As we have seen, long before “Origins” was published, radical evolutionary ideas were already the subject of intense discussion, especially amongst atheistic intellectuals, and the key to the success of Darwin’s theory was the addition of an extra unifying ingredient, a notional driving force, an organising principle – namely the “seductive idea” of Natural Selection -- described by him as relentlessly sifting and sorting all organisms on earth and in order to ensure the “survival” only of “the fittest”.

Even that contribution, however, was not strictly original, because Darwin’s thinking in these matters was evidently influenced by a Dr. Wells who suggested, in a presentation to the Royal Society, that just as plant breeders improve crops by exploiting small variations and selecting out those best suited to their purpose, so nature slowly shapes organisms to the habitats and climates they occupy. According to the record books, it was in the year 1813 that Wells actually came up with the crucial phrase: “a theory of natural selection by the survival of the fittest”.

As we have also seen, however, Dr Wells and Darwin seemed to have things back to front, in that it was the organisms that originated the required changes in their physiology in response to, or stimulated by, the needs of the habitats in which they chose to live – rather than the environment sifting and selecting their ancestors over millions of years on the basis of tiny variations they have somehow accumulated from a series of accidental DNA copying errors.

The Delusion Again
Perhaps we should repeat that it is one thing to accept that the screening process of Natural Selection can and does result in changes in the dominant characteristics of a given population of organisms, as with the emergence of drug-resistant viruses – but it is something totally different to assume therefore that limit-less variation can occur and result in the creation of new and different organisms. As already noted, the variation in any population is massive, so that even in the most adverse circumstances, a few hardy members will survive and thrive. That is not evolution in the Darwinian sense.

Bear in mind also, that Darwin later admitted that he had put way too much stress on the effect on Natural Selection in the first editions of “Origins” – which is why he came to embrace the theory of Pangenesis, which does depend on tiny random variations in organisms, but postulates a complex stimulus-response feedback mechanism by means of which organisms mutate in response to environmental pressures and changes.

Pregnant Suggestions
Some eighteen years later, in 1831, the very year that Darwin set off on his tropical jaunt to the Galapagos Islands as an amateur naturalist aboard HMS Beagle, botanist Patrick Mathew discussed the same theory in a book on forestry. However, although Darwin was undoubtedly aware of these ideas, historians tell us that the “pregnant suggestions” of Wells and Mathew were, for some strange reason, practically ignored for more than another twenty years, until Alfred Russel Wallace came up with same ideas in 1858. [Ed: I read somewhere, G-Man, that the ship’s professional naturalist got the sack and had to make his own way back from South America. Better than cutting his own throat, like the previous captain of the Beagle did I suppose – as a result of depression brought on by the long sea journey. In fact, Darwin was taken on to give the new captain a bit of stimulating company.]

Darwin and Wallace
It was only after returning from South America, still puzzling over the diversity of living things he had observed there, that Darwin’s cogitations were crystallized as a result of reading the works of Thomas Malthus concerning the competition between members of rapidly expanding populations for a less rapidly expanding food supply.

As a result, he formally proposed the principle of Natural Selection as the key mechanism for weeding out the less fit organisms in a population from the more fit, which would then be left free to breed and increase in numbers. Hence the notion of the “survival of the fittest” supposedly leading to the creation and accumulation of an endless chain of small modifications which could ultimately transform a frog, for example, into an elephant, or even vice versa – given enough time.

Thus it was not until 1858, after working quietly on his theory for some twenty years, that Darwin was shocked into going public with his ideas by the news that Wallace had written a paper, also inspired by Malthus, outlining an identical theory of evolution. Although the two evolutionists then became friends, and made a joint presentation of their ideas to the “Linnaean Society” that same year, Wallace, who was from humbler circumstances and who also dabbled in spiritualism, soon took second place in the public eye -- and the more respectable Darwin came to be the generally acknowledged as the creator of the theory. His landmark book, “The Origin of Species”, was published the following year, and sold out in record time, all 3,000 copies in just two days.

What Darwin had done was to unify several ideas, whose time had apparently come, into one simple, and seemingly logical theory – suggesting that all organisms are “plastic” and can, “given enough time”, be infinitely varied by the power of the master controller – so that a fish, for example, could indeed, as the ancient Greeks had imagined, be changed into a man, or a cat, or a cow.

A False Term
When “Origins” was published there was some confusion, as there is today, over the alternative terms Darwin employed for the same process – and it helps to understand that: that: Natural Selection = Survival of the Fittest = Preservation of favourable individual differences. It also helps to understand, as Darwin stressed, that Natural Selection does not and cannot create differences or variations between organisms – but can only process and choose between those already existing in populations and offered up to it.

