Page 158 - Once Upon a Time There Was Darwinism
P. 158

Once Upon a Time There Was Darwinism
                  into being. It is only "genetic variation" that occurs naturally
                  in a given species. These limited alterations include the devel-

                  opment of, for example, shorter, larger, short-haired or long-
                  haired breeds of dogs. Even given a million years, these
                  variations will never produce new species or higher taxa
                  (genera, families, orders, classes, phyla).
                       2) In nature, external interference with the genes of or-
                  ganisms comes about only through mutations. But these mu-
                  tations are never beneficial nor produce new genetic data;
                  they only destroy the existing one.
                       Therefore, it is impossible to explain the "origin of

                  species" in terms of natural selection, as Darwin thought to
                  do. No matter how much "selection" dogs are subjected to,
                  they will always remain dogs; there is no sense in asserting
                  that they were actually fish or bacteria in the past.
                       So, what of the "external interference" in the genes, or
                  mutations?
                       Since the 1930s the Darwinist theory has relied on this al-

                  ternative, and for this reason, the theory's name was changed
                  to "neo-Darwinism." However, mutations were not able to
                  rescue the theory—an important topic to examine separately.



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