Page 189 - The Creation Of The Universe

Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar) 187

selves into another living species, for instance, 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 differ-
ences or variations occur. 112

Lamarck's Impact
So, how could these "favorable variations" occur? Darwin tried to answer
this question from the standpoint of the primitive understanding 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 generation. He asserted that these
traits, which accumulated from one generation 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 trans-
formed themselves into whales over time. 113
However, the laws of inheritance discovered by Gregor Mendel (1822-
84) and verified by the science of genetics, which flourished in the twenti-
eth 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, at the end of
the 1930s. Neo-Darwinism added mutations, which are distortions formed
in the genes of living beings due to such external factors as radiation or