Jonathan Wells

Darwin vs. Science Conflict Is Real
Human Events, Sept. 15

There *is* a conflict between Darwinism and science.
Leland Smith's August 25 letter claims that "there is no conflict" between
science and Darwin's theory of evolution, which (he claims) has been
tested "at the molecular, cellular, tissue, and high levels of life," and
"revised as new and better information is developed."

As a biologist, I disagree.  Of course, Darwin's theory works at some
simple levels, such as antibiotic resistance and minor changes in finch
beaks. And the theory has been revised in some minor respects in the 141
years since it was first proposed.  But Darwinian evolution purports to
explain how all living things are descended from a common ancestor, and
how the obvious differences among them arose through random mutations and
natural selection. These larger claims are not consistent with the
evidence.

In the "Cambrian explosion," the major groups of animals appeared at about
the same time, with no fossil evidence of common ancestry.   Textbook
drawings of vertebrate embryos purporting to show similarities inherited
from a common ancestor have been faked.  Recent molecular findings have
uprooted Darwin's evolutionary tree, and the history of life now looks
more like a lawn or a tangled thicket.

Random genetic mutations can contribute to biochemical evolution, as in
antibiotic resistance.  But there is no direct evidence that they produce
the basic shape changes we normally associate with evolution.  And natural
selection has never been shown to produce anything more than the minor
modifications within species that we observe in domestic breeding.
Smith's letter ignores these facts.  So do most biology textbooks, which
mislead students by distorting the evidence for Darwinian evolution and
failing to present the evidence against it.  This is not science, but
myth-making.

Jonathan Wells, Ph.D.
Seattle, Wash.
JonWells1@compuserve.com