PART II: NATURAL SELECTION
Natural Selection attempts to explain the process in nature in which the organisms best suited to their environment are the ones most likely to survive. The process is also known as the survival of the fittest. Charles Darwin first explained Natural Selection in detail. Darwin believed that all plants and animals evolved (developed gradually) from a few common ancestors by means of natural selection.
The theory of natural selection comes from the variations that exist even among the most closely related individuals. In almost all cases, no two members of a species are exactly alike. This is because; each individual has a unique combination of traits such as size, color and ability to withstand cold. Darwin taught that most of these traits are inherited. He also stated that plants and animals produce many offspring, some of which will not survive to reproduce. Darwin believed that the process of natural selection determines which members of a species will die prematurely and which ones will survive to reproduce. For this reason, he believed that all organisms were always in a state of competition. This is because of the very limited supply of food, water and other necessities of life, for all of the living organisms produced. These organisms also would have to struggle against either being devoured by their prey, or facing the dangers of weather. Darwin wrote that in any environment some members of a species have combinations of traits that will help them in the struggle for life. Others have traits that put them in a huge disadvantage. The organisms with the favorable traits are the ones most likely to survive, reproduce and pass on their traits to their offspring. The organisms less able to compete, are likely to die prematurely and so produce no or inferior offspring. Therefore, so the favorable trait will survive and the unfavorable ones will eventually die out.
The environment plays an important part in this competition also. If the environment changes, different traits and combinations and combinations become favorable to survival, and the overall character of a species will change. In this way, explains Darwin, a species adapts to its environment to avoid extinction. If two species live in different environments, chances are they will develop differently. Moreover, eventually, they may differ so much that they will have become two separate species. Once this occurred, taught Darwin, all species would evolve.
B. TO SUMMARIZE A SUMMARY
Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection should be divided into three related propositions. This first point is that new species have appeared during the long coarse of the earth’s history by a natural process that he called descent with modification. The second point is that this evolutionary process can be extended to account for all the diversity of life. This is because all living things descended from a very small number of common ancestors, or even one single microscopic ancestor. (Or at least this is what Darwin taught). Point three is this, and this is what is most distinctive to Darwinism: that this vast process was guided by natural selection (or survival of the fittest) and that natural selection is so effective a guiding force that it can accomplish biological creations, that in the previous times people had though to give credit to the hand of a
creator.
C. SOME PROBLEMS WITH THE SUMMARY
1.New species have appeared during the long coarse of the Earth’s history by a natural process called descent with modification.
New species? Descent with modifications? When have we ever observed this? A honest answer would be never. Yet, Charles Darwin and Jean Baptiste De Lamarck point to the supposed example the giraffe would provide. They both taught that the giraffe was a relatively new species. Both believed that the story of the giraffe’s origins began on the African prairies long ago. (Neither stated when.) Due to a prolonged drought, the prairies dried up. Not all was lost though because there was some green leaves high up in the trees. Therefore, these animals, which would later be called the giraffe, began stretching their necks to reach the leaves. Because of this stretching, their neck grew longer.
(Now if one worked hard enough and long enough, one may be able to add a little bit to their height. People used to do that to get into the army or special services where there were height requirements).
The problem is that the offspring of these stretched parents would have necks just as small as those from the non-stretched parents. The longer neck could not be passed on. Darwin did not know much about the mechanism of heredity though. Darwin believed in pangenesis. Pangenesis is an abandoned theory that states that each cell of the body throws off very minute particles into the blood, which circulate freely and will undergo division and eventually collect in the reproductive cells. Once there, each part of the body is represented in the germ cell through these particles that were regarded as the units of heredity transmission. Of coarse, Gregor Mandel’s work would later disprove this. But it does help us understand what Darwin believed. He believed that at reproduction each organ would produce pangenes that would collect in the blood and flow to the reproductive organs that would cause the offspring to have longer necks. The idea of pangenesis is not accepted today. I have never met a person who believes in this theory. If the example of the giraffe is hard to follow, allow me to provide one or two more. If I believed in pangenesis, this is what I would believe: If I lost my entire arm in a farming accident, then got married to a woman who had both of her arms, there is a decent chance that some of our kids will be born without arms. Another is that if I use my brain a lot my kids will likely be born with larger than average heads. This is pangenesis and it is outrageously amusing. The problem is Darwin did no use the theory as a joke. Instead, he used pangenesis to explain how a new creature is formed.
I do not mean to make fun, because I know that back then, the people did not have as much technology as we have know. I only hope that one hundred fifty years from now, people will be as amused with some of the things that we believe in as I am with how many believed in pangenesis. Evolutionists will not admit it, but it is quite likely that the giraffe always had a longer than normal neck.
