Creationism Rears its Ugly Head
If you read the Ergo Sum you'll notice that the last article advocates simple creationism. The article was ironically enough written by a student who, like myself, is a double major in NPB and Philosophy. The student's argument is basically that while evolution works, the original structures that evolution has been improving must have been created intentionally by an intelligent being. There are myriad flaws in the argument that I'd rather not go into here (because I have a real paper to write for a grade and I don't have the time to write two papers today) but one point I will address is the claim that evolution passes on only useful traits. This may or may not be true depending on how you define evolution, but what is not true is that everything passed on from generation to generation is useful. Handicaps are occasionally passed on genetically, even for multiple generations, though they have absolutely no selective advantage. The same could have happened to flagella or eye precursor structures. Unless there is a strong selective pressure, it may take many generations for a useless characteristic to be winnowed out. This provides ample time for additional mutations to change the otherwise useless structure into something functional, vis a vis a means of locomotion or vision. Random mutation is quite capable of explaining the modification of organisms over time and selection's power should not be underestimated. A mouse bred selectively for large size could theoretically produce decendents the size of elephants within a milenium. That's a sobering thought for those who see a necessity for intelligent design or creationism.
