EVOLUTIONIST DISTORTIONS REGARDING OBESITY ON NEWSWEEK
EVOLUTIONIST DISTORTIONS REGARDING OBESITY ON NEWSWEEK
Newsweek carried an article titled “Darwin’s
Revenge” in its 7 February, 2005, edition. The article
was based on the idea that that excessive weight gain might
be linked to migrations that took place some 30,000 years
ago.
As a possible main cause of obesity, which is particularly
prevalent on the North American continent, genetic traits
that might have come down to the present day from people
who crossed from Asia to North America via the Bering Strait
were examined. It was stated that members of the Pima tribe
of Arizona suffer the highest rates of diabetes in the world,
and that 95% of diabetes sufferers are overweight.
It was estimated that this attribute might have survived
from the cold climate of the ice age, when food was particularly
hard to find. Certain genetic traits enhancing survival under
ice-age conditions may, according to the theory, have a hereditary
effect in present-day Americans, and today work in the exact
opposite manner, leading to obesity.
It is obvious that all this represents no support for the
theory of evolution at all. Nonetheless, the final paragraph
of the article refers to obesity as the product of thousands
of years of evolution. This is clearly nothing more than
facile word-game. There is not the slightest finding to indicate
that these features in the Pima tribe emerged by way of evolution.
Since Newsweek has adopted evolution as a dogma it regards
both mankind and obesity as having emerged through evolution,
and has no qualms about telling imaginary tales in the light
of these preconceptions.
Our advice to Newsweek is that it accepts that
playing with words contributes nothing to their endeavours
to keep Darwinism alive, and that it admits that Darwinism
has been invalidated by the scientific facts.
