This “Evolution” Is Not Darwinian

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Posted on February 23, 2013 in Birds, Cell Biology, Darwin and Evolution, Early Man, Mind and Brain


Deterministic Evolution


This claim, however, runs contrary to the unpredictable, contingent nature of Darwin’s theoretical mechanism.  If the mutations fall within the “Edge of Evolution,” as Michael Behe described in a book of that name, then the changes could be due to chance and selection pressure in an artificially designed environment.  But as Randy Guliuzza has explained, the ability to adapt would better be described as designed into the bacteria than residing in the environment.  The end products of the experiments, finally, are still bacterial “strains” within the same species, raising questions why natural selection, if so inexorable a process, has left bacteria content to remain so for hundreds of millions of years.

Salvaging Evolution

Sometimes an observation begs the question of evolution.  Why, for instance, do some birds continue their mating displays after laying of eggs?  Live Science explored the conundrum:

That begged the question: Why would monogamous animals have evolved to continue these display once they’d paired up?

It’s very obvious why you’d want a display to attract a mate, but once you’ve already secured a mate, why should you bother to keep displaying?” said study author Maria Servedio, an evolutionary biologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

To salvage evolutionary theory from the conundrum, they came up with a less obvious answer: it helps the birds pair-bond better for the raising of young.  So it may have evolutionary benefits, despite the “very obvious” why-question.

Incidental Evolution

Observation: males in many species beat females in navigational ability (Live Science).  A Darwinian just-so story arises to explain this in adaptationist terms: males wander farther for hunting, so only the good navigators would survive to get home and breed.  As Justin Rhodes explains in a cartoony video on PhysOrg, though, the story doesn’t wash.  Males would have passed on the genes for good navigation to their daughters, not just their sons.  So to explain the observation, Rhodes ended up calling the adaptation a “spandrel” of selection – i.e., a byproduct of the main selection pressure that just happened to produce navigational skill as a side effect.  “Maybe we shouldn’t be too eager to accept the stories, the adaptionist stories,” he said.  Even things in human behavior could be due to “alternative explanations that people haven’t considered.

It’s nice when evolutionists themselves find faults in their own theory.  Sometimes, though, they still need help from their critics.



Robert Byers February 23, 2013

It has occurred to this YEC creationist that is it possible in cases like this that its not mutations that happen but natural innate changes.
I mean why are they called mutations? why are they something that went wrong?
Mutations in nature are mistakes. Something provoked the mistake .
Is it possible what provokes the mistake/mutation here is a innate trigger where its sensed some threshold has been crossed.
Its not a mutation but only looks like one. Perhaps mutations in nature are only special cases of distortion of these mutation things that really are a part of biology.
just speculating because its unlikely the same mutation arrives johnny on the spot.
it seems if they did a thousand comparisons it might be the same result.

lux113 February 23, 2013

Robert Byers.. I’ve thought this for some time.

There is actually a gene with a ridiculous name — they call it the “sonic hedgehog gene”… yes, I know — why they called it that.. not sure, anyway this gene seems to effectively toggle on or off the development of legs. It’s been a long time since I looked into this.. but the point is — one gene all by itself determining whether an animal grows legs. So, obviously this gene by itself isn’t capable of producing legs — the programming in our dna already has the plans for these legs dormant.. this is just the gene that says yes or no.

A lot of the metamorphosis that animals go through appear to just be embedded code able to be accessed if necessary — triggered by environmental change — so.. no evolution necessary.

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