Evolution Theory and the Actual Selection Process in Animal Species
The actual “selection” process of survival of the fittest is so brutal, just about one in ten to one in a hundred of those born mature to an age suitable to produce offspring. This balance of mutations affords ample scope for the natural selection of any variation necessary in order to alter the species in such a was as to bring it into harmony with changes in conditions. This process of selection would be more simple and certain if we consider how slow land-surfaces and climates endure permanent changes. These are the kind of transfers that initiate and reinforce adjustments, first, most likely, in the dispersion, and afterwards in the structure and habits of species.
We conclude, therefore, this utterly inescapable theory from the facts: if natural selection can and does hold each continually changing species in close adaptation to an unchanging environment, that it preserves the fixedness of its average circumstance. Virtually every dissenter acknowledges this theory. In a slowly changing environment, the same power should necessarily effect some related modification is needed for the well-being and lasting survival of the various species who are subjected to those changed conditions.
I shall not include any further critique of the dissents professed by critics of the theory. All of these have, at this point, been fully covered by Darwin and other evolutionary biologists. Some of them have been talked about in review articles such as the series I am presently posting. The word extinction is a more puissant word than natural selection, but it’s important to remember that what we really are talking about is the maladapted species who perish while those more adapted survive.
The evolution creationism controversy debate has compounded in the last 20 years, and especially in the last 10. An Oprah Winfrey creationism controversy is among the most surprising of these. It is creating an unfortunate deviation from our undertaking of the further cultivation of knowledge, theory and reason within the study of evolutionary biology. We in the scientific discipline are no doubt frustrated by this, and perhaps we discover as a release valve for this frustration a healthy enjoyment of wit on the sometimes ludicrous argument about evolution, creationism and intelligent design.
