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An anonymous reader writes "A new species of plant came into existence about 30 years ago. It is a fertile hybrid which cannot breed with either of its parent species."
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The discovery of the York groundsel shows that species are created as well as made extinct, and that Charles Darwin was right and the Creationists are wrong.
This is the part where I imagine Anthony Browne, the columnist, doing a little dance, and thumbing his nose at those bad ol creationists. News Bulletin to Mr Browne, this can be construed as further proving the validity of an already accepted idea in Evolution theory, but finding a weed, no matter how genetically shiney, in a field does not disprove the existance of God, nor the notion that the universe was created by the afforementioned entity.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
about 30 years ago
I know Slashdot is usually the last one to post news headlines, but this is getting ridiculous.
It is a fertile hybrid which cannot breed with either of its parent species.
This is not all that impressive.
I know a whole bunch of people that are in exactly that same category.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
For example, Yeah, right. There are probably dozens if not thousands more; the only way to prove this statement is to catalog every single living organism in Britain. It may be the first new species known to have been created by unintentional hybridisation. It shows nothing of the sort. There are many flavors of creationism, and some believe that creation is ongoing through divinely ordained natural processes such as hybridisation. Further, Charles Darwin believed that women were mentally inferior to men - how exactly does this new plant species prove or disprove that part of his belief system? No, new species typically are created in a single breeding cycle. Think about it, does the first member of a new species stay in the womb for millenia? The generally accepted doctrine of "Punk Eke" or punctuated equilibrium (for which the late S.J. Gould can claim half of the credit) states that species evolve in rapid bursts due to strong environmental pressures such as geologic upheavals, overpopulation, human destructiveness, population isolation or mass extinction events, etc. etc. etc.. This bit about "creation of new species taking thousands of years" is straight out of Darwin, and it's one of the things that this discovery could be said to disprove.
No, hybrids are often sterile, and many of those that are not often de-hybridise and revert to parent forms in the wild. Nonetheless, fertile hybrids abound.
Most "scientific" articles written for non-scientists sacrifice some precision for accessibility. But this article has more false statements than real information, by a rather large margin.
Well, not really. Depends on who you're talking to. If you're talking to a strict fundamentalist who has no science background, then yes, it does disprove his breed of creationism. It doesn't, however, disprove Dr. Michael Behe's breed of "creationism".
What it does disprove, though, is that speciation is possible, but that's rather obvious to anyone who looks at the genetic/chromosomal make-up of, say, chimps, gorrillas and humans.
If you're truly interested in this debate, then I would recommend a book called "The Science of God" by Gerald L. Schroeder. He's a physicist who is also a creationist, but with a rather different take on the whole thing. He maintains that God did create the world in 7 literal days, but that it also took roughly 13.5 Billion years. Has to do with the theory of relativity of time... He's also Jewish, and has an incredible grasp on the Hebrew underlying the English in Genesis, and brings to light several key verses that could have either been translated better, or simply lost something in translation. Great stuff.
As a creationist who also has a degree in genetics and did research under an evolutionary geneticist, I've seen both sides of the spectrum. both sides extremes have their intellectual/theological bigots who aren't willing to budge simply for spites sake. However, those that are willing to at least listen generally can have very unique viewpoints.