IMAGINARY MECHANISMS OF EVOLUTION

The neo-Darwinist model, which we shall take as the mainstream theory of evolution today, argues that life has evolved through two natural mechanisms: "natural selection" and "mutation". The theory basically asserts that natural selection and mutation are two complementary mechanisms. The origin of evolutionary modifications lies in random mutations that take place in the genetic structures of living things. The traits brought about by mutations are selected by the mechanism of natural selection, and by this means living things evolve.

When we look further into this theory, we find that there is no such evolutionary mechanism. Neither natural selection nor mutations make any contribution at all to the transformation of different species into one another, and the claim that they do is completely unfounded.

Natural Selection

As process of nature, natural selection was familiar to biologists before Darwin, who defined it as a "mechanism that keeps species unchanging without being corrupted". Darwin was the first person to put forward the assertion that this process had evolutionary power and he then erected his entire theory on the foundation of this assertion. The name he gave to his book indicates that natural selection was the basis of Darwin's theory: The Origin of Species, by means of Natural Selection...

However since Darwin's time, there has not been a single shred of evidence put forward to show that natural selection causes living things to evolve. Colin Patterson, the senior paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History in London and a prominent evolutionist, stresses that natural selection has never been observed to have the ability to cause things to evolve:

No one has ever produced a species by mechanisms of natural selection. No one has ever got near it and most of the current argument in neo-Darwinism is about this question.13

Natural selection holds that those living things that are more suited to the natural conditions of their habitats will prevail by having offspring that will survive, whereas those that are unfit will disappear. For example, in a deer herd under the threat of wild animals, naturally those that can run faster will survive. That is true. But no matter how long this process goes on, it will not transform those deer into another living species. The deer will always remain deer.

When we look at the few incidents the evolutionists have put forth as observed examples of natural selection, we see that these are nothing but a simple attempt to hoodwink.

"Industrial Melanism"

In 1986 Douglas Futuyma published a book, The Biology of Evolution, which is accepted as one of the sources explaining the theory of evolution by natural selection in the most explicit way. The most famous of his examples on this subject is about the colour of the moth population, which appeared to darken during the Industrial Revolution in England. It is possible to find the story of the Industrial Melanism in almost all evolutionist biology books, not just in Futuyma's book. The story is based on a series of experiments conducted by the British physicist and biologist Bernard Kettlewell in the 1950s, and can be summarised as follows:

According to the account, around the onset of the Industrial Revolution in England, the colour of the tree barks around Manchester was quite light. Because of this, dark-coloured (melanic) moths resting on those trees could easily be noticed by the birds that fed on them and therefore they had very little chance of survival. Fifty years later, in woodlands where industrial pollutionhas killedthe lichens, the barks of the trees had darkened, and now the light-coloured moths became the most hunted, since they were the most easily noticed. As a result, the proportion of light-coloured moths to dark-coloured moths decreased. Evolutionists believe this to be a great piece of evidence for their theory. They take refuge and solace in window-dressing, showing how light-coloured moths "evolved" into dark-coloured ones.

However, even if we assume these to be correct, it should be quite clear that they can in no way be used as evidence for the theory of evolution, since no new form arose that had not existed before. Dark colored moths had existed in the moth population before the Industrial Revolution. Only the relative proportions of the existing moth varieties in the population changed. The moths had not acquired a new trait or organ, which would cause "speciation". In order for one moth species to turn into another living species, a bird for example, new additions would have had to be made to its genes. That is, an entirely separate genetic program would have had to be loaded so as to include information about the physical traits of the bird.

This is the answer to be given to the evolutionist story of Industrial Melanism. However, there is a more interesting side to the story: Not just its interpretation, but the story itself is flawed. As molecular biologist Jonathan Wells explains in his book Icons of Evolution, the story of the peppered moths, which is included in every evolutionist biology book and has therefore, become an "icon" in this sense, does not reflect the truth. Wells discusses in his book how Bernard Kettlewell's experiment, which is known as the "experimental proof" of the story, is actually a scientific scandal. Some basic elements of this scandal are:

• Many experiments conducted after Kettlewell's revealed that only one type of these moths rested on tree trunks, and all other types preferred to rest beneath small, horizontal branches. Since 1980 it has become clear that peppered moths do not normally rest on tree trunks. In 25 years of fieldwork, many scientists such as Cyril Clarke and Rory Howlett, Michael Majerus, Tony Liebert, and Paul Brakefield concluded that "in Kettlewell's experiment, moths were forced to act atypically, therefore, the test results could not be accepted as scientific".

