Re: Irreducible complexity

Perhaps you and Lance won't agree with the following quote from a
monograph by Antony Flew:

"Natural selection does not positively produce anything. It only
eliminates, or tends to eliminate, whatever is not competitive. For
some variant characteristic not to be eliminated, it does not need to
bestow upon its possessor any actual competitive advantage. It is both
necessary and sufficient that it should not burden that possessor with
any competitive disadvantage.

"Darwin's mistake -- a mistake the correction of which leaves us still
with a satisfactorily falsifiable implication -- is perhaps consequent
upon his employment of the expressions 'natural selection' or 'survival
of the fittest', rather than his own ultimately preferred alternative
'natural preservation'....Certainly it cannot be either too early or
too often emphasized that natural selection is no more a kind of
(conscious and grounded) selection than Bombay duck is a species of
duck."

Dave

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Asian natural disaster or evolution in action?
    ... Your lack of understanding suggest you are ... > Natural selection will definately limit a population. ... > course in order to be a mistake it has to have been done by intent rather ... tsunami will have children more likely to survive future tsunamis. ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Asian natural disaster or evolution in action?
    ... Your lack of understanding suggest you are ... I'm posting from the Bible belt and and a tidal wave is a natural disaster, ... Natural selection will definately limit a population. ... If a mutation provides an advantage why would you call it a a mistake? ...
    (sci.anthropology.paleo)
  • Re: Is Natural Selection the mechanism of Evolution?
    ... it's "a" mechanism of the theory of evolution. ... And Darwin said that what he meant by "Natural Selection" is ... survives" is the mechanims of the Theory of Evolution? ... The mistake of calling attention to something that you ...
    (talk.origins)