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Tom Chavez
Sexual Reproduction and the Theory of Evolution
The standard definition of a species for sexually reproducing organisms requires that members of the same species can mate and create fertile offspring. Different species cannot interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Species are divided into varieties. Varieties, unlike species, can interbreed freely and produce fertile offspring. Darwin agreed with this definition.
The crux of Darwin’s argument is that varieties can gradually become species through breeding: “Varieties are species in the process of formation, or are, as I have called them, incipient species.” In the first chapter of On the Origin of Species, “Variation under Domestication,” he implies that with enough time and crossbreeding species could be bred until they become a new species.
In his second chapter, “Variation under Nature,” Darwin argues that nature can breed varieties until they become species by a process of natural selection.
As it turns out, Darwin was wrong about how much change actually occurs in varieties. We now know that nature has placed limits on how far a species can change. By breeding dogs, we can produce varieties of dogs, but we can’t produce a cat or a muskrat. Breeding simply shuffles and recombines already existing traits (genes).
The American botanist and plant breeder, Luther Burbank (1849–1926) stated: “I can develop a plum half an inch long or one two and a half inches long, with every possible length in between, but I am willing to admit that it is hopeless to get a plum the size of a pea or a grapefruit.”
The noted French zoologist Pierre Grassé (1895–1985) agreed: “In spite of intense artificial selection (eliminating any parent not answering the criteria of choice) over whole millennia, no new species are born. A comparative study of sera, hemoglobins, blood proteins, etc., proves that strains remain within the same specific definition. This is not a matter of opinion or subjective classification, it is a measurable reality. The fact is that selection gives tangible form to all the varieties that a genome is capable of producing, but does not constitute an innovative evolutionary process.”
In 1982 Francis Hitching wrote similarly about selective breeding: “It is now absolutely clear that there are firm natural limits to what can be done. Remarkable achievements can be made by crossbreeding and selection inside the species barrier, or within a larger circle of closely related species, such as wheats. But wheat is still wheat, and not, for instance, grapefruit. Between 1800 and 1878, the sugar content of beets was raised from 6 to 17 per cent. A half century of further breeding failed to make any difference.”
Darwin’s notion that varieties could turn into species was wishful thinking and not based on actual evidence.
The other thing that Darwin got wrong was the mechanism of inheritance, and this soon became obvious as the science of genetics advanced. Natural selection alone is not enough to create a new species. Natural selection cannot create, it can only select from among the varieties created by breeding. If breeding does not create something new, natural selection cannot select it.
Darwin believed that the variation needed for his theory would be provided by external influences on the organisms. He thought that cows udders would become larger when they were regularly milked, and that this change could be passed on to offspring: “There can be little doubt that use in our domestic animals strengthens and enlarges certain parts, and disuse diminishes them; and that such modifications are inherited.”
However, this idea is now known to be incorrect. We may lift weights and develop muscles like steel, but our children will not be born with larger muscles. In some cultures women enlarge their lips and earlobes, but their daughters are not born with bigger lips or earlobes than girls in other culture.
Darwin was wrong in assuming that either environment or natural selection creates new characteristics. Natural selection simply eliminates those individuals that don’t have the favorable traits already.
Just when Darwin was publishing Origin Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) was studying the laws of inheritance. He performed extensive experiments crossing different varieties of plants and noting how their characteristics were passed from one generation to the next.
Mendel concluded that heredity involves a transmission of constant factors that determine an organism’s traits. Although the factors can be mixed and matched during reproduction, they remain discrete and unchanging from one generation to the next.
A simple way to understand the difference between Mendel’s and Darwin’s views is to think of a deck of cards. By shuffling the deck one can combine the cards in a variety of ways, but no new cards will arise in the process. This was Mendel’s correct view of inheritance. Darwin, on the other hand, incorrectly imagined a process of pangenesis that changed the cards into new cards.
Mendel’s laws of genetics have been established for over a century. But evolutionists still recycle erroneous Darwinian ideas. In 1993 the American biologist Christopher Wills wrote: “The force that seems to have accelerated our brain’s growth is a new kind of stimulant: language, signs, collective memories—all elements of culture. As our cultures evolved in complexities, so did our brains, which then drove our culture to still greater complexity. Big and clever brains led to more complex cultures, which in turn led to bigger and cleverer brains.”
This kind of imaginative speculation continues to promote evolution as a kind ideological propaganda in the guise of science. Darwinism has permeated society and the theory has left the realm of hypothesis and moved into the realm of an ideological “established fact,” something not to be doubted.
In 1967, the Wistar Institute hosted a conference called “Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution” attended by mathematicians and evolutionary biologists. The mathematicians argued that it is statistically impossible that complex organs, such as the eye, could have evolved by a series of small random mutations; there hasn’t been enough time in the earth’s history for those mutations to have occurred. This is called the combinatorial problem.
The biologists accused the mathematicians of “doing science backwards.” Evolution, they said, is an established fact; the eye had evolved. A leading evolutionist at the conference, Ernst Meyer, said, “Somehow or other by adjusting these numbers we will come out alright. We are comforted by the fact that evolution has occurred.”
Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote: “Einstein’s theory of gravity replaced Newton’s, but apples did not suspend themselves in midair pending the outcome. And human beings evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin’s proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be identified.”
Of course, we can directly observe apples falling, but we do not observe a common ancestor for apes and humans, nor humans being born of apes. It is a fact that humans are biochemically and physically more similar to apes than other species. But having a shared ancestor via evolution is a theory, not a fact. It may be plausible to those who have a materialistic worldview, but it may nonetheless be false.
In his 1990 book, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism, Tim Berra compared fossils to a series of automobile models: “If you compare a 1953 and a 1954 Corvette, side by side, then a 1954 and a 1955 model, the descent with modification is overwhelmingly obvious. This is what paleontologists do with fossils, and the evidence is so solid and comprehensive that it cannot be doubted by reasonable people.”
Of course, everyone knows that cars are designed in advance by intelligent designers. Their similarity is not the result of an unguided Darwinian process. What Berra actually showed is that resemblance between species might be due to design. But because he was so convinced of the fact of evolution, he saw even a contradictory example as evidence for evolution.
In short, evolution became dogma in Darwin’s time and has remained dogma ever since. Although there is abundant evidence against evolution, most evolutionists refuse to look at the evidence and instead have taken on the task of finding mechanisms to account for what they already accept as a fact.
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