* Evolution vs. 'intelligent design' ideas contrasted at two UNM
lectures

    Evolution cannot explain the complexity of living things, lawyer and
evolution critic Phillip Johnson told to a University of New Mexico
audience Monday.

    Nonsense, countered Peralta physicist Dave Thomas. Evolution is a far
better explanation for the oddities of life than the "intelligent design"
argument offered as an alternative by Johnson and others, Thomas said.

      The two squared off in separate talks at UNM on Monday.

    "I do not believe that the theory of evolution, or anything like the
theory of evolution, will survive the challenges that it faces in the 21st
century," Johnson told a large audience.

    Thomas insisted that evolutionary science is in fine shape,
successfully answering a host of biological questions. "Evolution explains
a lot of things intelligent design doesn't," he said.

    Johnson, a University of California law professor, wrote the book
"Darwin on Trial," a critique of evolution. He is a leader of the
intelligent design movement, which argues that some intelligent designer,
rather than natural evolution, is the best explanation for life's
complexity.

    Thomas, who works for an Albuquerque high-tech firm, is president of
New Mexicans for Science and Reason and was one of the leaders in the fight
to put evolution back into state curriculum standards in the late 1990s.

    Evolution is the idea that the nature favors fitter plants, animals
and even bacteria.

    If a slight change occurs through mutation, according to evolutionary
science, it will be wiped out of the gene pool if it makes its owner less
likely to survive. But if it gives its owner an accidental advantage in
survival and reproduction, then the owner will prosper and have more
offspring to pass along the new, mutated gene.

    Johnson argued those incremental changes are insufficient to explain
the huge complexity of life around us. But scientists are committed to a
"naturalistic" explanation, so they are unwilling to consider the
alternative that an "intelligent designer" is responsible, Johnson said.

    Johnson avoided identifying the designer he had in mind. "I'm not
going to say anything about any issues related to the Bible," he said at the
start of his talk.

    Thomas said evolution is perfectly capable of explaining the diversity
of life, citing fossil evidence of step-by-step evolution from one species
to the next. Evolution also explains things intelligent design cannot,
Thomas said.

    Why, he asked, are there kangaroos in Australia but not in New Mexico?
Evolutionary science says that different populations on different
continents follow different evolutionary paths, while intelligent design
has no explanation.

    Thomas criticized intelligent design advocates for devoting their
energy to criticizing evolutionary science while never offering a coherent
explanation of their own theory as an alternative.

    For scientists to throw up their hands and say life is too complex,
and therefore a deity must have designed it, would be like the Greeks, who did
not understand lightning, attributing it to their god Zeus, he said.

Here's another newspaper item of interest: