Page 525 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

Harun Yahya

ONCE, THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES WAS

THOUGHT TO LIE IN "SPECIATION"

n June 14, 2003, an article entitled "How Are New Species
Formed?" appeared in New Scientist, noted for its avid
O support of Darwinism. The author, George Turner, made
this important admission:

Not long ago, we thought we knew how species formed. We believed
that the process almost always started with complete isolation of
populations. It often occurred after a population had gone through a
severe "genetic bottleneck", as might happen after a pregnant female
was swept off to a remote island and her offspring mated with each

other. The beauty of this so-called "founder effect" model was that it
could be tested in the lab. In reality, it just didn't hold up. Despite
evolutionary biologists' best efforts, nobody has even got close to cre-

ating a new species from a founder population. What's more, as far as
we know, no new species has formed as a result of humans releasing
small numbers of organisms into alien environments. 102

Actually, this admission is not new. In the century and a half since Darwin, no speciation such as he
proposed has ever been observed, and no satisfactory explanation has ever been provided for the origin
of species.

To explain this, it will be useful to examine what sort of "speciation" Darwin envisioned.
His theory depended on the observation of variations in the animal populations. Some of these ob-
servations were made by individuals who bred animals, raising quality breeds of dogs, cows or pigeons.
From among the population, they selected ones with a desirable characteristic (for example, dogs that

could run fast, cows that produced good milk or "smart" pigeons), and bred them. Within a few genera-
tions, their resulting offspring had a high proportion of the selected qualities. For example, the cows pro-
duced much more milk than ordinary cows.
This kind of "limited variation" made Darwin think that modification is continual in nature, and

when it is extended over a long enough period of time, it produces a radical change, that is, evolution.
Darwin's second observation along these lines was that the various breeds of finches he saw in the
Galapagos Islands had differently-shaped bills than finches on the mainland. In the islands, long-billed,
short-billed, curved-billed and straight-billed strains of finches developed in the same population.

Darwin concluded that these varieties turned into separate species by mating among themselves.
When Darwin assembled all these instances of variation, he was led to think that unlimited modifi-
cation occurred in nature and that to develop brand-new species, orders and classes, only a long period
of time was required. But Darwin was wrong.

When individuals with a given dominant characteristic are selected and bred, only better and
stronger members of that species are produced. But this selective breeding can't possibly produce a dif-
ferent species. For example, a horse cannot descend from a cat, nor a giraffe from a gazelle, or a plum
from a pear. Peaches do not turn into bananas nor do carnations turn into roses. In short, under no con-

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