Natural Selection- What is it and what does it do?

Well let’s look at what natural selection is-

 “Natural selection is the result of differences in survival and reproduction among individuals of a population that vary in one or more heritable traits.” Page 11 “Biology: Concepts and Applications” Starr fifth edition

“Natural selection is the simple result of variation, differential reproduction, and heredity—it is mindless and mechanistic.” UBerkley

“Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view.” Dawkins in “The Blind Watchmaker”?

“Natural selection is therefore a result of three processes, as first described by Darwin:

Variation
Inheritance
Fecundity

which together result in non-random, unequal survival and reproduction of individuals, which results in changes in the phenotypes present in populations of organisms over time.”- Allen McNeill prof. introductory biology and evolution at Cornell University

OK so it is a result of three processes- ie an output. But is it really non-random as Allen said? Nope, whatever survives to reproduce survives to reproduce. And that can be any number of variations taht exist in a population.

What drives the output? The inputs.

The variation is said to be random, ie genetic accidents/ mistakes.

With sexually reproducing organisms it is still a crap-shoot as to what gets inherited. For example if a male gets a beneficial variation to his Y chromosome but sires all daughters, that beneficial variation gets lost no matter how many offspring he has.

Fecundity/ differential reproduction- Don’t know until it happens.

Can’t tell what variation will occur. Can’t tell if any of the offspring will inherit even the most beneficial variation and the only way to determine differential reproduction is follow the individuals for their entire reproducing age.

Then there can be competing “beneficial” variations.

In the end it all boils down to whatever survives to reproduce, survives to reproduce.

Evolutionists love to pretend that natural selection is some magical ratchet.

So what does it do?

The Origin of Theoretical Population Genetics (University of Chicago Press, 1971), reissued in 2001 by William Provine:

Natural selection does not act on anything, nor does it select (for or against), force, maximize, create, modify, shape, operate, drive, favor, maintain, push, or adjust. Natural selection does nothing….Having natural selection select is nifty because it excuses the necessity of talking about the actual causation of natural selection. Such talk was excusable for Charles Darwin, but inexcusable for evolutionists now. Creationists have discovered our empty “natural selection” language, and the “actions” of natural selection make huge, vulnerable targets. (pp. 199-200)

Thanks for the honesty Will.

Chapter IV of prominent geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti’s book Why is a Fly Not a Horse? is titled “Wobbling Stability”. In that chapter he discusses what I have been talking about in other threads- that populations oscillate. The following is what he has to say which is based on thorough scientific investigation:

Sexuality has brought joy to the world, to the world of the wild beasts, and to the world of flowers, but it has brought an end to evolution. In the lineages of living beings, whenever absent-minded Venus has taken the upper hand, forms have forgotten to make progress. It is only the husbandman that has improved strains, and he has done so by bullying, enslaving, and segregating. All these methods, of course, have made for sad, alienated animals, but they have not resulted in new species. Left to themselves, domesticated breeds would either die out or revert to the wild state—scarcely a commendable model for nature’s progress.

(snip a few paragraphs on peppered moths)

Natural Selection, which indeed occurs in nature (as Bishop Wilberforce, too, was perfectly aware), mainly has the effect of maintaining equilibrium and stability. It eliminates all those that dare depart from the type—the eccentrics and the adventurers and the marginal sort. It is ever adjusting populations, but it does so in each case by bringing them back to the norm. We read in the textbooks that, when environmental conditions change, the selection process may produce a shift in a population’s mean values, by a process known as adaptation. If the climate turns very cold, the cold-adapted beings are favored relative to others.; if it becomes windy, the wind blows away those that are most exposed; if an illness breaks out, those in questionable health will be lost. But all these artful guiles serve their purpose only until the clouds blow away. The species, in fact, is an organic entity, a typical form, which may deviate only to return to the furrow of its destiny; it may wander from the band only to find its proper place by returning to the gang.

Everything that disassembles, upsets proportions or becomes distorted in any way is sooner or later brought back to the type. There has been a tendency to confuse fleeting adjustments with grand destinies, minor shrewdness with signs of the times.

