Evolution of the Species
There's a myth that the inventions that succeed are the best ones. In fact, the factors that influence success are many and varied. Luck and marketing play a good part. Microsoft doesn't produce the best software but have had luck and marketing success. In the early days of cars there were a number of different types of vehicles. Tiller steering, three and four wheeled vehicles, steam and internal combustion driven. From an engineering point of view, a steam engine has a number of advantages over an internal combustion engine; one being that it doesn't require a gearbox.
Similarly, with computers. A few years ago there was a broad range of operating systems and chip designs but now, because of the predominance of Microsoft and Intel, there is much less choice. Biologists have remarked that a similar pattern has developed in evolution. Going back some millions of years, there was a huge array of different types of animals but over the centuries only the fittest have survived. That is at least according to the hard-core Darwinians. (In fact, Darwin would be shocked at much of what is stated in his name). Similar forces that determine survival of inventions determine the survival of a species. The view that it is simply 'the best' (or most adapted) from random permutations is at best naive and at worse an exercise in propaganda. Certainly, survival of the fittest takes place but this is not the only factor at work.
Darwinians have created a lot of what may be called propaganda in order to discredit opponents. One form this takes is to throw up two camps - 'Us' (the Darwinians), and 'Them' (the creationists). So if you question the conventional Darwinian view then you are supporting the creationist view, which carries emotional overtones.
There are a number of holes in the Darwinian theory and even a cursory look at Dawkins' "The Blind Watchmaker" reveals a mass of pseudo science and to show the flaws in his reasoning would require a separate article. The Sceptics association has a very sympathetic view of him, which shows how they are more concerned with propagating a line than with real science. The science fiction writer Isaac Asimov speculated that human beings were the most adapted they could be and he couldn't imagine how we could have evolved with any fundamental differences.
I will return to this theme later, but here are some problems with the conventional view of evolution that Dawkins et al don't address:
If we are the best (that is, the most adapted) form there could be, then it assumes that any variations died off. In other words, for every form we have there was a group who had slightly different forms, a race with 6 fingers instead of 5, or with 4 or 8. Races with three legs, three eyes, monochrome vision etc. Where are the traces of these creatures? It's not just humans but for every animal there would be rejects There is no evidence that any of these permutations ever existed.
A recent article in New Scientist pointed out that the genetic variation in humans was extremely low - lower than any other species. The only way this could have happened (according to them) was that at one time there was a very small group who survived and everyone today is descended from this small group. Now, if that's the case and we are also to accept the conventional Darwinian view, then this group survived because it was the most adapted. This sounds highly improbable. As I pointed out earlier, the factors that influence survival are many and varied and for any one group to survive over others is more luck than adaptation. Darwinian evolution assumes a large number of a species over a long period of time (at least for the kind of changes we are looking at). It doesn't apply to a small group, in which case our 5 fingers are not due to best survival but due to chance.
