself asking what seemed to me straightforward questions about the chemical origin of life. In particular:
(1) Life was said to have begun by chemical inadvertence in the early seas. Did we, I wondered, really know of what those early seas consisted? Know, not suspect, hope, theorize, divine, speculate, or really, really wish.
The answer was, and is, "no." We have no dried residue, no remaining pools, and the science of planetogenesis isn't nearly good enough to provide a quantitative analysis.
(2) Had the creation of a living cell been replicated in the laboratory? No, it hadn't, and hasn't.
(3) Did we know what conditions were necessary for a cell to come about? No, we didn't, and don't.
(4) Could it be shown to be mathematically probable that a cell would form, given any soup whatever? No, it couldn't, and can't. (At least not without cooking the assumptions.)
Well, I thought, sophomore chemistry major that I then was: If we don't know what conditions existed, or what conditions are necessary, and can't reproduce the event in the laboratory, and can't show it to be statistically probable – why are we so very sure that it happened? Would you hang a man on such evidence?