It is true that species may lose something on the way—the mole its eyes, say, and the succulent plant its leaves, never to recover them again. But here we are dealing with unhappy, mutilated species, at the margins of their area of distribution—the extreme and the specialized. These are species with no future; they are not pioneers, but prisoners in nature’s penitentiary.

Not such a powerful designer mimic after all.

But there is one thing it can do– it can undo what artificial selection has done.

557 thoughts on “Natural Selection- What is it and what does it do?

  1. LoL! Having YOU on the stand would be worth the lawsuit. Well when my oldest starts being taught the ToE that is when I will act.

    But most likely I will just be putting a disclaimer on the school’s textbooks. The sticker will say “Intelligent Design is NOT anti-evolution. Rather ID says that evolution proceeeds by design as opposed to necessity and chance.”

    And I am looking forward to that day…

  2. I do not say the designer is the God of the Bible. I say the designer does not have to be any God at all.

    I say the design does not mean there is any chance at eternal salvation.

    But anyway it is OK if some or even most IDists say the desgner is God. They make it very clear that is a PERSONAL choice.

    As for sticking to the science, well obvioulsy your position cannot because there isn’t any science to stick to.

  3. The biggest problem with immaterialism is that it asserts the existence of agencies for which there is no evidence.

    Nobody that I know has advocated for anything called “immaterialism”. Please note that there is only “no evidence” of non-material agencies if all such evidence is dismissed on an a priori basis. IOW, testimony is acceptable as long as it is not about things that conflict with one’s belief system.

    The assumption that unseeable capricious agents are active in the history of biology is simply not productive. It leads nowhere; it suggests no lines of research.

    It leads to attempts to discover the purpose of biological devices via the expectation that they serve some function; it leads to theories based on reverse-engineering and engineering design theory; it provides a conceptual framework for investigatory research based on the idea that similar design theories and devices can be found in non-related organisms, it provides a heuristic that doesn’t require a branching distribution of organic information; it provides an information-based heuristic of gene and control-system research.

  4. Joe G:
    YOUR postion doesn’t have anything to do with science nor reality. THAT is the whole problem.

    Let’s see you describe my “position” in detail. Get those psychic powers of yours cranked up and get busy.

    And your problem isn’t my problem or science’s problem to solve. It’s your problem, and it’s a big one.

    Tell me joe, what exactly is “reality”? Don’t hold back, and don’t be afraid to include your scientific “position” on ghosts, hauntings, demons, angels, aliens, body snatching, zombies, monsters under your bed, flying saucers, near death experiences, out of body experiences, psychic spoon bending, allah, mohammed, the koran, the bible, the flud, jesus, prayer, miracles, a talking snake, a rib woman, what happens after death, souls, sin, evil, black holes, Bigfoot, Nessie, the age of the Earth and the universe, crop circles, the ultimate purpose of design and creation of the universe, life, and humans, the ultimate purpose of ticks, and don’t forget Stonehenge and other ancient structures, Erich von Däniken, orbital mechanics, quantum stuff, and what women really want.

  5. William J. Murray: Again, you’re conflating their admitted metaphysical views with what they specifically limit the scientific theory itself to.You are apparently incapable of compartmentalizing arguments about science away from arguments/discussions about metaphysics, which I suggest is a lot of the problem on both sides.

    No. That’s not what I meant at all.Again, this demonstrates the interpretive barrier I’ve mentioned before.To many Darwinists that are arguing from (either known to them or not) metaphysics, natural = everything except the supernatural, so when IDists argue against the “natural” part, there’s nothing left, from the metaphysical materialist point of view, but god.

    So they immediately think the IDist is trying to hide or camouflage a religious argument, and are trying to insert a religious argument into school & science – when they are not.For the materialist, ID can only be a religious position – but, it is not.

    It doesn’t help the confusion that they are also advancing a social agenda, but that confusion isn’t their fault; they are no more required to be silent about their metaphysical interpretation of ID than materialists are required to be silent about their metaphysical interpretation of Darwinism.

    william, who do you believe is “the designer”?

  6. I’m closing this thread, as I simply do not have time to moderate it, and the software doesn’t put Joe G in the moderation queue for his own thread.

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