silver

For this website: http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/science/sc0042.html

You're trying to refute the idea that the fossil record does not support Darwinian evolution. That's good. Science is full of conflict, one person telling the other that this isn't quite right, and discovering where we're right and we're wrong. With multiple points of view, logical fallacies, errors in methodology, and all that other stuff is cleared out. The philosophers of the eighteenth century are right in the fact that we have only the evidence our senses provide to get a bearing on our world: fine, we need to make sure it's accurate.

But I have objections to your website. Firstly, if you haven't noticed...the Origin of Species was published one hundred and fifty years ago. Actually, 151 years, now. Last year was the 150th anniversary, so to speak, of publication. You can bet that there's a whole lot more that scientists have discovered, refuted, or added to the concept of population ecology and evolution. Why are you talking only about Darwin's work? Why are the more recent discoveries and additions to this theory not mentioned at all? The Origin of Species does not represent the summation of what scientists and others know about how species change over time. I'd respect you a whole lot more if you would read up on what has been discovered since 1859 and refuted that.

Second issue: I assume you're trying to convince not just "the laymen" but also the scientific, by interviewing a doctor. Then I scroll down and discover that, hey, number one, this is a medical doctor. Not an evolutionary biologist, or even a biologist, who would be my first choice to interview, to be the most credible. He graduated with his first degree in British History--an absolutely fascinating topic (even for people overseas, like me) but just about irrelevant to evolution. He sounds like a very accomplished man, but the last paragraph about his credentials touched off this rant: he's the chairman of a Catholic commission for parents. He co-hosts a Catholic radio show. He is part of a Catholic Educator Center.

Being Catholic is not evil--far from it. But this is bias. If you presented work on evolution with this kind of background, there are red flags, neon signage, waving yellow-and-black warnings that there is bias in this. Major, major bias. By no means does this assume someone's "fudged data", but this is clearly identifiable bias. Even studies that are funded by a corporation, for example, are not as reputable as those funded from the more-or-less neutral government grants.

Thirdly, get your facts straight. "Survival of the fittest" was not something Darwin said--it is a simplification of natural selection. You don't have to die for natural selection to occur, though death does influence it.

In short: get some credible sources, straight facts, and please do stop using a 150+ year old theory as your opponent. Thanks.