Darwin

I am surprised by some of the examples used by Mr Balaji Ravichandran
in his refuting of creationism. Take the statement "And the genes coding
for the proteins involved in all vital functions of the body are
remarkably conserved. Eg. Cytochromes." This does not contribute to
refuting intelligent design anymore than it does to promote evolution.

If I were a designer, why should I re-invent the wheel, particularly
if it works well in the first place? Looking at the design of the Intel
microprocessors from the granddaddy chip 8086 to the 80486 (the last
before the Pentium series), the basic architecture of the old 8086 was
actually quite well-preserved. Similarly the new models of the PowerPC
chips were added onto the basic architecture of the basic 1st generation
micro-processor. These would have grave implications for his statement on
neuroanatomy - "the structural-functional correlation of the vertebrate
nervous system has been faithfully conserved for their vital functions,
and successively improved to result in the complexity of their primates."

As for the emergence of multi-resistant MRSA, or whatever bug is
wreaking havoc in nosocomial infections at your hospital, might I
respectfully suggest that he was merely drawing attention to the well-
recognised phenomenom of natural selection. I think most creationists
would not deny natural selection. It is whether such is necessary and
sufficient for evolution, and whether evolution is both necessary and
sufficient in explaining the diverse variety of living organisms we see
today that is the arguing point between the creationists and the
evolutionists.

Competing interests:
None declared