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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