Page 40 - The Errors the American National Academy of Sciences

The Errors of the American National Academy of Sciences

tion a power it does not possess:
The essence of Darwinism lies in a single phrase:
natural selection is the major creative force of
evolutionary change. No one denies that natural
selection will play a negative role in eliminating
the unfit. Darwinian theories require that it cre-
ate the fit as well. 1

In an article published in Scientific
R Roger Lewin American in 1994, Gould describes the limita-
o

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tions of natural selection in these terms:
Natural selection is therefore a principle of local adaptation, not of
general advance or progress. 2
In his comments on a new mechanism for evolution postulated by
Edward Wiley and Daniel Brooks, Roger Lewin says:
Natural selection, a central feature of neo-Darwinism, is allowed for
in Brooks and Wiley's theory, but only as a minor influence. "It can af-
fect survivorship" says Brooks. "It can weed out some of the com-
plexity and so slow down the information decay that results in
speciation. It may have a stabilizing effect, but it does not promote
speciation. It is not a creative force as many people have suggested." 3
A book by four evolutionary biologists titled Parasitology makes
the following statement about natural selection:

Natural selection can act only on those biologic properties that al-
ready exist; it cannot create properties in order to meet adaptational
needs. 4
The subject which evolutionists really need to explain is how the
above "biologic properties that already exist" came to be. Evolutionists
themselves confess that natural selection is unable to provide an an-
swer. That is why the neo-Darwinist theory was proposed. Neo-
Darwinism suggests that the biological changes expected to be chosen

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