Q. Isn't Darwin's central idea of Natural
Selection self-evidently true? How can anyone deny that cumulative selection is the primary mechanism of
evolution?
A. Although the idea of natural selection or the 'survival of the fittest' appears to be self-evidently true there are several
major problems with the idea that are usually glossed over
in biology text books.
The first problem is: how can biologists (or anyone else)
define 'fitness'? How can you tell, scientifically, which characteristics fit
the animals and plants to survive?
The answer is that the only way to define the fit is by means of a post-hoc
rationalisation -- the fit must be "those who survived". But the way
Darwinists define "those who survive" is as "the fit".
The central proposition of the Darwinian argument turns out to be an empty
tautology.
C.H. Waddington, professor of biology at Edinburgh University wrote;
"Natural selection, which was at first considered as though it were a
hypothesis that was in need of experimental or observational confirmation, turns
out on closer inspection to be a tautology, a statement of an inevitable
although previously unrecognised relation. It states that the fittest
individuals in a population (defined as those who leave the most offspring) will
leave most offspring. Once the statement is made, its truth is apparent."
George Simpson, professor of paleontology at Harvard, sought to restore
content to the idea of natural selection by saying; "If genetically
red-haired parents have, on average, a larger proportion of children than
blondes or brunettes, then evolution will be in the direction of red hair. If
genetically left-handed people have more children, evolution will be towards
left-handedness. The characteristics themselves do not directly matter at all.
All that matters is who leaves more descendants over the generations. Natural
selection favours fitness only if you define fitness as leaving more
descendants. In fact geneticists do define it that way,
which maybe confusing to others. To a geneticist, fitness has nothing to do with
health, strength, good looks, or anything but effectiveness in breeding."
Notice the words; "The characteristics themselves do not directly matter
at all." This innocent phrase fatally undermines Darwin's original key
conception: that each animal's special physical characteristics are what makes
it fit to survive: the giraffe's long neck, the eagle's keen eye, or the
cheetah's 60 mile-an-hour sprint.
Simpson's reformulation means all this must be dropped: it is not the
characteristics that directly matter -- it is the animals' capacity to reproduce
themselves. The race is not to the swift, after all, but merely to the prolific.
So how can neo-Darwinism explain the enormous diversity of characteristics?
The second problem is -- if possible -- even more
fundamental. The word selection means to choose
one or a few from a greater number, as in selecting a dish from a menu.
Selection is thus inescapably a process that
reduces biological diversity. But evolution, as
envisaged by Darwinists is inescapably a process that increases
biological diversity (Darwin called his book "The origin of species",
not "The reduction of species").
It is obvious therefore that no form of
selection can be the central engine that drives evolution. Selection may or may
not exercise some peripheral effect (as a matter of
fact there isn't any evidence that it exercises an
effect of any kind) but selection cannot ever be pressed into service as the
central mechanism of evolution.
What this means is that although Darwinists
speak of selection coupled with mutation as the engine of evolution, in reality
it is mutation alone that can account for the origin of species.
As Harvard's Ernst Mayr said, "It must not
be forgotten that mutation is the ultimate source of all genetic variation found
in natural populations and the only new material available for natural selection
to work on."
The third problem, perhaps the most damaging of all
to the concept of natural selection, is that -- limited
though its content may be -- it is so nebulous that it can be made to fit a
whole range of mutually contradictory outcomes of the evolutionary process.
Natural selection is entirely compatible with the
notion that all organisms in stable environments have reached a fitness peak on
which they will remain forever. At the same time natural selection is entirely
compatible with the idea that all organisms should regress to the safest common
denominator, a single-celled organism, and thus become optimally adapted to
every habitat.
In precisely the same way, because of its
infinitely elastic definition, natural selection can be made to explain opposed
and even mutually contradictory individual adaptations. For example, Darwinists
claim that camouflage coloring and mimicry (as in leaf insects) is adaptive and
will be selected for, yet they also claim that warning coloration (the wasp's
stripes) is adaptive and will be selected for. Yet if both propositions are
true, any kind of coloration will have some adaptive value, whether it is partly
camouflage or partly warning, and will be selected for.
As a theory, natural selection makes no unique
predictions but instead is used retrospectively to explain every outcome: and a
theory that explains everything in this way, explains nothing.
Natural selection is not a mechanism: it is a
rationalisation after the fact.
