Mr.Kitchen

This is<a href="http://www.thedmonline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2002/02/19/3c71ebef18d7b" target="_blank">his letter</a> I know he is wrong but I don't have the time to write a letter to the paper he wrote to countering it. Hopefully one of yall will be hungry for a yec.

Please respond Mississippi needs all the help it can get.

Jeremy The Ole Miss Student.

liquid

Here is my shot. I don't live in the US, let alone Miss. but anyone is free to use my reply as their own, modified or not - just tell me if it is published. If they won't publish it, ask them to forward it to the original correspondent.

Dear Editor,

David Stone (02-19-02) appears to be suffering from some fundamental misconceptions about evolutionary biology.

The Associated Press has never been an authority on biology - there are in fact several valid and evidenced theories for the origin of sexual reproduction.

Kondrashov, at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, argues that sexual reproduction removes deleterious mutations, providing an evolutionary advantage. Van Valen, at the University of Chicago, argues that sex allows a species to keep one step ahead of diseases. Either or both of these may be true, and they are supported by the vast majority of biologists. Sex may be a mystery, but it is no embarrasment. I would question his baseless assertion that "the rotifer is not [sic] surprised to be alive". Says who?

I might also remind him that there are plenty of ways an irreducibly complex system can arise incrementally through evolution, in much the same way as an irreducibly complex arch can be built stone by stone within a scaffold. 'Primitive' forms of sex are commonly found. For instance, E. Coli bacteria perform conjugation, directly injecting DNA into adjacent bacteria. There is no evidence of design, let alone the undemonstrated claim that Christ is the designer.

Finally, I would like to address the out-of-context quote of Dr. Colin Patterson. That question was not asked of the gathering as your correspondent insinuated. It was a rhetorical question used to exemplify popular ignorance of evolutionary biology. The late Dr. Patterson certainly trusted the evidence enough to remain a supporter of evolution until his death.

The embarrasing mystery is why people fail to accept the evidence that has caused the scientific community to overwhelmingly support evolution for many decades now.

Liquid

II DB.

tgamble

Good response. You might want to toss in a quote from Dr. patterson showing his support for evolution and/or pointing out some of the evidence for it.

Orpheous99

I wote a feedback to him. Here it is;

For a doctor he sure doesn't know much about biology. It must be not be a doctorate in medicine.

Sexual reproduction is a mutation. If one looks at the pair in the male XY and female XX humans one would see that the male's Y is actually an X with a piece missing. Also, if one took a look at the reproductive systems of each one would see that the male's are analogous to the females. I.E. The testes are lowered ovaries, the is an enlarged , and the "seam" between the testes is a sealed vagina. There is also the fact that male mammals also have nipples. Another fact is that during the early part of a pregnancy we're all females. Sexual reproduction isn't an embarassment, creationists are.

I see that they have a bit of a censor built into their feedback system.

[ February 19, 2002: Message edited by: Orpheous99 ]</p>

tronvillain

Sexual reproduction predates chromosomal determination of sex, so that's not really much of an explanation.

Mr.Kitchen

Thanks for providing the response. I would like to give you credit however. So if you sumbited it through the internet I would appreciate it.

Orpheous99

It seems that my response is the only one which they had posted from people from here so far.

Kevin

Both of them seem to be true. It might be worth mentioning that Rice & Chippindale (2001) tested both the Red Queen and Muller's Ratchet theories, and confirmed them both.

<strong>Reference:</strong>Rice, W. R. and Chippindale, A. K. (2001) <a href="http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/edg/pdf/RiceChippendale2001.pdf" target="_blank">"Sexual Recombination and the Power of Natural Selection."</a> Science. 294(5542):555-559.

tgamble

Another piece of ignorant crap
<a href="http://www.lancastereaglegazette.com/news/stories/20020220/opinion/1681455.html" target="_blank">http://www.lancastereaglegazette.com/news/stories/20020220/opinion/1681455.html</a>