As Darwin also points out, Natural Selection is actually a “false term”, being simply a metaphor used to summarise in a clever phrase the interplay of a variety of forces at work in the earth’s incredibly complex eco-systems – an interplay described by him as a battle for survival as organisms struggle to cope with factors such as climate, food supply and predators that can kill and control populations,.

After discussing Darwin’s and Wallace’s speculations in this area, Professor P.M. Shepherd, in his book “Natural Selection and Heredity”, comments: “It is a sobering thought that after 100 years later in not a single instance are all the controlling factors for a wild population known, and, in fact, hardly one such factor is fully understood”. [Ed: Now I am surprised at that, G-Man. I thought David what’s-his-name on the tele and these ecology chappies knew all there was to know about these food chains and pyramids and all that stuff.]

Half Truths
As Derek Hough has testified, Darwin’s theory of evolution exerted and continues to exert a mesmerising influence on the intellectual mind – and it is instructive to recall that many intellectuals found communism an equally entrancing philosophy.

Time has clearly demonstrated, however, despite Marx’s compelling and once seemingly irrefutable arguments, that successful economic systems do not operate in the simplistic and seemingly obvious way he described, mainly because he omitted from his equations vitally important human factors such as self-actualisation and personal ambition. In similar fashion, time is also making it very clear that the natural world is far too complex to have arisen in the way Darwin’s primitive theory postulates.

Popular delusions are normally mixtures of truth and error, which is why evolution, like communism, does contain, intertwined with its errors, some fundamental truths -- three in particular being the notions of fitness for purpose, competition for space and resources, and the need to adapt to environment.

Time and Chance
In once place, Darwin states that: “individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and procreating their kind”—and that: “On the other hand we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed”

Implicit in these statements is the assumption that the “chance” of survival depends on even “slight” advantages or disadvantages -- which might be due, for example, to an organism being a tiny bit bigger or smaller, faster or slower, stronger or weaker, etc. However, might not the differences he speaks of be so slight as to actually be irrelevant?

Like Darwin, King Solomon of ancient Israel, the wisest man and probably the greatest genius who ever lived, was also an avid observer of nature, even lecturing and writing books on the subject (1 Kings 4:29-34). However, whereas Darwin speaks of the certainty of the survival of the fittest members of a population and the surety of the death of the less fit, Solomon points out that life is not that logical – so that even in human affairs, where people can consciously attempt to control events, seeming absolute certainty can commonly be defeated by the operation of time and chance -- so that: “the race is not (always) to the swift, or the battle to the strong . . . or wealth to the brilliant – time and chance happen to them all . . . so that men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them” (Ecclesiastes 9:11). ). [Ed: I know what he means, G-Man. That favourite I backed at Salisbury last week actually came in last. Last! ]

Ducking and Diving
Each year in the village where I live, it is a delightful sight to see a mother duck and five or six babies swimming in a local stream, disappearing now and then as they dive under the water in search of a tasty morsel. Sadly, a few days later there may be only two or three babies left trailing behind their mother. In the lush surroundings, it seems unlikely that the lost ducklings perished for lack of food – but it does seem highly likely that they were taken by predators, such as pike, birds of prey and vermin.

Would Darwin seriously suggest that the ducklings which survived did so because they were a bit bigger or stronger, or had feathers of a slightly different shade of colour – or that the eggs of those stolen from the nest were somehow less fit to survive and hatch out, or were in some way more attractive to vermin? Or might he concede that time and chance can play a far more important part in survival than slight variations in physical and even mental attributes. [Ed: How fast can duck eggs run when they see a predator, G-Man?]

In the same way, as already suggested, Lamarck’s reasoning regarding the giraffe’s neck seemed to be an over-simplification, because the giraffe not only needs food to survive, but also the fleetness of foot to escape its predators. Common sense would suggest that the longer the giraffe’s neck, other things being equal, the heavier, more ungainly, slower-moving and more unfit to survive the creature will become. However, the unfathomable complexity of our planet’s ecology renders all such seemingly logical reasoning suspiciously simplistic.

The Good Die Young?
Darwin himself points out the interesting fact that the key to maintaining a “shoot” with a good stock of partridge and grouse is to keep strict control of the vermin that destroy the eggs and devour the young. Once again, small individual differences amongst the eggs and the chicks are clearly insignificant as the voracious predators move in for the kill.

