The arguments against Natural Selection

There are four crushing a priori arguments (that is argument by the natural consequence of logic) disposing of Natural Selection, and, after that there is overwhelming positive evidence against it, of which the main divisions are three in number.

The four a priori arguments are these:—

1. Variations in nearly every case must continue to accumulate. Variations more and more advantageous must appear successively, Generation after Generation. This is not logically essential in every conceivable case, e.g. parti-coloured animals could grow whiter against the snow. But in the vast majority of cases such accumulation is essential: e.g. to produce a taller type or to produce horns or to lengthen a tail. Now the chances of such a regular series appearing by accident, even in one case, let alone millions, clearly approximate to zero.

2. The advantageous differences making for survival are not of one kind in any particular case, but of an indefinitely large number (e.g. climate getting colder needs not only warmer coat, but power to digest new food, protective colouring so as not to show dark against snow etc. An indefinitely large number of qualities). Now the chance of all being combined (and co-ordinated) in a single individual, without design, accidentally — let alone of their thus appearing in many individuals accidentally and without design — approximate to zero. On the same line of reasoning the chances of co-ordination between all the vastly numerous parts of one complex creature by accident approximate to zero.

3. The chances of each very slight change being an advantageous one over the last in the series indefinitely prolonged of myriads or millions approximate to zero.

4. Where more than one specially favoured progenitor is necessary to the production of an organism (e.g. among mammals, two, a male and a female: with many plants three, a male and a female and an insect go-between) the chance combination of such favoured progenitors accidentally and without design diminishes with each generation in geometrical ratio and rapidly approximates to zero.

The decisive character of these a priori arithmetical arguments will appear later.

Now for arguments from evidence. The arguments from evidence against Natural Selection come under three heads:—

1. Within humanly recorded historical experience no trace of such permanent progressive action is observable. There is no doubt of individual differences; there is also plenty of proof of slight changes swinging round the normal. There is manifest to every one differentiation of type: Negroes and Mongols among men for instance. But the main types are fixed. Negro and Mongol are both men. Man and other mature types are, within historical record, fixed. They are not on their way to becoming something else. It is true that humanly recorded experience covers but a very brief fraction of the total time allowed for even the shortest estimates of the of the past of this world. None the less, it is sufficient to prove that types once achieved are permanent. Call it five thousand years … even that short period is enough to prove the existence of stable types. For if during five million years some animal form existing at the moment has been forever slowly changing by a process such that its present apparent fixity is an illusion, and is still proceeding to further slow changes indefinitely, then five thousand years ought to show a perceptible fraction of the movement; only a thousandth of it, no doubt, but one in a thousand is measurable: tiny but measurable. Yet no fundamental change, still less any progressive change, is apparent. During all the historical epoch fixity of type is invariable.
2. The geological record, so far from showing types perpetually in a state of flux, presents us with Fixed Types and nothing but Fixed Types. A Fixed Type does not mean a type which had no other type for its ancestors; nor one which never passed through immature stages before reaching maturity. Nor does it mean a type without collaterals. It means a type which, when mature, is repeated indefinitely.
3. The geological record does not as a fact show gradually progressive change by imperceptible degrees like an inclined plane, but on the contrary, a series of leaps, like a number of steps.

1. The first a priori argument against Natural Selection, that it presupposes quite arbitrarily that variations will accumulate, I have already dealt with.
2. The second a priori argument against Natural Selection: It involves accidental survival value not in one single feature but in many complex co-ordinated features all simultaneous and yet accidental. This without design is mathematically impossible.

When the climate gets colder, there will probably be more snow. But this is not the only thing that will happen. There will also be a change in the methods of progression over the surface of the earth. Paws advantageous for speed when there is no frost or snow may be disadvantageous when there is. There will also be a change in the things present for an animal to eat; many of the grasses and fruits present in the warmer time will disappear and others better suited to the new, cold climate will increase. Again, a change of this kind does not take place in isolated fashion; it will be accompanied perhaps by longer nights in winter; probably by more cloudy skies, and by sudden floods in spring, and so on. Change of environment will nearly always mean not one, but a great number of concomitant changes.

Change, then, in environment is always complex. But the organism which has to meet it is also complex, only because it is an organism. Every living organism is highly complex. It is its very complexity, that is, the vast number of its parts and the mysterious co-ordination between them, which makes it a living organism, and distinguishes it from dead matter. Even the simplest organic cell is chemically of a highly complex nature, and its principle of continuity is so different from a simple mechanical process that no-one has ever been able to lay down a formula for it. In plain words, the very nature of a living organism escapes us on account of its complexity.

Here then, you have a complex organism, consisting of an indefinitely large number of parts, all of which must be co-ordinated to the changed environment; and you have also an environment which, when it changes, changes not in one but in a very large number of respects.

Now observe the inevitable, mathematical necessity of this relation. The environment changes not in one respect, or fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand, but in as many as you like to catalogue. The living animal consists not in one function, or a hundred, or a thousand, but in as many more as you care to examine…. The organism has to be adapted to meet all changes. But that living thing also must, in order to have special survival value, discover, somehow a corresponding change in all its innumerable functions. When such and such a proportion of the organisms shows one aspect of the change, such an advantage helps this favoured proportion, in that point only, to survive. But in order to have special survival value, the organism must also show advantages in every other respect. The chance of all of these advantages coinciding in any one organism and accidentally corresponding to the very numerous changes in the environment, is mathematically indistinguishable from zero. The animals with whiter coats than the average are not (if the matter be left to chance) the same as those with paws slightly better suited for snow than the average; nor are either of these the same as those with slight survival advantage over the average in digesting changed food— and so on with any number of conditions. Left to chance the combination could not arise. Yet it does arise!

