CHAPTER 5. EVOLUTIONISTS’ CONFESSIONS THAT NATURAL SELECTION HAS
CHAPTER 5.
EVOLUTIONISTS’ CONFESSIONS THAT NATURAL SELECTION
HAS NO EVOLUTIONARY POWER
The theory of evolution suggests that living things evolved thanks to two fundamental mechanisms: natural selection and mutation. Evolutionists maintain that the characteristics brought about by mutations in living things are then chosen by the mechanism of natural selection and thus survive to reproduce. Close inspection, however, shows that neither mechanism has any evolutionary force at all, not giving the slightest support to the idea that living things evolve and gradually turn into new species.
Charles Darwin, founder of the theory of evolution, first claimed that natural selection was an evolutionary force. The title he gave to his book emphasizes that natural selection represented the basis of his theory: The Origin of Species, by Means of Natural Selection. . .
Natural selection predicts the survival of living things possessing the most appropriate characteristics for the conditions prevailing in the natural locations they inhabit, and the extinction of those individuals that lack these advantages. For example, in a herd of deer threatened by wolves, those deer able to run the fastest will naturally survive. The others will be hunted down and eliminated. The result will be a remaining herd of swift-running deer.
Yet the one important point is that no matter how long this process continues, it will never transform deer into any other species. A deer cannot turn into a horse, for instance. Deer always remain deer, no matter how swift.
In fact, Darwinists have been unable to reveal a single finding to show that natural selection causes living things to evolve. Evolutionists are aware of this and starting with Darwin himself, have many times admitted that natural selection cannot cause new species to develop, much less new life forms.
Charles Darwin:
Is it possible that an animal having, for instance, the structure and habits of a bat, could have been formed by the modification of some other animal with widely different habits and structure? Can we believe that natural selection could produce, on the one hand, an organ of trifling importance, such as the tail of a giraffe, which serves as a fly-flapper, and, on the other hand, an organ so wonderful as the eye? 55
I shall know that the theory of Natural Selection, is, in the main, safe; that it includes, as now put forth, many errors, is almost certain, though I cannot see them. 56
 Alfred Russell Wallace |
Alfred Russell Wallace is a British naturalist and co-formulator with Charles Darwin of the theory of biological evolution via natural selection:
I found this argument [natural selection] convincing until I attempted to explain the advanced state of human faculties. 57
The late Professor Stephen Jay Gould was a professor of geology and paleoanthropology at Harvard University and the main spokesman for evolution in the second half of the 20th century:
Paleontologists [fossil experts] have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin’s argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection. We view our data as so bad that we almost never see the very process we profess to study. 58
The essence of Darwinism lies in a single phrase: natural selection is the creative force of evolutionary change. No one denies that selection will play a negative role in eliminating the unfit. Darwinian theories require that it create the fit as well. 59
Prof. Cemal Yıldırım is, as you saw, a Turkish evolutionist, and Professor of Philosophy at Middle East Technical University:
Yet various aspects of natural selection have never managed to avoid being the subject of debate, neither today nor when it was first put forward. We know that theologians on the one hand and also biologists find evolution unsatisfying as an explanation. 60
Scientists of the nineteenth century were easily misled into adopting the thesis that nature is a battlefield, because more often than not, they were imprisoned in their studies or laboratories and generally didn’t bother to acquaint themselves with nature directly. Not even a respectable scientist like Huxley could exempt himself from this error. 61
Another criticism from the scientific point of view concerns the claim that the living world is in a constant fight for survival. Many reliable observations have revealed that organisms, particularly those at a more advanced level, display solidarity and behaviour that can be defined as “cooperation.” A third, more important criticism concerns the way the inadequacy of natural selection as an explanatory principle. According to this criticism, living things in all stages from amoeba to human beings exhibit an extraordinary organization and purposefulness incompatible with physical and chemical explanation. It is impossible to account for this mechanical order based on random variations by way of natural selection.
Take the human eye, for example. Is there any chance that such a delicate and functional organ with such complex structures and workings could have come about in a solely mechanical order with no purposeful creative power? Is it sufficient to say that human beings, who create civilization out of their artistry, philosophy and science evolved by way of natural selection? Can a mother’s love be explained by the blind process of natural selection, which has no spiritual aspects? For such questions, it’s hardly possible for Darwinist biologists to give satisfactory answers. 62
J. B. S. Haldane is a British geneticist and famous evolutionist biologist:
To sum up, no satisfactory cause of evolution other than the action of natural selection on fortuitous variations has ever been put forward. It is by no means clear that natural selection will explain all the facts…63
He will probably attempt to account for it as a result of natural selection, but natural selection is more fitted to explain the origin of given adaptations than the existence of living beings to which the term adaptation can be applied with a meaning. 64
J. Hawkes:
I have difficulty in believing that the dazzling beauty in birds, fish, flowers, etc., came about by natural selection. Beyond that, he asks the question whether human consciousness can be the product of such a mechanism. In his article, finally, he concludes that the human mind that produced the blessings of civilization, and the creative imagination that immortalized those such as Socrates, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Newton and Einstein cannot be the gift of the law of the jungle called the “struggle for survival” to us. 65
Roger Lewin is a prize-winning author and former News Editor of Science Magazine:
It [natural selection] may have a stabilizing effect, but it does not promote speciation. It is not a creative force, as many people have suggested. 66
Dr. Colin Patterson a senior palaeontologist at the British Museum of Natural History:
No one has ever produced a [new] species by mechanisms of natural selection. No one has ever got near it and most of the current argument in neo-Darwinism is about this question. 67
Arthur Koestler is a Hungarian-born British novelist, journalist, and critic:
In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutations plus natural selection—quite unaware of the fact that random mutations have turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection a tautology. 68
Pierre Paul Grassé is the former president of the French Academy of Sciences:
The “evolution in action” of J. Huxley and other biologists is simply the observation of demographic facts, local fluctuations of genotypes, geographical distributions. Often the species concerned have remained practically unchanged for hundreds of centuries! Fluctuation as a result of circumstances, with prior modification of the genome, does not imply evolution, and we have tangible proof of this in many panchronic species. 69
55 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, Chapter VI, “Difficulties of the Theory.”
56 Francis Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. II, p. 10.
57 Roger Lewin, In the Age of Mankind, Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 1988, p. 26.
58 Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda’s Thumb, 1982, pp. 181-182.
59 Stephen Jay Gould, “The Return of Hopeful Monsters,” Natural History, Vol. 86, July-August 1977, p. 28.
60 Cemal Yıldırım, Evrim Kuramı ve Bağnazlık, [“The Theory of Evolution and Bigotry”], p. 36.
61 Ibid., p. 49.
62 Ibid., p. 185.
63 J.B.S. Haldane, Possible Worlds, Chatto & Windus, 1928, p. 43.
64 Ibid., p. 128.
65 J. Hawkes, “Nine Tantalizing Mysteries of Nature,” New York Times Magazine, 1957, p. 33.
66 Science, 1982, No. 217, pp. 1239-1240.
67 Colin Patterson, “Cladistics,” BBC, Interview with Brian, Peter Franz, 4 March 1982.
68 Arthur Koestler, Janus: A Summing Up, Vintage Books; 1978, p. 185.
69 Pierre Paul Grassé, Evolution On Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Information, Academic Press, Jan. 1978.
