When Mr. Singh argues that Darwin is wrong because no one has witnessed apes “turning into” man, he takes it for granted that man is not an ape. Jean Baptiste-Lamarck, whose theory of evolution involved species changing into another and whose ideas Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace displaced, was merely “wrong” about evolution. Modern ideas of epigenetics now suggest that Lamarck may not have been as wrong about evolution as he’s made out to be. Mr. Singh doesn’t deserve a scientific rebuttal. What’s worrisome is that when the absurd and the rational collide, the latter doesn’t always triumph.

Source: The Hindu January 25, 2018 18:45 UTC