Page 107 - Fear of Allah

Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar)
evolve and transform themselves into another living species, for in-
stance, horses.
Therefore, the mechanism of natural selection has no evolutionary
power. Darwin was also aware of this fact and had to state this in his
book The Origin of Species:
Natural selection can do nothing until favourable individual differences
or variations occur. 7

Lamarck's Impact
So, how could these "favorable variations" occur? Darwin tried to
answer this question from the standpoint of the primitive understand-
ing of science at that time. According to the French biologist Chevalier
de Lamarck (1744-1829), who lived before Darwin, living creatures
passed on the traits they acquired during their lifetime to the next gen-
eration. He asserted that these traits, which accumulated from one gen-
eration to another, caused new species to be formed. For instance, he
claimed that giraffes evolved from antelopes; as they struggled to eat
the leaves of high trees, their necks were extended from generation to
generation.
Darwin also gave similar examples. In his book The Origin of
Species, for instance, he said that some bears going into water to find
food transformed themselves into whales over time. 8
However, the laws of inheritance discovered by Gregor Mendel
(1822-84) and verified by the science of genetics, which flourished in the
twentieth century, utterly demolished the legend that acquired traits
were passed on to subsequent generations. Thus, natural selection fell
out of favor as an evolutionary mechanism.

Neo-Darwinism and Mutations
In order to find a solution, Darwinists advanced the "Modern
Synthetic Theory," or as it is more commonly known, Neo-Darwinism,

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