Natural Selection works only in peoples' minds

“Nature selects the fittest organisms”? Evolution has no life apart from this idea of natural selection. This “selection” is a captivatingly powerful idea—it’s difficult to dislodge things that exist only in someone’s mind. As Daniel Dennett explains, "natural selection" is the evolutionists equivalent to God:

The fundamental scientific idea of evolution by natural selection is not just mind-boggling; natural selection, by executing God’s traditional task of designing and creating all creatures great and small, also seems to deny one of the best reasons we have for believing in God….The idea that natural selection has the power to generate such sophisticated designs is deeply counterintuitive.¹ 

The word “select” is an absolute necessity to Darwinism. But in reality, choice-making abilities have never been observed by anything other than conscious agents or by things they have designed. Life displays features apparently chosen by a designer to solve environmental problems or exploit properties such as gravity and friction. Darwin’s extraordinarily clever account attributes those features to unintelligent natural forces that somehow could “select” in a way very much akin to how animal breeders select. Thus Darwin introduced a natural source of intelligence—a substitute god.

But in recent years, evolutionists have backpedaled furiously from the idea of "selection." Graciela Flores in The Scientist argued that evolutionists feed the beast of theism by incessantly using the word “design” in publications. She made an example of Timothy Bradley’s paper in Nature, which evidently said insect respiration was “designed to function most efficiently.” Afterward Bradley conceded that the word design is subject to misinterpretation, and confessed that “there is no reason for sloppy language.” Flores also gave an example of a professor who has stopped using the word design with his students. “They are going to take the language too literally, and it will cause a misunderstanding.”²

Evolutionists' problem is this: since there is no designer, using the word “design” is fundamentally illegitimate—in spite of qualifiers like “apparent” or “illusion of” preceding it. Even Darwin himself, when pressed on this illegitimate use of the word, conceded that tying “selection” to a real agent is “false,” and his followers also admit it’s “not really accurate.”³

Advocates, therefore, insist that “selection” is not used in a literal sense. Really? Evolutionists claim their word choice is only a figure of speech—a ploy characterized as the “bait-and-switch” logical error.⁴ Darwin’s remarkable feat—which continues nearly unaltered—was to get everyone looking at the organism-environment interface from the environment’s perspective. External forces are illegitimately given credit for the capabilities of the organisms. It is challenging to dissect evolutionary language that clouds the fact that the power to solve ecological challenges resides in organisms and not environments.

The power of “natural selection” to imprison minds must always be taken seriously—as it’s only in the mind that “selection” actually occurs. Minds immersed in “natural selection” view interactions from the perspective of “nature’s” inanimate forces and are further clouded by being uninformed that there is no real “selector”! If the evidence points to the fact that “natural selection” is merely a figure of speech, and thus impotent, should not honest scientists put aside their passionately held beliefs and accept reality?

A distinctive of living things is their goal-directed operation—one of which is filling ecological niches. This is in obedience to God telling “them” to be “fruitful,” “multiply,” and “fill” the earth (Genesis 1:22, 28; 8:17; 9:1, 7.)

As a label applied to the normal outworking of organisms’ innate programming that enables them to fill environments, it steals credit from the organism and ultimately from the Lord. “Selection” is not really real. We should ascribe glory to the Creator, and not to “natural selection”!

(excerpted from Randy J. Guliuzza, Darwin's Sacred Imposter: How Natural Selection Is Given Credit for Design in Nature, Acts & Facts, July 2011, Institute for Creation Research)

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References (selected)

1. Dennett, D. C. Show Me the Science. New York Times, August 28, 2005

2. Flores, G. 2005. Journals and intelligent design. The Scientist. 19 (4): 12.

3. Guliuzza, R. 2011. Darwin’s Sacred Imposter: Recognizing Missed Warning Signs. Acts & Facts. 40 (5): 12-15.

4. Johnson, J. J. S. 2011. Just Say No to Trojan Horses. Acts & Facts. 40 (2): 17-18.