Darwinist ignorance and confusion (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, June 12, 2010, 11:23 (5066 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: Speciation occurs after natural selection has made some kind of decision on the innovation.-DAVID: I'll accept that as stated.-So will I. However, in an earlier post Matt says that "NS is the lynchpin of evolution", and I think this is where so many misunderstandings arise. A lynchpin, yes, but not THE lynchpin. If there was no innovation, NS would not have anything to decide on. NS is an absolutely logical process which I don't think any of us would dispute, but for that very reason some materialists try to make out that NS is synonymous with evolution. By doing so, they can cover up gaps in the theory. The gaps relate not to NS but to innovation. A third vital factor for the theory itself (which perhaps we take for granted now) was the starting-point of this particular discussion: common ancestry, as discussed in Elliott Sober's article. All these factors are, in my view, lynchpins of evolution because ... if I may flog Matt's metaphor to its messy end ... take any one of them away, and the wheels fall off.