Devonian Physics Lecturer Doesn't Do Evolution

I'm a firm believer in freedom of speech, but there's a fine line between arguing a point and actually deceiving people. The North Devon Gazette reports that Tim Street, a retired physics lecturer, is among the speakers appearing in an "antidote to Darwin Day".

The trouble with physics lecturers is that they don't know biology but because they are men of science people take them at their word. Woe betide any churchman who tried that around where I live, because if they do, they're in for a nasty shock.

Mr Street told the Gazette:

"How could all the amazingly complex plants and animals have come about by chance?"

Chance? Chance! Life may have originated by chance, but the diverse forms we see around us are the product of millions of years of evolutionary change. I could go, on but Mr Street is quite capable of demonstrating his ignorance of life science, going on to say:

"As for the origin of life, the idea that life spontaneously comes from non living matter was clearly disproved 150 years ago by Louis Pasteur. He showed that once all living bacteria or organisms are killed off, life would never start on its own."

This is abiogenesis - not evolution you dolt. Darwin never, ever argued the origin of life - the book is called the Origin of Species and for an intellectual to make such a basic mistake is inexcusable. Professor Stanley Miller (who died recently) and his professor demonstrated how it might have appeared but the jury is still out on that.

I get so angry when people pose these straw man arguments and then claim to have a better solution - which is always (predictably) goddidit. These Intelligent Design arguments invariably spill over from US-based "think" tanks such as the Discovery Institute who have only ever discovered one thing - how to make retrograde-monkeys out of highly evolved apes.

Next he'll be telling us that we're not actually apes at all but some special creatures created in God's own image - which is a weak argument in itself - would a creature capable of creating the universe really have such a ridiculous design?

What really bugs me is the Gazette's words which say that this is an "alternative" view to the accepted Darwinian evolution (which has been superseded by neo-Darwinism since 1950ish) as if this is a valid view.

It isn't and it never was. It's dumb, theological boilerplate of the highest order. A way of spreading ignorance of the worst kind.