I

refer to a letter titled '€œCreationism and evolution'€, (The Jakarta Post, Nov. 14) by Atom.

Dear Atom,

Clearly your grasp of abiogenesis (the origin of life) and evolution by natural selection is limited; your letter reads like a typical creationist diatribe with points that have been refuted a thousand times.

The line named for Wallace (Alfred Russel Wallace) runs through the middle of Indonesia and that work led to an independent development of the theory of natural selection, so it is somewhat ironic that you ignore that Darwin'€™s data was supported by independent research conducted in your own backyard, in the 1800s.

Firstly you seem to have a poor understanding of how science works. Just because unfounded claims are published in a book that doesn'€™t make them any more true than, say, Harry Potter, excepting that the Harry Potter story is at least internally consistent and a well-written account of magic.

The greatest discovery of all time would be reproducible experimental evidence that proves that a designer exists, but so far we only have the contrary.

We even have evidence now of evolution in action: the fossil record is surprisingly good, considering how rare fossil formation is. Even the fabled intermediate fossil that creationists have been crying out for, the '€œcrocoduck'€, has been found.

We keep finding new and interesting intermediate fossils, which is frankly awesome.

The fact that you paint the West as atheistic and committing a conspiracy against the East suggests that there are not equally excellent research being done in all parts of the world into genetics, chemistry, biology and paleontology. This is condescending to those scientists.

Frankly, I don'€™t know what you mean by the '€œEast'€. Does that include all of the atheists in China, or are they part of the '€œThe Grand Atheist/West conspiracy'€?  And how does this fit with the Catholic Church, which most would consider to be pretty western?

Hypotheses on abiogenesis (which isn'€™t actually anything to do with evolution, by the way) vary but numerous experiments have proved that organic chemicals can be produced in early Earth-like situations, these chemicals can undergo molecular evolution and potentially form self-replicating chains that could have led to the first cells. While the answer to how life started is still, '€œWe don'€™t know, but we have a clue,'€ that'€™s OK and it'€™s one of the greatest questions that science can answer.

Your problem is that science doesn'€™t have to make room for theistic evolution. It is up to you to prove how and why theistic evolution works, provide a falsifiable hypothesis and find evidence that supports it. All it takes is one piece of evidence to invalidate that theory and the problem with theistic evolution is that we keep finding more evidence that disproves it.

What is really cool now is how we are finding out how punctuated evolution hypotheses might fit into the neo-Darwinian synthesis, which helps explain why we have '€œliving fossils'€, particularly as new discoveries into epigenics show promise for promoting mutation in shorter time frames than random mutation when environmental factors influence inherited gene expression.

Science is cool because we keep re-writing the book rather than let it gather dust on the shelf. We have come a long way since Darwin and Wallace, but keeping your head buried in the past is no way to be ready for the future.

Jus Rationa
Jakarta