In your rush to disprove a Creator, you again show your ignorance. The blind salamanders are not missing eyes from birth, as you seem to believe. In fact, they are born with eyes, and then, as they reach metamorphosis, the eyes begin to go away. This is not a form of evolution, which even Darwin himself would recognize. For it to be evolution, there would have to be a genetic change due to natural selection so that future salamanders are born without eyes. Instead, this is simply a case of the eyes atrophying due to the darkness and lack of use and then disappearing as the salamander becomes an adult. This is what would happen with any body part or muscle. In fact, it is sort of like what happened with your brain aparently--atrophy from lack of use. You must be evolving, Hitchens. Nice work.

Check the link. The vestigial eyes don't develop even thought they are present in the babies.

<link>

Hitchens may be a bombastic and caustic writer, and he may be a habitual drunkard, but he is nto an idiot. That title is reserved for people who try to speak with authority when they are wrong about the basic facts.

JPL.. Are you stating that the same species of salamander would have eyes if it were conceived, born and raised in the light of day? If not then it is by all means a change in the use of genetic coding. It is the same situation as teeth which do not now appear in chickens. They are genetically there but are not now required by the species to survive. They merely are a silenced genetic trait that may someday return should the need arise, just like our tails.

will grow up with eyes if exposed to light at birth and normal salamanders will lose their eyesight at birth if deprived of light?

Can you validate that? I'm not aware of any scientific research that has produced those results.

...don't forget "liar." He still claims that Saddam was trying to buy yellowcake in Niger.

But he's right about the salamanders.

Think about the lunacy of this statement. If it were true, we would expect that people who were born blind would have no eyes as adults! Hitchens is right - the word "intelligent" should not, under any circumstances, be associated with people like you.

Otherwise, no.

Yes, he's an unrepentant liar on that issue. Cranky, too. Watch out for the "attack" posters dogging those who disagree with him.

Another common escape clause: "It's there to challenge our faith". Also "Irreducible complexity."

I have always wondered why people who claim to worship an omniscient diety insist on limiting that diety to their limited understanding of their place within that diety's creation.