Although Darwin desperately wanted slight individual differences to matter and be the stuff to evolution, many of his comments seem to suggest that the crucial mechanism preventing vast overpopulation of both plants and animals is actually the operation of time and chance – particularly with regard to the destruction of eggs and the very vulnerable young. He states, for example, that: “Eggs or very young animals seem generally to suffer most”. Time and chance are blind to the very slight differences that occur at that stage.

Many plants likewise perish very early on in their existence, as the industrious Darwin investigated by observing the growth of common weeds in a 3 foot by 5 foot plot of ground that he had carefully cleared and dug over. He noted that of 357 weeds that came up, some 295 were destroyed at the seedling stage by slugs and insects. Again the same question needs to be asked – were the 295 seedling that were destroyed, simply picked at random by the greedy, marauding slugs or carefully selected on the basis of slight individual differences?

The mass destruction of infant organisms by the agency of time and chance is blind to Darwin’s slight differences, so that in those cases at least no Natural Selection takes place and nothing is preserved or accumulated in the way he imagined.

Checks and Balances
As we have already seen, even today the checks and balances of the earth’s ecology, the stomping ground of Natural Selection, are still poorly understood – so it is little wonder that Darwin had to admit that: “The causes which check the natural tendency of each species to increase are most obscure . . . We know not exactly what the checks are even in a single instance”. [Ed: Did he really say “even in a single instance”, G-Man?]

Darwin illustrates this unfathomable complexity of nature when he informs us that although a condor lays only a couple of eggs each year compared to the score produced by an ostrich, the condor is usually far more numerous – adding that the Fulmar petrel lays only one egg, yet is said to be the most numerous bird in the whole world!

Even a century after Darwin, such matters are still poorly understood – so that despite the confident pronouncements of evolutionists regarding fossils, extinct organisms, and even the origins of life on earth, they do not even understand the incredible complexity of organisms that exist now and are readily available for study -- even the humble squirrel, for example, as evidenced by the following information:

One authoritative website gives the weight range of grey squirrels as 400-600grams and another as 350-800 grams – one site that reds live about 7 years and another that they only live 3 years – one saying that reds eat acorns and another that only greys eat acorns because reds cannot digest them. What are we to believe? But there is more!

Although red and grey squirrels are clearly “cousins” and belong to the same Genesis kind, they seem unable to live with each other for some mysterious reason. Despite the best efforts of ecologists, nobody understands why the British red squirrel has virtually died out in the hundred years since the American grey was introduced to the country. The popular notion that the greys are violent towards the reds and drive them away is now said to be a fallacy.

However, some people claim that disease may be the key factor – citing the Parapox virus, for example, which is supposedly fatal to red squirrels but does not affect the greys, which are even thought to be carriers. Some other ecologists dispute this difference in immunity.

In addition to colours which give them their names, the squirrels also differ in size and weight, gestation period, lifespan, diet, habit (reds like conifer woods, greys like deciduous), daily work habits (reds active most of the day, greys mainly early morning and dusk), and a number of other ways too.

Clearly these very significant differences are the result of coordinated mutations, and reflect mental traits as well as physical ones – and simply cannot be explained as the fortunitious accumulation of accidental DNA copying errors.

I Know Notink Mr Fawlty!
In the final paragraph of his chapter on the “Struggle for Existence”, Darwin says that it is interesting to try to imagine what changes a biologist might make, if he had the power to do so, to give one species a competitive edge over another. He answers that: “Probably in no single instance should we know what to do” – adding the astonishing comment: “This ought to convince us of our ignorance on the mutual relations of all organic beings”. [Ed: OK, I am totally convinced, G-Man.]

Despite such open admissions of ignorance in the face of the unfathomable complexity of the natural world, where shoals of fish in the ocean will migrate hundreds of miles due to a degree or two change in water temperature, Darwin confidently pronounced his infantile theory of evolution anyway – and the world applauded, understandably so impressed by his brilliance as a naturalist that they simply assumed he must know what he was talking about. [Ed: I wonder if his middle name was Manuel, G-Man? – Charles Manuel Darwin! Sounds good. He didn’t come from Barcelona did he?]

Of Old Maids and Mice
Darwin’s genius as a botanist, despite his delusions, is nicely illustrated by the following summary of the findings of an investigation into an ecosystems in a field near his home:

1) the red clover out in the fields is pollinated only by bumble bees, because ordinary bees cannot reach the nectar and so do not visit the plants,

2) the bumble bees live in small colonies in nests at ground level which often get attacked and destroyed by field mice,

3) the mice are hunted by cats, especially near villages,

4) old maids tend to keep a lot of cats, so that:

5) the number of red clover plants in the fields around a village depends on the number of old maids! [Ed: I wonder what effect mothers-in-law have on the environment, G-Man?]

