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Darwin misquoted

Letters

Editor:

Once again, Darwin has been misquoted. Former pastor Hergesheimer is quoted as saying that the Darwinian law says “let the strong survive and the weak fail.” Darwin said almost the opposite: “The survival of a species does not depend on who is the strongest, nor who is the most intelligent. Survival depends solely [emphasis mine] which species can respond to change most efficiently.”

If we were to compress the 14 billion years of the universe’s existence into 24 hours, then Homo Sapiens has only been around for the last 0.00007 seconds, far too short a period of time to establish any record. If one further considers that 98 per cent of all species is extinct, and what we see now on this earth is the two per cent left over, one begins to wonder what our ability to adapt to change really is.

Having read Colin F. MacLean’s letter, (Coast Reporter, Jan. 23), who is obviously a global warming denier, I am convinced that our chances of ending up together with the 98 per cent extinct has greatly increased.

Klaus Blume, Gibsons