Re: possibly OT: NYT article on GA creationism/evolution debate

[Michael Bowen <fizzbowen@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 10:35 2002/08/24, Hugh Haskell wrote:

> While we have some ideas about how life *might* have arisen spontaneously,
> we have never successfully created life, or even generated anything close
> enough to argue that we even know "in principle," how it happened. And
> evolution does not deal with that, either. Evolution talks about "descent
> with modification," and not "the origin of life."

Given that Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" has a title that sounds so
much like the last quoted phrase in Hugh's message, I cannot help wondering
whether much of the current philosophical war over evolution could have
been sidestepped had Darwin selected a title such as "On Descent Through
Modification" instead.

--MB