2. The evolutionist process can be extended to account for all the diversity of life because all living things descended from a very small number of ancestors; perhaps even one single microscopic Ancestor.
The creationist believes that all human beings, if they had a complete genealogy, could trace back and all would find that they come from the same man and woman. These common ancestors for all humans are named Adam and Eve. The creationist would tell you that all species come from their own species. To make this easier to understand; a pig in the beginning was not a horse, but a pig. Just as a human was not a pig in the beginning (though some may act like them) but was a human. Yet this belief that the creationists hold dear, runs counter to one of the most popular evolutionary beliefs that says that all living things come from one single microscopic ancestor. (I have already shown in Part I, that the evolutionists are mistaken on this one).
However, I want to stay on this one for a few more minutes. I would like to retell of an incident once that I witnessed during a debate between an evolutionist and a creationist. I do not have the script in front of me so I have to go by memory. Trying to make a point the evolutionist said, Look at all the different types of dogs that we have. He named a few and then went on, Are you trying to tell me that of the hundreds of different breeds of dogs all descended from the same to dogs way back when? Do you honestly believe that two dogs, millions of years ago could be responsible for all the dogs we have now? The creationist responded, Yes. It would seem quite reasonable to assume that all of the different breeds of dogs came from just two dogs thousands of years ago. The evolutionist, Reasonable? How can you say that? To answer the creationist said, By comparing my belief to yours. I think dogs came from other dogs who came from other dogs, but you are trying to tell me that dogs, humans, vegetation and all other living organisms hundreds of billions of years ago from holes in the ground that contained a soup-like substance.
I hesitate to ask, but which view appears more reasonable?
3. Natural Selection (Survival of the Fittest) is so effective a guiding force that it can accomplish so spectacular a biological creation that in the ancient times people thought to credit the hand of a creator.
First, part of natural selection does occur and in many ways, it does have an effect in maintaining the genetic fitness of a population. For example, infants born with severe defects will not survive to maturity without expensive medical care. Quite obviously, creatures that do not survive to reproduce will not leave behind any weak offspring. Yes, this is obvious, but Darwin asserts much more. Darwin claims that this guiding force, natural selection, (that kills off the weak), is so powerful that it can begin with a bacteria cell and gradually craft its descendants over billions of years to produce trees, flowers, ants, humans, and every other living organism. At this point, the creationist must disagree. They may also ask, how evolutionists make the jump from the strong surviving and the weak dying to a bacteria cell, over billions of years creating all that is in the world. Evolutionists do not care to explain how they draw the two together, but they do attempt to explain the more controversial opinion that all came from a bacteria cell. To explain this they point to mutations and artificial selection.
1.Mutations
Mutations are randomly occurring genetic changes which are almost always harmful especially when they produce effects in an organism that are large enough to be visible. Occasionally, they do slightly improve an organism’s ability to survive and reproduce. Organisms generally produce more organisms than can survive to maturity, and so offspring that possess an advantage of this kind can be expected to produce more descendants themselves than less advantaged members of the society would. As this type of survival continues, the traits eventually spread through the species and it becomes the basis for further improvements in succeeding generations. Given enough time, and enough mutations of the right sort, enormously complex organs and patterns of adaptive behavior can eventually produce tiny steps ahead without any pre-existing intelligence.
Therefore, from the mutations a bacterium could form into a human, a tree, or a rat. Evolutionists have tried to say that, and continue to do so, yet Darwin was never able to point to any example of this natural selection in action. Therefore, he had to rely heavily on an argument by analogy. The analogy was artificial selection.
2.Artificial Selection
Unfortunately for Darwinists, this analogy (which attempted to show that natural selection and artificial selection were the same) is terribly misleading. It is misleading because in artificial selection the plant and animal breeders enjoy the intelligence and specialized knowledge to select their breeding stock and to protect their changes from natural dangers. Yet, Darwinist natural selection seeks to establish that purposeless natural process can substitute for intelligent design. For this reason, as well as many others, artificial and natural selections are fundamentally different. In addition, artificial selection shows that there are definite limits to the amount of variation that even the most highly skilled breeder can achieve. The breeding of domesticated animals has produced no new species. Interestingly, the fact that breeding can create no new species shows that artificial selection provides powerful testimony against Darwin’s natural selection.
As an example, the reason dogs do not become as large as elephants, much less change into elephants, is not that we have not been breeding long enough. Instead, it is because dogs do not have the genetic capacity for that degree of change, and they stop growing when their genetic limit is reached.