It is equally true that the adaptations of function within each organism are vast in number and could never have arisen from blind accident. ..

Wolff put it admirably in his attack on Darwinism as early as 1898: "One might possibly imagine the adaptation between one muscle cell and one nerve end, through Selection among innumerable chance-made variations, but that such shall take place in 1000 cases in one organism is inconceivable."

And another great biologist has well said: "What is the survival value of horns without the structure to support them and muscles to use them?"

Strange that Mr Wells should never have heard of all this!

Animals are adapted we know. They do co-ordinate an indefinitely large number of internal conditions to meet external conditions. They also have a myriad adaptations within themselves necessary to their existence as organisms quite apart from external change. But this could not possibly happen from blind chance.

The mathematical chances are millions and millions to one against the possibility of such a thing. Grant design moulding all nature — that is God —and this process is explicable. Grant even an inherent power possessed by the living thing to attempt its own adaptation, and the process is explicable. Leave it to the mechanical explanation of Natural Selection, and it is impossible

(3) The third a priori proof against Natural Selection: Natural Selection presupposes that each new infinitesimal stage in development out of millions in each type, is, by blind chance, an advantage over the last. This is mathematically impossible.

This third a priori proof that Natural Selection is a false theory lies in the simple consideration that it demands each stage in millions of stages in millions of types to show a survival value … let me return to the case of the bird. If it began as a reptile without wings — when presumably it had armour or some other aid to survival — what of the interval? Natural Selection sets out to explain how the evolutionary process changes a reptile’s leg into a bird’s wing. It does so by making the leg less and less of a leg for countless ages. By the very nature of the theory each stage in all those millions is an advantage over the last towards survival! The thing has only to be stated for its absurdity to appear. Compare "get away" chances of a lizard at one end of the process or a sparrow at the other with some poor beast that had to try and scurry off on half-wings! Or to fly with half-legs! The change took place? No doubt. Some of our greatest biologists say it didn’t and couldn’t. Most say it did. The hypothesis has much in its favour. But the changes could not possibly have taken place by successive advantages any more than the turning of an egg into a full grown hen takes place by successive survivals, or of a chrysalis into a moth.

Postulate Design, say "Here was something in the making", and the process is explicable, especially if fairly rapid so as to bridge over dangerously weak stages of imperfection. Postulate Natural Selection, and it is manifestly impossible. Now Natural Selection wants that to happen not only with every kind of bird, but with every kind of living creature.
 
 

The Fourth a priori argument against Natural Selection: When two or more progenital agents are required, Natural Selection, acting by blind chance alone, loses effect in geometrical proportion with each generation.

Nageli brought it out with crushing force as long ago as 1884 — it is a common place with everyone except Mr Wells who imagines (a great compliment) that I made it up.

Where there are two or more progenitors, rare accidental advantages rapidly disappear in a few generations if the process is left to chance, as Natural Selection demands.

Suppose two progenitors required — as is the case with all animals — there are, of course many cases in which the total number of factors necessary for the production of progeny is more than two and the argument far stronger, e.g. the pollen of one flower, the pistil of another flower, and the insect which acts as the go-between. Take any proportion you like of slightly favoured specimens. Suppose out of a hundred individual males ten show in varying degrees the slight differentiation which gives them a survival value under changing conditions in the environment, and we have already seen that a single advantage is useless. But we can afford to give this nonsense every advantage in argument, so we will consider only one clear advantage and allow one tenth of the males to have it. Now suppose a similar number of females showing in varying degrees this slight valuable differentiation. Upon the mechanical theory of Natural Selection, the chances in favour of progeny inheriting that differentiation in the next generation are not one tenth, but only one tenth of a tenth, i.e. one hundredth. The chances of favoured progeny in the third generation are not one-hundredth, but one ten thousandth. In the fourth, the chances are already only one in a hundred million, which we may call zero.

The reason is clear. Here are a hundred male land birds compelled by change of environment to take to the water. Ten of them show an infinitesimal rudimentary webbing between the toes of their feet, and that is a first infinitesimal advantage in swimming. Ten hens are of the same kind. Left to mere chance there is no reason why a season’s mating should allocate the web-footed male to the web-footed female. Each one of the ten males has nine chances to one of paring with a non-advantaged mate, and only one chance of mating with a hen similar to himself and possessing as he does, this infinitesimal advantageous differentiation. On the average you would only have one couple in a hundred handing on in full even that first tiniest advantage to their progeny with a corresponding tiny survival value. In the case of eighteen others it would be halved, and in the case of a hundred and eighty one, it would be absent. It is so with each generation. Each little infinitesimal advantage can only be fully handed on to a fraction which is the square of the last, and in even diminished form to a fraction smaller in proportion to the flock of the third generation than in the second. Long before you got anything like an even rudimentary webbed foot the tiny advantage would have been absorbed. The advantage, left to chance, sinks into common stock.

There is no getting away from this conclusion by saying, "Oh, we’re not talking of individuals, we’re talking of great masses."

The masses are made up of individuals, and the mathematical argument is exactly the same whether you are dealing with a hundred or ten million.

The Arguments from Evidence:

Click on blue line