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Evolution: A Stage Parody

Updated: Aug 24, 2023

If evolution is true, then why has it slunk?


Slunk? Yes, the past tense of slink.


To be more precise, evolution-ists have been slinking away.


It appears that in the past few decades the study of evolution in any meaningful way has been slowly slinking away to meaningless descriptions of almost imperceptible changes in existing organisms. It has become a stage play parody of itself. Unfortunately, we are all required to sit and watch the sad hangings-on of sad hangers-on’ers while all along we are forced to agree with their nostalgic musings.


Let us explain. Search online for definitions of evolution. Go ahead, we’ll wait.

What did you find? Did you find any meaningful definition? Did any definition state anything more than essentially “change over time” to produce “diversity of life”? Did the “definition” simply state the supposed result of natural selection with authoritative-sounding musings such as: “Natural selection is defined as the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype”?


(That last sentence, often posed as a definition, is not a definition. Imagine if the process of photosynthesis was defined in this manner: “Photosynthesis is defined as the differential color green in plants due to differences in chlorophyll.”)


Did any of the definitions allude to any mechanism that might produce the “differential survival” or “differences in phenotype”?


More importantly, did any definition come close to describing a process that can be understood–and more importantly, critiqued–as creating you?

Why not?

Here is the interesting thing about evolution. The topic of evolution is taught by educators as a thing that happens in nature. And this thing that happens is taught such that the origin of humans is implied by teachers and inferred by students. And this pattern of implication and inference repeats relentlessly through time with teachers teaching about dark moths and light moths with fancy diagrams that lead students to believe that they are the products of blind nature acting on some early blotch of slime.


And this pattern of implication and inference is repeated endlessly to a steady stream of students while the true experts in evolution fumble about trying to find how any theory of evolution can survive in light of the growing body of evidence on earth.


It is truly an amazing thing, this posturing of educators on the stage of public education and the scrambling of the expert stage hands behind the curtain looking to revise an outdated and increasingly unbelievable script.


Take a typical article, for example, entitled What’s Wrong With Evolutionary Biology, from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). The article starts out with the quiet part spoken out loud (but only behind the stage curtain): “There have been periodic claims that evolutionary biology needs urgent reform, and this article tries to account for the volume and persistence of this discontent.”


Did you know that there are periodic claims that evolutionary biology needs urgent reform? Why might such claims be made? And why don’t you know that?


The article continues with many ideas and suggestions, and then includes this telling paragraph. Because this article is written by a true believer, you will need to read a bit between the lines to see that natural selection, Darwin’s keystone idea, is in trouble. To help you we have added bold highlight to certain parts:

Of course evolutionary biology does have a very general and powerful idea. But the theory of natural selection causes additional problems. One problem is its deceptive simplicity (Huxley 1887, p. 197); it is an idea that we all think we understand, but which continues to divide experts (e.g. Lewens 2010; Pence and Ramsey 2013). The simplicity is deceptive in a second sense: our intuitions about natural selection are often very poor. For example, nature is full of “traits whose complexity makes it difficult to see how they can be accounted for by normal natural selection” (Papineau 2005), and so it is tempting to assume that some factor, neglected by current evolutionary thinking, must also have played a “creative role”. This argument from our ignorance stems from Mivart (1871, e.g. Chs. 2 and 4), but it is not restricted to creationists (e.g. Waddington 1960, Ch. 9; Papineau 2005; Nagel 2012; see also Orr 2013). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5329086/

Natural selection is the idea that “we all think we understand?” We have been brow-beaten into believing that if we don’t understand natural selection we are flat-earth dolts! And now we learn that the stage hands don’t fully understand it either!


And why would anyone have “poor intuitions” about such a basic process step of evolution? And why would anyone ever, ever, be led to consider some unknown “factor” that is currently “neglected” by current evolutionary thinking that played a “creative role”? We were all told that creation of humans by evolution is a “fact” and to question it is akin to questioning gravity.


Is the law of gravity in need of “urgent reform”? Are our intuitions about gravity “very poor”?


Here is the truth known to the stage hands, many of the actors on stage, and suspected by most of the people in the audience: natural selection is a non-starter. Natural selection cannot explain the origin and existence of any living being!


Is it possible that there truly is an “unknown factor” that is “neglected” by current scientific thinking?


To help you answer that question, consider our posts here and here, as well as The Natural Selection Paradox. And you will never again be shy to consider the unknown factor missing in all the science of human origins.


It’s time for the dead-end idea of natural selection to exit stage left, right, or down.

Think about it.

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