Then came Darwin, who tried to make an analogy between the dynamic 'selecting' done by stockbreeders like himself, and what happens to organisms in the wild. What he did was to imply that there was a sentient being, call it "Mother Nature" or "The Great Flying Spagghetti Monster", or what you will, that acted like human stock breeders and picked one creature to live but picked another for drowning, or otherwise eliminating. As a literary or pedagogical device it was quite effective, so long as you didn't take it literally. Taking it literally was mere superstition. Like believing in the 'angel of death', or, 'the grim reaper'. But, of, course, thousands of people did take it literally, just as millions of people take biblical creation myths literally.
Here is Darwin's actual text (I note that you have already ignored it once.)
If during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organisation, and I think this cannot be disputed;
if there be, owing to the high geometrical powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed;
then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them,
I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being's own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to man.
But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterised will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life;
and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterised.
This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection.
This in no way implies that there is any intention involved in what he labeled Natural Selection. Only someone accustomed to thinking in superstitious terms could suppose that it did.
I ask you again, what part of this can you refute, and how?
™ Version 4.2
