Voices for Evolution

[Stephen W. Schaeffer]

On Tue, 31 May 1994 23:31:45 GMT, yehuda silver wrote:

>To my knowledge, no group is trying to censor 'evolution'.
>The creationists are asking only that:
>a) It be taught as a "theory" with all the evidence, including
>strongpoints and weakpoints.
>b) alternatave theories be also presented.
>It is the "evolutionists" who are trying to censor this time around!

I think that the current thread of this discussion belongs in 
talk.origins not bionet.general.  Stories of divine creation do not belong 
in science classes because creationism cannot be tested with the scientific 
method.  Censorship would occur if creationism was an appropriate topic for 
biology classes, but teachers refused to instruct students in the subject.
Evolution is not a theory, but a fact.  Holmes et al. 1992 Proc. Natl. 
Acad. Sci. USA 89: 4835-4839 demonstrated that HIV, the AIDS virus, evolves 
over time.  These investigators collected HIV from a single patient once 
each year for a period of seven years and determined the nucleotide 
sequence of part of the surface glycoprotein gp120.  They found that the 
gp120 sequence evolved over time in response to the human immune system.  
One critical feature of scientific study is that it be repeated.  The 
experiment with HIV can be repeated to confirm if the observation is true.  
This can not be done with the 'hypothesis of divine creation'.
Stephen W. Schaeffer
Institute of Molecular Evolutionary Genetics
The Pennsylvania State University