Review of Inherit the Wind (1960) by Edith N — 30 Dec 2006

I don't understand Biblical literalism. I just don't. I think just comparing the same verse in half-a-dozen translations of the Bible ought to put paid to that idea. If the Bible is the one, true word of God, why doesn't every translation work out the same way?

But leaving that aside, I [i]really[/i] don't understand ignoring evidence. We [i]see[/i] evolution happen. Don't believe it? Ask a doctor who's having to treat an AIDS patient--or, even simpler, the flu. Why isn't that flu shot you got last winter good for this winter's strain? Because it evolved. We are creating by our own actions strains of bacteria that are resistant to the drugs we use to keep their close genetic relatives under control. Every time you fail to finish that course of antibiotics, the survivors--the ones most resistant to the drug--pass on what makes them resistant, and it's that much harder for the antibiotics to do their job next time.

There is a species of mosquito that only exists in the London subway system. We have, again by our own actions, bred animals that are no longer anything like their wild cousins. While it's true you can't tell a dog from a wolf by looking at its DNA, I doubt that is true of the chicken and the guinea fowl.

And, of course, we've only been tinkering a few thousand years. Less, in the case of those drug-resistant bacteria and the London mosquitoes. Even if you go with the YEC hypothesis of a 6000-year-old Earth, that is enough time for new species to have come to be. Why not?

And then there's the evidence of thousands upon thousands and millions upon millions of years behind us--3 billion years of life on Earth from the first fragile proto-cell to the wide spectrum that we see today.

Evolution itself is a thing of wonder. Evolution is a miracle. I don't need Spencer Tracy to tell me that, though gods know he did an excellent job at it.