Scientist: I don't talk to creationists

One of Britain's leading biologists says he has given up trying to debate creationists because his views are misstated or he is called names.

Steve Jones of University College London spoke at the Guardian Hay Festival on "Why Evolution Is Right and Creationism Is Wrong," The Guardian reported.

"I don't engage with creationists directly," he said. "If somebody has decided to believe something -- whatever the evidence -- then there is nothing you can do about it."

Jones said that believers in evolution are actually a minority worldwide, in spite of the mountains of evidence assembled since Charles Darwin's day.

In his talk, he also examined some of the recent mysteries of genetics and evolutionary study. One is that the number of genes in the human genome is only 30,000, a fraction of what scientists expected.

Geneticists have also found that women are biologically closer to chimpanzees than men are. That is because the Y chromosome, which only men carry, has changed more than the X chromosome.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International