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From: bch@unc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Observing Evolution
Message-ID: <6028@unc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 18-Oct-83 23:52:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: unc.6028
Posted: Tue Oct 18 23:52:16 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 20-Oct-83 04:53:21 EDT
Lines: 39


So...Creation Scientists maintain that evolution has never been observed.

If I remember correctly, the process of evolution is not some unitary
driving unintelligent force, but the product of at least three different
phenomenon:

	(1) Natural selection (survival of the fittest):  simply
put -- in a competetive environment the species most well adapted to
that environment survive, most likely at the expense of species less
well adapted.  The most obvious example of this is the human being.
The species has not only adapted to its environment, but gone one
step further and has begun adapting the environment to itself!  For
an example of species failing to compete, see any list of extinct
or endangered species.  

	(2) Random mutation:  While this doesn't happen to complex
critters in ways that are generally observable, it does happen to
viruses and bacteria all the time.  Some biologist correct me if
I'm wrong, but I believe that Swine Flu virus that caused such a
panic in the medical industry in 1976 was a mutated form of the
swine flu virus responsible for the pandemic of 1918.  There is
a marvelous book called "Rats, Lice, and History" which describes
developments in human history as a result of a genetic shift in
the Typhus bacteria from Biblical times until today.  The more
complex the critter, the longer it takes to show up, but the
evidence is there.

	(3) Genetic Drift:  See the newspapers of two weeks
ago for the Nobel Prize for observations of this exact phenomenon.
Hybridization of plants -- a naturally occurring phenomenon --
has been observed and studied for centuries and is the basis for
most of modern agriculture.  

Have I left anything out?

					Byron Howes
					UNC - Chapel Hill
					decvax!duke!unc!bch