Changing Pace of Evolution
I`ve always said that Evolution does not work the way that Darwinists say it does, that the conventional wisdom is distorted by the religious agenda (or, more precisely, their a-religious agenda) and political philosophy of Darwin`s proponents. I`ve long put out the call for a more open-minded look at the subject, for an end to the slavish, dogmatic approach taken towards ``the origin of species``. After all, Charles Darwin`s own falsification suggestions have failed, in that Darwin believed the fossil record would be overflowing with clear, complete records of the evolution from one species to another. He himself was very disappointed with the failure in his own lifetime of science to find the fossils he believed were there, and the situation has not dramatically improved since; the fossil records touted by pro-Darwin people are still very meager, and open to considerable interpretation. The Darwinists have yet (after over 130 years) to find the smoking gun.
That failure would doom any other scientific theory, but the religious implications to atheists has produced a cadre of furious defenders who will allow no deviation from this, the cornerstone of their belief system. As a result, efforts by open-minded scientists are generally met with belittlement, disgrace, and abuse. Few are willing to suffer the slings and arrows (and the cutting off of research funds) so Darwin reigns supreme, a naked king who parades about proudly in his invisible clothes.
David of Ultima Thule sent me this piece from World Science about the apparent variability in the rate of evolution. Classic Darwinism says that evolution proceeds are a more or less steady rate from one species to another. Since this never agreed with the fossil record, neo-Darwinists came up with such ideas as ``punctuated equilibrium`` to explain the sudden, dramatic change from one species to another (or the lack of any defensible fossil record showing this change had occured.) This article suggests, like Stephan J. Gould, that evolution may move at changing rates. It also makes the case that humans are still in the process of evolution-something that should be obvious since the environment is always changing and genes still mutate.
The problem is, it calls into question the basic premise of Darwin-that random mutations survive because the competition dies out. If this is the case, then there is no reason for modern man to evolve in any meaningful way because medical science and the assistance of civilization should stop this dying out of the ``unfit``. If, in an era of radically decreasing mortality, one that has been ongoing for several thousand years, we are witnessing an acceleration of evolution one must question Darwin`s Natural Selection.
I understand; Man`s enemies have changed from nature and predators to himself, and the Neolithic brought a great revolution in nutrition and other health-related issues, freeing greedy men to steal from and kill others. Perhaps it can be argued that this has brought a change in the environment which encourages evolutionary change. Perhaps. But that should have made us all into mighty warriors, into people incapable of pity, or mercy, or gentleness. That we have gone in the opposite direction in many ways, that we have banned the warrior culture (at least in the West), encouraged such non-military pursuits as literature, art, science, etc., that a non-producing homosexual culture should thrive in modernity, care for women, infants, children, the elderly all suggest that we are NOT seeing evolution being driving by military pursuits. The mystery deepens.
I apply the principle of Occam`s Razor, and suggest we simply eliminate Darwin`s basic concept. We have no proof of Natural Selection, we can make no predictions with it, can answer no questions with it. Just as Einstein eliminated the idea of the Ether (something that all physicists of his day clung to) because it didn`t have any evidence despite being an attractive theory, so too scientists cling to Darwin despite a dearth of evidence that Natural Selection is correct. It`s an attractive theory, but is not born out of physical evidence.
If we are to truly advance our understanding of reality we need to eliminate the illusions we cling to as science. Darwin`s particular theory of how evolution works is treasured by those with a particular ax to grind, and is holding back our knowledge of the Universe. It is a 19th century theory, a good try, but isn`t it time to move on? Let`s start fresh, shall we!
That failure would doom any other scientific theory, but the religious implications to atheists has produced a cadre of furious defenders who will allow no deviation from this, the cornerstone of their belief system. As a result, efforts by open-minded scientists are generally met with belittlement, disgrace, and abuse. Few are willing to suffer the slings and arrows (and the cutting off of research funds) so Darwin reigns supreme, a naked king who parades about proudly in his invisible clothes.
David of Ultima Thule sent me this piece from World Science about the apparent variability in the rate of evolution. Classic Darwinism says that evolution proceeds are a more or less steady rate from one species to another. Since this never agreed with the fossil record, neo-Darwinists came up with such ideas as ``punctuated equilibrium`` to explain the sudden, dramatic change from one species to another (or the lack of any defensible fossil record showing this change had occured.) This article suggests, like Stephan J. Gould, that evolution may move at changing rates. It also makes the case that humans are still in the process of evolution-something that should be obvious since the environment is always changing and genes still mutate.
The problem is, it calls into question the basic premise of Darwin-that random mutations survive because the competition dies out. If this is the case, then there is no reason for modern man to evolve in any meaningful way because medical science and the assistance of civilization should stop this dying out of the ``unfit``. If, in an era of radically decreasing mortality, one that has been ongoing for several thousand years, we are witnessing an acceleration of evolution one must question Darwin`s Natural Selection.
I understand; Man`s enemies have changed from nature and predators to himself, and the Neolithic brought a great revolution in nutrition and other health-related issues, freeing greedy men to steal from and kill others. Perhaps it can be argued that this has brought a change in the environment which encourages evolutionary change. Perhaps. But that should have made us all into mighty warriors, into people incapable of pity, or mercy, or gentleness. That we have gone in the opposite direction in many ways, that we have banned the warrior culture (at least in the West), encouraged such non-military pursuits as literature, art, science, etc., that a non-producing homosexual culture should thrive in modernity, care for women, infants, children, the elderly all suggest that we are NOT seeing evolution being driving by military pursuits. The mystery deepens.
