A way you can win Nobel Prize

Dear Editor: A recent letter to the editor regarding the theory of evolution contained two major errors.

The first error was assigning an explanation of the origin of life to the theory of evolution. To the best of my knowledge, the theory of evolution makes no statements about how life originated.

The second error is a common error, that of equating evolution to a tornado assembling a house out of a lumber yard to evolution. Those who understand evolution are aware that it refers to incremental change occurring in populations, not to dramatic alterations in individual cases.

Within the scientific community, one will find many disagreements about the mechanisms and processes of evolution, but there is, among scientists without a religious agenda, nearly unanimous agreement that evolution is the explanation for life as it exists today.

And, a reminder to those who say that evolution is “only a theory.” According to Wikipedia: “A scientific theory is a well substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not ‘guesses’ but reliable accounts of the real world.”

Germ theory of disease, atomic theory, cell theory, plate tectonic theory, electromagnetic theory, the theories of gravity and relativity, and a host of others, are the best explanations currently available of how our universe works.

Anyone who can bring forward a scientifically tenable alternative to a current scientific theory has a Nobel Prize waiting for them. Ron Smuin Penticton