Run Rabbit, Run!
As a final example of time and chance in operation -- if, when walking my Jack Russell terrier, Ollie, I come upon some rabbits lazily nibbling choice bits and pieces of vegetation in a field, will it necessarily be the weakest or slowest running rabbit that becomes dead meat for my dog? Or might it not be the one which, purely by chance, is the farthest from the safety of its burrow? Time and chance, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, can and do moderate the operation of Natural Selection – especially with regard to young offspring at the most crucial time in their lives.

Even in human affairs, in business and show business in particular, it is well acknowledged that “luck” plays an important part. It not always the most talented, clever and diligent who get the big breaks and achieve fame and fortune.

Even on the most fundamental level of physics, that of the quantum theory, time and chance are dominant players – with the probability of any event occurring being a matter of percentages as the wave forms associated with supposedly solid particles are partially reflected and partially transmitted at barriers. [Ed: I remember Dawkins warning us that purely by chance the atoms in the arm of a statue of the Virgin Mary might move in such a way that she waves at us – so we shouldn’t think it was a miracle happening. Need to be prepared for that one, G-Man, like the boy scouts.]

Bear in mind, however, that no matter how ruthlessly Natural Selection happens to operate, it can only process already-existing variation – i.e. variations about the basic bauplan of the Genesis kinds.

Fortuitous Destruction
Darwin does recognize the existence of time and chance in a paragraph devoted to “fortuitous destruction”. Although he states that a “vast number of eggs or seeds” are destroyed annually by “accidental causes”, as well as a “vast number of mature animals and plants”, he claims that this can have no effect on the course of Natural Selection.

Sounding a touch desperate to dismiss this factor, no doubt because its blindness to “slight differences” could render them irrelevant factors, he adds: “But let the destruction of adults be ever so heavy . . . or again the destruction of eggs or seeds be so great that only hundredth or a thousandth part are developed . . . those that do survive will tend to propagate their kind in greater numbers than the less well adapted”.

So although any effect of Natural Selection may be greatly mitigated by time and chance, Darwin still insists that the survivors, be they ever so few, will, given enough time, relentlessly evolve into new and different kinds of organisms.

In so doing, he once again makes the unwarranted assumption: a) that any advantageous adaptation of an organism has arisen purely accidentally through the imagined accumulation of trifling differences, rather than meaningful mutations, and b) that limit-less variation beyond its Genesis kind bauplan is possible.

Infinite Complexity
From what we have seen so far, it would be a bold biologist who would claim to understand the vagaries of nature, and the checks and balances of complex food webs - where certain butterflies, for example, feed only on certain flowers, which may or may not survive the agricultural activities of man, and where, as a recent study showed, slugs and snails in the garden use each other’s mucus trails to save energy and hence reduce their food requirements.

Appreciating such matters, perhaps, Darwin himself said: “Let it be borne in mind how infinitely complex and close fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life”. Ironically, it is just this utter complexity and the ignorance of most other people of it that enabled Darwin, and still enables Dr Dawkins, to bamboozle most of the world with evolutionary bunk.
The key phrase in Darwin’s comment here is “infinitely complex”, for the more science investigates the handiwork of God, the more the unsuspected sophistication they discover – a complexity that is very unwelcome to evolution’s True Believers and mechanical reductionists.

Little wonder, therefore, that such scant attention is paid to the work of Scottish ecologist V.C. Wynne-Edwards, published in 1962, which suggested that Scotland’s native red grouse do not breed willy-nilly like mindless machines and so create starvation conditions for themselves, but rather somehow sense the amount of food available on the moors and adjust their breeding behaviour accordingly, leading Edwards to conclude that the interests of the group override those of the individual. It is claimed that similar sacrificial behaviour has been observed in ants and bees – conduct quite opposite to that envisioned in Darwin’s selfish and desperate struggle-for-survival model.

Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw
In his book “Parasite Rex – the bizarre world of nature’s most dangerous creatures”, evolutionist Carl Zimmer quotes some comments from Charles Darwin about the upsetting evils found in “nature”, for example: “We behold the face of nature bright with gladness . . . we do not see, or we forget, that the birds we see idly singing around us mostly live on insects and seeds – and are thus constantly destroying life . . . or we forget how largely these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestling, are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey”

Such common evils and violence in nature, which was famously described by one author as being “red in tooth and claw”, greatly disturbed Darwin, evidently a gentle person who had in his youth trained for the Christian ministry. How could a loving God, he reasoned, allow or, worse still, have created such wickedness? It seems clear that, unlike the atheistic Greek evolutionists, Darwin’s private agenda was not to necessarily to eliminate God from the picture, but to let him off the hook, so to speak, suggesting that He had originally created only a handful or benign organisms that had, purely by the accidental attention of Natural Selection, become violent and evil. Darwin’s personal agenda and the problem of evil is discussed in more detail below, and is the focus of chapter 3: “Charlie is My Darwin!”

One of the most disturbing things Darwin observed in nature was the action of vile predators, which are in fact the focus of Zimmer’s scary book—in particular the action of a wasp that parasitises fruit flies by laying eggs inside them. In due time, the eggs hatch out into larvae which gobble away the insides of their hosts for food, leaving them dying empty shells.

It Depends What You Mean by Evolution
In an experiment on the “evolution” of immunity, a British scientist, A.R. Kraaisjeveld, raised some parasitic wasps by feeding them on flies that we might, for convenience, call Type-A -- then let the adults loose to attack a colony of Type-B flies. At first, the wasps wiped out 19 out of every 20 Type-B flies, with just 1 out of the 20 somehow possessing the wherewithal to destroy the parasite wasp larvae that had been injected into them.

Kraaisjeveld then bred the remaining, resistant Type-B flies, and found that after just 5 generations, the number that could resist the wasps had risen to 12 in 20.
Although the tiny minority of one in twenty of the Type-B flies already possessed needed immunity genes before the experiment even began, Zimmer cites this example as an illustration of “evolution” at work, which it clearly is not.

However, since the revered biologist Theodsius Dobzhansky, whose work is discussed later, defined evolution as “any change in the gene pool” of a population, such a situation would qualify as evolution in his book, but not in the Darwinian sense. Although the gene pool of the Type-B fly colony was modified during the course of the experiment, as a result of an artificial selection process, there was no “evolution”, but simply a shuffling and dealing out of extra copies of already existing genes.

Nevertheless, although the minority of immune flies in this example evidently already possessed the requisite genes, all organisms have apparently been designed to have useful, specialist genes tucked away at the back of their genetic closets, ready for future us—just as I might have a pair of wellies, some overalls and a bee-keepers veil in my garage ready to don before trying to deal with a swarm of bees or some other potentially unpleasant situation. The supposedly surplus, or “junk DNA”, possessed in abundance by all organisms, may well prove to be the source of those potential mutations.

The Red Queen Hypothesis
What Zimmer then discusses is the fact that, like the flies in Prof. K’s experiment, the wasps were also able to call on more potent genes from their own pool, enabled them to wipe out more of the resistant flies. In due time, the picture then gets very complicated as each combatant comes back armed with better weapons, so to speak – so that in the end, the status quo remains, and neither population is eliminated, but comes into some kind of dynamic balance.

Apparently biologists call this the “Red Queen hypothesis”, based on a character in Lewis Carrol’s “Through the Looking Glass” who takes long runs but gets nowhere – causing the Red Queen to comment: “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place!”

Although it rarely makes the news headlines, there is apparently a very scary battle going on this very moment between dangerous mutating germs and the increasingly more powerful anti-biotic weaponry provided by the drug companies. . [Ed: Is it true, G-Man, that organisms which once keeled over and died at the very mention of DDT, now happily gobble it up by the boxful for breakfast? ].

Not-so-simple Natural Selection
Nature and its ecological interplay of organisms, as we have seen, is far more complex than Thomas Malthus and Charles Darwin ever imagined, so that instead of a given population being “certainly” wiped out because it is “less fit” than another, as Darwin supposed, a dynamic balance is often achieved, as Carl Zimmer also explains – for example, with minute parasites often playing a key role in systems of “biological control” that are still not well understood.

Zimmer describes a crisis back in the 1970’s in the production of the cassava crop in Africa, an important starchy root vegetable described as being to much of that continent what rice is to China, with hundreds of millions of people depending on it for survival.

For some reason, the cassava plants began to die as the leaves curled up and shrivelled. The culprit, entomologists soon discovered, was the tiny mealy bug which sucked out sap and injected a poison. The problem was finally solved by Swiss entomologist Hans Herren, who after discovering that the cassava plants had originally been imported from South America, was able to locate a parasitic wasp in Paraguay in 1981 that preyed exclusively on cassava mealy bugs, and destroyed them by laying eggs inside them, using them as a food supply for their larvae.

