Plenty of science behind evolution

About your recent letters from people who support creationism: I respect their right to believe, but they shouldn’t use falsehoods to justify those beliefs. One letter says evolution has never been observed, and there are no transitional fossils between apes and men. Of course not! We did not descend from apes; they are a separate branch from common ancestors, and there are plenty of transitional fossils.

As far as observing evolution, remember that changes resulting from natural selection are extremely tiny from one generation to the next, so tens of thousands of generations must take place before natural major changes occur. But when man causes selective pressures faster than nature, we definitely observe evolution occurring.

During man’s history, we’ve seen changes in shorter-lived animals, birds, and plants — such as the evolution of teosinte grass into corn. On a shorter scale, the multi-generation study of arctic foxes has evolved changes in color, body structure, and behavior.

And in our own lifetimes, we all are aware that microbes have evolved resistance to antibiotics.

And I was sorry to see that another letter accused Darwin of racism because “race” was a subtitle of his book. That false claim was spread by the Nazis to justify anti-Semitism. Let’s not go there. “The Origin of Species” primarily refers to different animal races.

That letter also said evolution wasn’t scientific because there were no experiments. Not true. Observation is equally important — look at the science of astronomy. But the fox study and every breeding program that evolves new plants is a controlled experiment that proves evolutionary change.

John F. Moore

Libertyville