[Thee Alex]

Here is my reply to her email.....

(she opened her initial message by saying should couldn't write for long as she's off to Africa for a month)

Hi,

Hope you have a good trip. I'll address the issues you've raised in this email...



" However the way I see it when I look at the world is that somebody had to have thought real hard about were to put the stars the people etc.We could have been living in space floating about but that would mean we woudnt really need legs if we arent gonna use them."


That makes absolutely no sense. The fact we aren't living in space doesn't mean that there is a Creator! If someone thought very carefully where to put the stars we wouldn't run the risk of skin cancer from the radiation spewing from ours! And people weren't 'put' anywhere, we have evolved to fit the environment we exist in. If 'God' created mankind then 'He's' a very sloppy workman; our eyes are upside down (our brains flip the image), our lower backs aren't strong enough to hold the weight of our upright torsos (leading to back problems for many of us), our own bodies go wrong regularly (leading to cancers), we carry around organs that are nothing but bile bombs waiting to go off (appendix), and women's hips are a DISASTER in turns of childbirth! If all that was 'designed' then I would have to question how competent 'God' really is.

Think about this - the nearest you can get to living in the zero gravity of space on Earth is in the oceans.....where legs aren't especially common! Look at the Whale - it evolved from a land mammal, and has vestigial hips and hind legs! Why would 'God' put those there? In the Bible 'He' says 'He' doesn't test or tempt people, so why create something that cause people to get the wrong idea?



"Evolution cant think."


It doesn't have to, because it's (contrary to what a lot of advocates of ID and Creationism think) not got an 'end result' to aim at. Eyes didn't evolve because it was 'decided' we needed to see, they evolved through slow alteration, each step only being passed on if it gave an increased chance of survival.


"I might sound stupid now but I will try and explain better what I am trying to say. I have printed out the attachment you sent so I can read in the plane."


I hope you enjoy it, it covers a lot of the problems Creationism has.



"One of my friends thinks its an 'ad hoc fallacy)...I.e. something that uses principles defined by itself as a theory to justify its existence as a theory; avoiding the need for testing due to the apparent existence of these principles.

Evolution is a theory but creation is a 'fact'."


Theory has a very different meaning in science. You start with a hypothesis ('I think that gravity exists'), then you look at the facts ('Hmmm, that apple just fell on my head'), then, when you've got enough facts you present a Theory ('I believe items of great mass attract smaller items to them, this has been demonstrated over and over again as fact, so I present my Theory of Gravity')

You're going to be on a plane very soon, trusting in the Theory of Aerodynamics, ask yourself whether that feels like an unproven 'idea' when you're at 20,000 feet!!

Creation is an absolute fallacy. The Bible is internally inconsistent (I can give you a list of over 100 direct contradictions), and the Earth is clearly far older than 6000 years. Mankind developed farming BEFORE the world was meant to have been created!! You cannot trust the Bible (or Torah, or Koran, or any 'holy' book) as a source of accurate information. Looking up at the night sky proves the Bible to be wrong about how old the Earth is - you see those stars? They're hundreds of thousands of light years away - remember that light travels at 186,282.397 miles per second! A light year is how far light can travel in a year! Thats 5,878,625,373,183.61 miles! How long has a photon ejected by that star had to travel to reach your eye? 100,000 light years? 10,000 light years? If the Universe was only 6000 years old we'd be only starting to see light from stars 6000 light years away by now. It's nonsense. Every particle of light that falls on your eyes in a night sky screams out the fallacy of Creation.



"My friend also advised I read the following although I havent gotten round to doing it ,but you might be interested:

The Blind Watchmaker - by Richard Dawkins
>
> The Theory of Evolution - by John Maynard Smith
>
> Wonderful Life - The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History - by Steven Jay Gould
>
> Almost Like a Whale - The Origin of Species Updated - by Steve Jones"


The Blind Watchmaker is excellent, and Steve Jones is one of the smartest men in the world. I'd also advise reading 'Why Darwin Matters' by Michael Shermer, it's an excellent rebuttal of 'Intelligent Design' and Creationism.

I hope you'll eventually be convinced of the truth in this matter, as you obviously have a lot of passion and it's a shame to see it wasted on stories from the childhood of our species that have become Religion.
Alex