Editor,
I try hard to avoid debating creationists - little good ever comes from it - but Gerardo Saenz' letter in Thursday's issue of the Daily Lobo requires at least a brief response. If Saenz wants to engage in an intellectual debate about evolution, he should avoid using creationist arguments that went extinct long ago - though perhaps he doesn't believe in extinction, an evolutionist conspiracy.
He states that what he calls the "scientific law of cause and effect" says no effect can be greater than its cause. I am aware of no scientific law by that name or of any other scientific law by a different name that makes the same statement. Perhaps he is thinking of Newton's third law, but it really doesn't fit his usage. How does this explain nuclear explosions? Aren't they bigger than their cause?
Saenz also rephrases Newton's second law, and insists that any system must drive constantly from order to disorder. Newton must be rolling in his grave.
Even relatively informed creationists don't rely on this argument anymore because they were humiliated when they attempted it decades ago.
Science lesson: Newton's second law refers to closed systems. The Earth will certainly die an entropic and disordered death some day, but in conjunction with the sun as a joint system, the Earth can tend toward increasing order for a fleeting few billion years. Heck, even an egg developing into a fetus disproves his absurd claim.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Be a creationist because it suits your faith, not because you need scientific validation of your faith.
Keith Wiley
UNM student
