Roving Defender of Evolution, and of Room for God

[SecularMotion]

From the NY Times

For a university professor, Francisco J. Ayala spends a lot of time on the road.

An evolutionary biologist and geneticist at the University of California, Irvine, he speaks often at universities, in churches, for social groups and elsewhere, usually in defense of the theory of evolution and against the arguments of creationism and its ideological cousin, intelligent design.

Usually he preaches to the converted. But not always.

As challenges to the teaching of evolution continue to emerge, legislators debate measures equating the teaching of creationism with academic freedom and a new movie links Darwin to evils ranging from the suppression of free speech to the Holocaust, “I get a lot of people who don’t know what to think,” Dr. Ayala said. “Or they believe in intelligent design but they want to hear.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/science/29prof.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Duppers]

1. What gets me

As a friend on another forum said:

is the ignorance of the way they frame it - "Do you believe in the theory of Evolution"?

Fuck no I don't. There is nothing to believe. Evolution is an observable fact.

Living organisms mutate and change, there is no question. The theory is this- the mechanism that causes evolution to produce new adaptations and new species is Darwin's theory of "Natural Selection" and that is a highly probable explanation of the mechanism but it is not proven.

However, evolution itself is a fact. It happens. There is no question.

To say one does not believe in evolution is to say one does not believe in Newton's laws of thermodynamics.