The guy is not too bright, sorry This has all been discussed so many times that i do not want to get anywhere close to giraffe's long neck any more Even though i find Dawkins a bit too harsh, i mostly agree with him. My disagreement with him is only about the way he expresses himself sometimes - but considering the unlimited number of idiots he has to deal with, i feel some kind of empathy towards him even when he's most irritated.

In general, i find all those "tough" questions about evolution senseless, because nobody ever said that any scientific theory is "correct" (unless we talk political correctness here). Everybody agrees that a theory is an approximation, until anything better is found. Some theories look better, some - worse, but all of them are open to question and challenge. Poor jerk Popper wasted his life talking about the nature of a scientific theory - and yes, he was not very impressed with Evolution theory:

Perhaps the best-known philosophical criticism of evolution was put forth by Karl Popper, who once claimed that "Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program" (Unended Quest, 1976). Popper famously retracted his comments once it was explained to him that there was quite a bit more to the theory than he had understood from a cursory examination of the subject: "I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation" (Dialectica 32:344-346).

© Did Popper refute evolution?

Sure Evolution theory does not look that good - tons of questions. Especially if one does not knopw much. Biology does not look especially good either. But if even in math, even in the number theory, nobody can explain/predict prime number distribution ... oh my ... let me ask a few stupid questions on quantum theory - and the Creator would smile approvingly from the Heaven. Or at least a Creationist

But let's leave Popper and Fred Reed alone for now. Let's see what i think about all that. I like what Prigogine says about life in his "Order out of Chaos". Somewhere in this book he says that once we learn enough, we'll see the life starting out of chaos with the same inevitability as we see a stone falling to the Earth. Neither he nor anybody else claims that we fully understand how life started, how the species evolved, or even how the living cell works. Morphogenesis was one of the greates mysteries - now we have at least some explanation.

But the most important thing for me personally is somewhat different. I won't be that much surprized if some Higher Intelligence dropped all existing DNA ready to use on Earth or somewhere in the Solar System. The thing is - it does not change anything at all. One question is just replaced by another, or, rather, many different questions. Say, is Intelligent Design (if it does exist) really intelligent? It does not look so - to me at least. But if i start asking questions - why He designed giraffe's neck rather than provided him with food close on the ground - ID people would wind up saying: "You are a stupid idiot. He (that is HE) knows better!" His ways are beyond your chicken brain. Got it, guys, thank you so much

And if He, or They, or Whoever, did not just drop DNA, but are rather involved in everyday life - i do not even want to participate in all this debate after Leibniz and whoever else. I'll better finish this with a small poem, partly stolen from you know who:

Неужели та же сила,
Та же мощная ладонь,
Что ягненка сотворила,
И тебя, ночной огонь -
Нам дала чумы бациллу,
И холерный вибрион?!?

[to mratner]  ¶ 4:44 PM