It’s appropriate that Joshua Ashwood begins his letter to the Muskogee Phoenix (The People Speak — “Evolution proves ungodly folly”, 10/5/2012) with a fairy tale. Everything he says is a fairy tale.

Modern physics demonstrates things do come from nothing. Quantum field fluctuations produce virtual particles continuously — from nothing. It happens. It’s real. Denying it won’t make it stop. There is a mountain of factual evidence supporting the Big Bang. But, I digress — this has nothing to do with evolution.

It’s painfully obvious Josh hasn’t availed himself of the diversity of links to scientific information provided him from his last letter. Unfortunately, this is a ubiquitous characteristic of creationists like Josh. Josh is profoundly ignorant of the science of evolution. He refuses to learn anything about the science he is so ignorantly criticizing. There is no excuse for such spectacular ignorance when it is projected into the public forum.

Darwin had nothing to do with explaining the origin of the universe. Claiming scientists of past centuries were creationists is meaningless and has no impact on the current understanding of evolutionary science. Morris was not a biologist and the literature demonstrates he had no concern for facts or the scientific method.

Marx, Stalin and Hitler have nothing to do with biological evolution. Imagine Hitler accepting his perfect Aryan race descending from a common ancestor with chimpanzees. Ridiculous! Marx’s ideas were already well formulated before Darwin published “Origin of Species” in 1856, publishing “The Manifesto of the Communist Party” in 1848, eight years earlier. Marx cites Darwin in a footnote in Chapter 9 of “Das Kapital”, referring to Darwin’s refutation of the ideas of Malthus. The citation is dubious because Darwin credits Malthus as inspiring much of his thinking on natural selection. The Soviet Union’s primary “biologist” surviving Stalin’s favor was T. D. Lysenko, an obviously anti-Darwinian crack-pot. Suggesting a connection between these three and Darwin is made up creationist nonsense. Joshua, you are deeply, fundamentally, factually wrong again.

DAVID GROW

Edmond