Apparently the natural parasites had not been imported with the plants, but by 1985, after a massive wasp breeding and distribution programme, crop-duster fashion, the crisis was over and the mealy bug population, although not eliminated, was brought under control, so that crop damage was minimal. Notice, however, that both wasps and mealy bugs survived in a balanced situation, existing in very small numbers Natural selection had not destroyed either one.

The outcome seems to be that adaptation of organisms to their environment, a la Lamarck, is best understood in terms of populations rather than individuals. As we saw with Dr. Kraaisjeveld’s flies, although an individual organism may perish due to new environmental stress, there will be some survivors because of the massive variation already existing in the population at large due to the steady input of mutations over earlier generations – or possibly from the “invisible ink” of their original creation. In that sense, Darwin was correct, as the “fittest”, i.e. those already genetically prepared for the fight, will be the ones to survive and multiply in that particular environment.

But again we dealing with variation and adaptation about the bauplan, not evolution into new and different organisms – which is why, over millions of generations, fruit flies in the laboratory remain fruit flies despite being frozen and scorched, and injected and irradiated with nuclear isotopes by kindly scientists.

[Ed: Did you know, G-Man, that another reason fruit flies were favoured for genetic research was Edouard Babiani’s discovery in1881 that the chromosomes in their salivary glands are some 100x the size of normal chromosomes, making them much easier to study? Of course, they also had other advantages included a gestation period of just a few days, low cost, small size and the fact they can survive on a simple diet such as ripe bananas. Some early cash-strapped researchers, we are told, found that the flies could be bred very well in milk bottles stolen from doorsteps on the way to work! ]

A Cry for Help
In his work with cassava, Herren made some astonishing discoveries, for example, that the wasps purposefully searched out the mealy bugs. In an experiment, when some bugs were placed on one single plant in the corner of a clean field and wasps were released in the opposite corner, within the day the bugs were searched out and destroyed.

The astonished Herren also found that if he put bugs on a certain plant then removed them a short time later, the wasps still came searching, leading him to believe that the infected plant somehow sent out a chemical cry-for-help signal detectable by the wasps.

Good Farming Methods
It is now well known that some healthy plants actually create their own pesticides that makes them unpalatable to pests, and Herren soon found that his system of biological control of bugs did not work very well in fields where the plants were scrawny because the farmers had not taken good care of them and weeded them properly.

Zimmer provides some fascinating insights into how the wasps worked, explaining for example, that when the female wasp mates, she stores the male sperm in a special gland for future use, at her discretion, somehow knowing that fertilized eggs will develop into females and unfertilised into males

Herren claims that after using her antennae to measure the sizes of several mealy bugs, the female wasp then fertilize the eggs she lays in the larger ones because they provide a bigger food supply, thereby favouring the production of lots more females – which are more important to keeping up the numbers and trying to expand the wasp population. The eggs she lays in smaller mealy bugs are simply left unfertilised to develop into males. [Ed: If it took at least a billion years for the wasps to work that one out, G-Man. No wonder they get so angry.]

Again, according to evolution, all this complexity arose totally be accident, over multiple millions of years, as the accumulation of random DNA copying errors led not only to the development of the basic wasp physiology, but also to its gradual refinement by the relentless work of natural selection. And this is just one of literally millions of such situations in nature. [Ed: It’s like the old question, G-Man, of how long would it take a monkey with a word-processor to accidentally type out Oxford Dictionary? No doubt Dawkins would suggest a few millions years – but the real question should be, where did the monkey and word-processor come from?]

As British evolutionist Derek Hough admits, attributing such sophistication and complexity to blind chance evolution is infantile in the extreme. . [Ed: Derek’s a biologist, so I wonder if he knows that crocodile eggs hatch out male or female depending on the temperature – with alligator eggs just the opposite? ]

The Moth Myth
The inherent adaptive power engineered into organisms is well demonstrated in school biology books where the story of the peppered moth is held up as a model example of evolution in action.

According to the story, the pale or white Peppered moths, so named because of the spotted pattern on their wings, thrived many years ago in England, in the days when the climate was free of industrial pollutants, by resting on the trunks of trees that were adorned with pale patches of lichen growths that served as camouflage against predatory birds. However, with the coming of pollution, the lichens died out, leaving bare and dark trunks on which the white moths then became conspicuous. As a result, their numbers were decimated by the birds – the white moth having proved “unfit” to survive in the new darker environment.

