Page 125 - Knowing The Truth

Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar) 123

attack by wild animals, those that can run faster will survive.
Therefore, the deer herd will be comprised of faster and stronger
individuals. However, unquestionably, this mechanism will not cause
deer to evolve and transform themselves 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 favorable individual
differences or variations occur. 17

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 transformed themselves into whales over time. 18
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.