I apply the principle of Occam`s Razor, and suggest we simply eliminate Darwin`s basic concept. We have no proof of Natural Selection, we can make no predictions with it, can answer no questions with it. Just as Einstein eliminated the idea of the Ether (something that all physicists of his day clung to) because it didn`t have any evidence despite being an attractive theory, so too scientists cling to Darwin despite a dearth of evidence that Natural Selection is correct. It`s an attractive theory, but is not born out of physical evidence.
If we are to truly advance our understanding of reality we need to eliminate the illusions we cling to as science. Darwin`s particular theory of how evolution works is treasured by those with a particular ax to grind, and is holding back our knowledge of the Universe. It is a 19th century theory, a good try, but isn`t it time to move on? Let`s start fresh, shall we!
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 6:10 AM
2 Comments:
First, having actually read Darwin's _Origin of Species_, I have noted at least two things about it: first, he thought that evolutionary rates varied over time, and that the amount of time a lineage spent not evolving was usually longer than the amount of time it spent evolving, and second, that he thought, as he put it, that the Earth's crust was a vast museum that only at great intervals and haphazardly added to its collections. He offered, in a chapter entitled "On the Imperfection of the Fossil Record," his arguments for why transitional fossils might not be found, not a prediction that someday they would be. Fossils were not that important to his argument, which rested more heavily on the patterns of similarity and differences among living species.
Now, the Darwinian "struggle for survival" is not necessarily a literal battle against members of one's own species. The point is that individuals with different genes are differently likely to find food, avoid becoming food, find a mate, and survive or resist infection and parasites. Technology doesn't do much to change the fact of selection -- some people will still have more children than others -- although it will change the exact selective pressures (e.g. that whole fat-storing ability is not the advantage it was when food was harder to come by). It is not paradoxical that selection should speed up, even though certain selective pressures have weakened or disappeared; other pressures (from resistance to new diseases to the ability to attract mates and influence peers) have become stronger. Again, this is not a new idea, something added to Darwin's idea, but was implicit from the beginning.
Hi Steven J.!
Thanks for a courteous and thoughtful comment.
I agree with you that Darwin did not say that evolution only occured at one rate; my point-and the point of the article I linked to-was that he didn`t believe in such a rapid rate of evolution. That is why the findings in that article have everyone interested; they suggest a much more rapid evolutionary process than previously thought.
Consider this comment from Origin;
``Although each formation may mark a very long lapse of years, each perhaps is short compared with the period requisite to change one species into another.``
Also, consider this from chapter 4;
That natural selection will always act with extreme slowness, I fully admit.
and again from chapter 10;
I believe in no fixed law of development, causing all the inhabitants of a country to change abruptly, or simultaneously, or to an equal degree. The process of modification must be extremely slow.
You are also right about Darwin`s point on the fossil record, but I disagree with your interpretation. Darwin believed that the fossil record would eventually yield evidence; without it his theory would remain exactly that.
For example:
By the theory of natural selection all living species have been connected with the parent-species of each genus, by differences not greater than we see between the varieties of the same species at the present day; and these parent-species, now generally extinct, have in their turn been similarly connected with more ancient species; and so on backwards, always converging to the common ancestor of each great class. So that the number of intermediate and transitional links, between all living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great. But assuredly, if this theory be true, such have lived upon this earth.``
``But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.``
``He who rejects this view of the imperfection of the geological record, will rightly reject the whole theory. For he may ask in vain where are the numberless transitional links which must formerly have connected the closely allied or representative species found in the successive stages of the same great formation?``
``Nature may almost be said to have guarded against the frequent discovery of her transitional or linking forms.``
"Lastly, looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking closely together all the species of the same group, must assuredly have existed; but the very process of natural selection constantly tends, as has been so often remarked, to exterminate the parent-forms and the intermediate links. Consequently evidence of their former existence could be found only amongst fossil remains which are preserved, as we shall attempt to show in a future chapter, in an extremely imperfect and intermittent record."
"To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system I can give no satisfactory answer . . . Nevertheless, the difficulty of assigning any good reason for the absence of vast piles of strata rich in fossils beneath the Cambrian system is very great."
Furthermore, Darwin had this to say;
"But I do not pretend that I should ever have suspected how poor was the record in the best preserved geological sections, had not the absence of innumerable transitional links between species which lived at the commencement and close of each formation, pressed so hardly on my theory
This strongly suggests that he did, in fact, believe the fossil record would eventually prove his case.
Darwin didn`t make the fossil record his principle argument because he couldn`t; he didn`t have any physical evidence of linkage to work with. Still, it is pretty clear that he expected the record to eventually prove him correct, although he didn`t expect that to happen immediately.
Of course, cataloguing alone cannot be used to falsify his theory, and actually proves nothing when it comes to Natural Selection, since the ``why`` of the matter, the conditions which spurred the change, cannot be known. Cataloguing may be useful to argue for evolution in general, but does little to ``prove`` that species change based on random mutations providing a survival benefit. For that you need the fossil record.
I would also like to point out that neo-Darwinism was created precisely to address the problems of the fossil record and the rate of evolution.
You make an interesting case about modern evolutionary pressures, one I admit I had not considered; that dietary changes could alter the species, for example. It`s an interesting speculation, although it should be pointed out that medical science has allowed people prone to diabetes, for instance, to live long and fruitful lives, so technology does have an impact in stabilizing the human species.
It should be pointed out that your example about the fat-storing abilities being liabilities in a world of plentiful food can be argued both ways; we see more obese people now than at any other time, and they are alive because of medical advancements to continue breeding. It actually hasn`t become a detriment, otherwise the younger generation should tend to be slimmer!
At any rate, we can agree to disagree; thanks for an interesting discussion!
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