The outcome was that a black variety of peppered moth, which had previously been in a tiny minority in the population, then thrived and its numbers greatly increased. Ergo – behold natural selection working the magic mechanism of evolution.

However, was this really an illustration of evolution on its way to creating a new and different kind of organism – or simply an increase in numbers of an already existing variant of moth? [Ed: My dog could work that one out, G-Man.]

Notice also that the advantage which rendered the black moths “fitter” to survive, was not “slight” in the way Darwin claimed, but highly significant – a meaningful mutational difference, not some imagined accidental DNA copying error of the kind imagined by Dr Dawkins.

Cryptic Coloration
As professor Sheppard points out, the protective coloration, as possessed by peppered moths, may not be sufficient of itself, so that when moths with linear markings alight on a tree trunk they may have to shuffle about a bit to line up with the dark grooves on the bark, in order to become less conspicuous.

As a result of the random variations in the markings of a particular population, coupled with random variations in the patterns on the tree bark, purely by accident some moths will be more visible to birds at any one time than others, and so will probably perish – but not because they are intrinsically less “fit” than others, but because of time and chance.

Similar reasoning would seem to apply to fish in a stream being hunted by an egret.. The visibility of any particular fish will depend on how well its coloration pattern matches that of that particular patch of the stream bed – so that no one fish will be intrinsically “fitter” and therefore safer from attack than any other, but purely at that moment. Time and chance seem to suggest that the most likely to perish will be those that, purely by chance, swim closest to where the egret is wading on its long legs, poised to spear the first prey it spots.

All talk about evolution and Natural Selection needs to be brought down to a level of specific cause-and-effect detail. Once an evolutionist has embraced the faith it is easy to talk confidently in meaningless generalities – such as “then the fish evolved their fins into feet so they could venture onto the land”, simply because they are already convinced that is what happened.

Eye Spots
Sheppard continues with a discussion of “eye spots” on butterflies and moths. On some varieties the wing marking, by some supposed miracle of evolution, have come to represent a generalised predator “eye”. When a moth is at rest, with its wings closed, the “eyes”, two of them, are not visible. When threatened by a hungry bird, the moth simply flops open its wings, and the sudden appearance of the eyes terrifies its assailant and puts it to flight. . [Ed: Get the lingo right, G-Man – you mean it: “initiates a flight response”.]

Darwin would no doubt assume that some “eyes” were more evolved and therefore more scary than others, making their owners just that little bit more “fit” to survive. Are we to suppose that on some occasions, when the moth parts it wing, the hungry bird, says to itself, in so many words: “Good try, Mr Moth – but not good enough! I don’t scare that easily!”– chomp, chomp, chomp!

A more likely time-and-chance scenario would seem to be that sometimes the bird strikes before the moth becomes alerted and sometimes not, possibly due to random factors such as its avenue of approach, and light conditions, and also any distracting activity with which the moth might be preoccupied at that moment.
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Mus Domesticus
The unfathomably complex in-built ability of organisms to adapt or fit themselves, a la Lamarck, to the needs and pressures of a new environment is well illustrated by Mus Domesticus, the common mouse, which manages to find habitations in almost all parts of the world, from the tropical to the sub-antarctic.

In the source already quoted, confirmed evolutionist Anthony Barnett describes how kindly biologists have investigated mouse adaptability by breeding them in a variety of simulated environments -- such as in a refrigerator at near zero Celsius. The few survivors of the trauma and the widespread sterility it induces, were actually able to produce offspring -- and after ten generations with the females secreting a very concentrated milk for their young which then grew to an average body weight of 40 grams, against the 16 grams typical of some tropical cousins.

Falling into the same trap as Darwin himself, Barnett then lets his vivid imagination extrapolate this amazing adaptability in a totally unjustified and unscientific manner, saying: ”If such diverse populations were isolated for a long time, they would perhaps evolve into separate species”. Notice particularly, the word “perhaps”, because such “macro-evolution” has never actually been observed, and never will be.

Such reasoning is about as infantile as predicting that because an athlete running at 5 mph, can speed up to 10 mph and then 15 mph, will soon be running at 100 mph. There are barriers and limitations in nature about which Darwin seemingly knew nothing. . [Ed: Come off it G-Man, Darwin wasn’t that stupid. I reckon he knew he was talking nonsense. He wanted to believe it. ]

Freely admitting that macro-evolution has never been observed, Barnett says: “Large scale progressive modifications can, however, be followed only in the fossil record”. Notice the word “only” -- and even then the variation is contrived using a dodgy technique that, after the manner of Aristotle, involves shuffling fossil bits around to create notional lines of descent from a primordial single-celled organisms to man.

