Several readers have sent me Fred Reed’s rumination on evolution

(go look for the March 7 column),

which I had anyway read — I am a great Fred fan. Fred & I have been

exchanging occasional emails for a few years, and are basically simpatico –

he knows a surprising amount of math.

What did I think of the March 7 column? Well, I think the answers to some

of Fred’s questions are rather obvious. E.g.: Why are so many biologists

reluctant to say “I don’t know” when they don’t know the answer to a

question? Because they are members of the human race, that’s why. Who

among us is *not* so reluctant? (Not anti-evolutionists, for sure!)

Where Fred raises actual technical questions about the processes of

evolution, they are ones that have been dealt with many, many times over, in

books and on websites that are easy to find. This website

is particularly good & well organized. I have

started just sending the link for it in response to people who harass me

with 2,000-word screeds about abiogenesis, frog proteins, or color vision.

It’s all there, with plentiful references for further reading.