Author:
Pahu
|
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
Date Posted: 13:42:45 12/04/08 Thu
THE ORIGIN OF NEW LIFE FORMS 1
There are two views of origins. One says that everything came about by natural causes; the other looks to a supernatural cause. In the case of the origin of new life forms, they appeared either by an evolutionary process of natural selection without any intelligent intervention or by special Creation through the work of an intelligent designer.
Darwin made one of his greatest contributions to the theory of evolution with his analogy of selection by breeders to selection in nature. This principle of natural selection became the hallmark of evolution because it provided a system by which new developments of life forms could be explained without recourse to a supernatural cause. The main evidence that he put forward to support this analogy was the fossil record. Introductory biology books ever since have pictured this gradual transition of life forms from simple to complex in acceptance of this view.
Darwin himself was aware that there were serious problems with the analogy between breeders and nature, but he hoped that what humans could do in a few generations could be done by nature in several hundred generations. However, time is not the only factor, which weakens the analogy. E.S. Russell wrote:
“It is unfortunate that Darwin ever introduced the term ‘natural selection,’ for it has given rise to much confusion of thought.
“Conclusion: Rather than being analogous, in the most crucial aspects, natural selection and artificial selection are exact opposites.
“He did so, of course, because he arrived at his theory through studying the effects of selection as practiced by man in the breeding of domesticated animals and cultivated plants. Here the use of the word is entirely legitimate. But the action of man in selective breeding is not analogous to the action of ‘natural selection’ but almost its direct opposite .... Man has an aim or an end in view; ‘natural selection’ can have none. Man picks out the individuals he wishes to cross, choosing them by the characteristics he seeks to perpetuate or enhance. He protects them and their issue by all means in his power, guarding them thus from the operation of natural selection, which would speedily eliminate many freaks; he continues his active and purposeful selection from generation to generation until he reaches, if possible, his goal. Nothing of this kind happens, or can happen, through the blind process of differential elimination and differential survival which we miscall “natural Selection.”
[E.S. Russell, The Diversity of Animals ([1915] 1962), p. 124. Cited in James R. Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979)]
[From When Skeptics Ask by Geisler & Brooks]
[
Next Thread |
Previous Thread |
Next Message |
Previous Message
]
|
Feedback: 