"Glib generalizations [according to the author] come from the assumption shared by many biologists that natural selection is the only mechanism of evolutionary change, and hence every observed feature of organisms must have come about because of natural selection." This mechanism is highly prized because they think it can do anything. They claim it is the great creator of complexity. But the concept is qualitative, not quantitative, and there are inadequate checks to avoid the pathways to fantasy. "This conveniently licenses anyone to concoct any adaptive story about anything biological and put it forward as a serious contribution to the science of evolution."
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"The problem with natural selection is that if it explains everything, it explains nothing, and instead it becomes an exercise in story telling. [. . .] The challenge for those who would invoke natural selection as causing any biological feature is therefore to propose a specific adaptive mechanism, to deduce attributes that would differ according to which hypothesis were correct and then to make the necessary observations or comparisons."
But doesn't this guy see? Natural selection is such an elegant logical explanation that it just has to be true! About everything!
2 comments:
Today's lesson, children, is about the difference between "everything" and "anything". One is bounded by existence, one is bounded by imagination. (And the critic complains that scientists do too little "to avoid the pathways to fantasy"!)
It seems best to ask someone with first-hand perspective: Do creationist shills ever realize how silly they sound?
It is interesting to see who else is a closet creationist. Natural selection as Darwin proposed it is an elegant and powerful theory. The concept is simple and easy to grasp and can be applied to bring understanding to the world we live in. Modern evolutionary theory which builds upon natural selection is much more complex and just as amazing.
But what some people don't appear to realise is that natural selection doesn't deny the existance of a God, nor does it prove the existance of a God. It is simple a tool for understanding the natural world.
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