• Scientists who tested Kettlewell's conclusions came up with an even more interesting result: Although the number of light moths would be expected to be larger in the less polluted regions of England, the dark moths there numbered four times as many as the light ones. This meant that there was no correlation between the moth population and the tree trunks as claimed by Kettlewell and repeated by almost all evolutionist sources.
  
  
• As the research deepened, the scandal changed dimension: "The moths on tree trunks" photographed by Kettlewell, were actually dead moths. Kettlewell used dead specimens glued or pinned to tree trunks and then photographed them. In truth, there was little chance of taking such a picture as the moths rested not on tree trunks but underneath the leaves.14

  These facts were uncovered by the scientific community only in the late 1990s. The collapse of the myth of Industrial Melanism, which had been one of the most treasured subjects in "Introduction to Evolution" courses in universities for decades, greatly disappointed evolutionists. One of them, Jerry Coyne, remarked:

  My own reaction resembles the dismay attending my discovery, at the age of six, that it was my father and not Santa who brought the presents on Christmas Eve.15

Thus, "the most famous example of natural selection" was relegated to the trash-heap of history as a scientific scandal which was inevitable, because natural selection is not an "evolutionary mechanism," contrary to what evolutionists claim. It is capable neither of adding a new organ to a living organism, nor of removing one, nor of changing an organism of one species into that of another.

Why Cannot Natural Selection Explain Complexity?

There is nothing that natural selection contributes to the theory of evolution, because this mechanism can never increase or improve the genetic information of a species. Neither can it transform one species into another: a starfish into a fish, a fish into a frog, a frog into a crocodile, or a crocodile into a bird. The biggest defender of punctuated equilibrium, Stephen Jay Gould, refers to this impasse of natural selection as follows;

The essence of Darwinism lies in a single phrase: natural selection is the creative force of evolutionary change. No one denies that selection will play a negative role in eliminating the unfit. Darwinian theories require that it create the fit as well.16

Another of the misleading methods that evolutionists employ on the issue of natural selection is their effort to present this mechanism as conscious. However, natural selection has no consciousness. It does not possess a will that can decide what is good and what is bad for living things. As a result, one cannot explain biological systems and organs that possess the feature of "irreducible complexity" by natural selection. These systems and organs are composed of a great number of parts cooperating together, and are of no use if even one of these parts is missing or defective. (For example, the human eye does not function unless it exists with all its components intact). Therefore, the will that brings all these parts together should be able to foresee the future and aim directly at the advantage that is to be acquired at the final stage. Since natural selection has no consciousness or will, it can do no such thing. This fact, which demolishes the foundations of the theory of evolution, also worried Darwin, who wrote: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." 17

Through natural selection, only the disfigured, weak, or unfit individuals of a species are selected out. New species, new genetic information, or new organs cannot be produced. That is, living things cannot evolve through natural selection. Darwin accepted this reality by saying: "Natural selection can do nothing until favourable variations chance to occur".18 This is why neo-Darwinism has had to elevate mutations next to natural selection as the "cause of beneficial changes". However as we shall see, mutations can only be "the cause for harmful changes".

13 Colin Patterson, "Cladistics", Interview with Brian Leek, Peter Franz, March 4, 1982, BBC.
14 Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong, Regnery Publishing, 2000, p. 141-151.
15 Jerry Coyne, "Not Black and White", a review of Michael Majerus's Melanism: Evolution in Action, Nature, 396 (1988), p. 35-36.
16 Stephen Jay Gould, "The Return of Hopeful Monsters", Natural History, Vol 86, July-August 1977, p. 28.
17 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition, Harvard University Press, 1964, p. 189. 
18 Ibid, p. 177.