However, Darwinists disagree with this genetic capacity limit. They point to their experiments with laboratory fruit flies. Not surprisingly to the creationist, these fruit flies have never produced anything but fruit flies, and then only sometimes with the slightest change in characteristics. (This is not enough to convince me that a bacteria cell can create all the living organisms on earth). These fruit flies have never produced a more complex species, let alone a genus or family. So while the Darwinists point to these experiments with pride, I must ask, how is this supposed to convince the creationist or I of anything?
Darwinists love to talk about new species. The fact that we have never seen any does not seem to bother them. When questioned they attribute, to their inability to find evidence, it to a lack of time. The time defense must be taken into account, but the greater time available to nature may be counterbalanced by the power of an intelligent purpose, which is brought out in artificial selection. To go back to the fruit fly experiments, while bringing time into the question, French zoologist Pierre Grasse has this to say, The fruit fly, the famous pet of geneticists, whose geographical, biotropical, urban, and rural genotype are now known inside out, seems not to have changed since even the remotest times.
Therefore, nature has had plenty of time, but it just has not been doing what the experiments have been doing. Lack of time would be a reasonable excuse, if there were no other known factor limiting the change that is produced by selection, but the fact is, selective change is limited by the inherent variability in the gene pool. After a number of generations, the capacity for change runs out. Conceivable, it is possible that the variations could be renewed by mutation, but whether (or how often) this happens is unknown.
Darwin’s analogy to artificial selection is misleading. There is no evidence that any new species have been created by either natural of artificial selection. Also, and this has already been stated, the two types of selections are fundamentally different because one gives credit to a designer and the other seeks to show purposelessness.
D. PROVE IT!
Today most evolutionists would insist that Darwin's Natural Selection is a scientific hypothesis that has been so thoroughly tested and confirmed that any reasonable person should accept it. The hypothesis being that natural selection is an innovative evolutionary process capable of producing new kinds or organisms and organs.
The evolutionist points to the following as evidence of their belief;
1.Bacteria usually develop resistance to antibiotics, and insects who have become resistant to insecticides, because of the differences in the survival of the mutant forms that have the advantage of resistance.
2.After a severe storm in Massachusetts, in 1898, there were hundreds of birds left dead. Someone brought in 136 exhausted birds to a scientist thinking that they would have care shown towards them. The scientist killed the surviving birds so that he could measure their skeletons. He found that among the male sparrows, the larger birds had survived more frequently than the small birds.
3.A drought on the Galapagos Island in 1977 caused a shortage of the small seed on which the finches feed. As a result, these birds had to eat larger seeds, which normally they would have ignored. After one generation, there had been so much death among the smaller birds (who could not easily eat the seed) that the average size of the bird and of their beak went noticeably up.
4. The allele (genetic state) responsible for sickle cell amenia in the African population is also associated with a trait that confers resistance to malaria. Individuals very free of the sickle-celled allele suffered high mortality from malaria, and those who inherited this allele from both parents usually die from amenia.
5.Mice populations have been observed to cease reproducing and become extinct when they are temporarily flooded by the spread of a gene that causes sterility in males.
6. When trees darkened by industrial smoke, dark colored moths became abundant because predators had difficulty seeing them against the trees. When the trees became lighter again, because of less air pollution, the lighter colored moths again had the advantage.
If these six examples are the best observational evidence of natural selection, one who accepts creationism can conclude two things.
First, there is no reason to doubt that peculiar circumstances can sometimes favor drug-resistant bacteria, or large birds rather that small birds, or dark colored moths instead of light ones. In these cases, the population of drug-susceptible bacteria, small birds and light colored moths may become reduced for a period.
Point two is this: None of these proofs provide any pervasive reason for believing that natural selection can produce new species, new organs, or other major changes, or even permanent minor changes.
Pieree Grasse was unimpressed by these proofs given. He stated, "The evolution in action believed by Huxley (who was Darwin's "bulldog") and other biologists is simply the observation of demographic facts, local fluctuations of genotypes and 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 pan chronic species (living fossils that remain unchanged for millions of years)..."
Why do people, including the experts think that evidence of local fluctuation confirms the hypothesis that natural selection has the capacity to work engineering marvels, or to construct the wonder of the wing or eye? Everyone who studies evolution knows that the peppered moth experiments are the classic demonstration of the power of natural selection. Yet, these moths have nothing to do with the origin of species, or even in any variety, because dark and white moths are already present before the experiments.
Only the ratios from on e variety of the moth changed. How can intelligent people have been so gullible as to imagine that these peppered moths in any way support the ambitious claims of Charles Darwin.
The truth is if I knew the answer I would not have asked.
Yet, many look upon natural selection as a philosophical necessity. They may ask, "If not natural selection then what is your alternative?"
I will answer this question in a Part to come. I hate to end on this note but I have finished saying what I needed to say. This has been a difficult part to put together, yet I do think it will shed some light on natural selection as taught by Charles Darwin.
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