Notice also that just as the mouse gene pool made adaptations even to artic conditions possible, so with fruit and vegetables there will be genes that favour later or earlier maturity, dwarf and tall tendency, round or cylindrical fruit, etc. – variations that enable gardeners to grow the plants most suitable to their needs, their geographical location and their personal taste.

In this situation, the gardener makes his “selection”, guided by identified needs – but limited in his actions by the seed stock on offer at the garden centre. In just the same way, Natural Selection is limited by the gene pool made available by the particular Genesis kinds involved – and so mice remain mice, and moths remain moths, be they black or white.

Our Audio-visual Environment
Despite his theological training, Darwin apparently failed to perceive the fact that the whole world is metaphorical – in particular that the gruesome evils of nature that he found so upsetting were merely demonstrations to mankind of the end results of the self-sufficient and Godless way of life opted for by Adam and Eve in Eden, and followed by most people ever since, as typified also by the thorns and thistles that began to spring up on the earth, and the hard labour and striving typified by the sweat of Adam’s brow.

It is no accident, therefore, that people have been able to draw endless informal parallels between human society and the natural world – the loan shark, the dirty pig, the sloth, the cunning fox, the stupid donkey, the snake in the grass, the slimy low-life under the stone – and also the protective mother hen with her chicks, the majestic eagle, the wise old owl, and the industrious ant.

A widely recognized metaphor from nature is that there is food for the body and food for the mind – and just as there are poisonous plants and snakes, so there are poisonous ideas and poisonous people, which is why Jesus compared the Pharisees to vipers. Perhaps the theory of evolution should be compared to a “magic mushroom”, an hallucinogenic plant that distorts reality for those who swallow it..

Consider the Lowly Ant
Solomon, an insightful observer of nature, was aware of these things, which is why on one occasion he advised: “Go to the ant thou sluggard – consider her ways and be wise” (Proverbs 6:6) -- to learn the lesson of working without the need of a supervisor, of being a self starter, diligently creating and storing wealth for the winter to come. [Ed: Don’t forget that ancient English king, G-Man, who was inspired to try, try and try again, by watching a spider weaving a web in a cave – and got his kingdom back as a result.]

Slaves and Masters
Darwin himself describes how he observed colonies of slave ants, in which tiny black ants do all the work in the service of large lazy red ones, to the extent that the “masters” are incapable of building a nest or even feeding themselves or their own larvae. The only thing they are good at is catching new slaves. If it becomes necessary to move to a new nest, the little slaves actually pick up their masters and transport them in their jaws.

If the slaves are removed, the masters will die from hunger. Darwin describes one experiment in which a single female slave that was introduced to a moribund community promptly set to work feeding the dying masters and their larvae, so saving the colony.

“What can be more extraordinary than these well ascertained facts?” asks Darwin. “What indeed?” we might answer, “other than you and Dr Dawkins believing that such miracles are simply accidents of evolution!”

Nevertheless, despite his diligent observation of such communities over several years, Darwin failed to perceive the lessons being illustrated -- namely the selfishness and depravity of the human nature so sadly acquired for us by the unwise Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and which humanity still possesses.

There is more going on in the earth’s complex eco-systems than competition for food. There is sheer depravity, and destruction for its own sake, as demonstrated by the way a fox mindlessly massacres chickens as just one example.

On a more positive note, the engineering wonders of nature have provided the inspiration for many inventions. William J.J. Gordon’s powerful “Synectics” problem solving system features a deliberate search for useful analogies and parallels in nature – with a fishing net being like a spider’s web, for example. [Ed: You mean like those chaps in Bristol studying Stanley the Knife fish? And what about the bloke who invented the suspension bridge by seeing how a spider’s web spanned a country path he was walking along one morning?]

Social Problems
I wonder what lessons of life and human nature Solomon, or perhaps Karl Marx, might draw from the following social insect situation, which involves earthbound and non-earthbound organisms:

1. The European Large Blue Butterfly lays its eggs on Wild Thyme flowers, which the larvae feed on for several weeks when they hatch out – also eating one another when they get the chance. [Ed: Larvae? Do you mean caterpillars, G-Man?]

2. The seventh abdominal segment of each larva contains a gland that is touch sensitive, and when stimulated exudes a droplet of a sweet liquid..

3. Ants find and “milk” the larvae for the secretion, just as they do aphids.

4. After three weeks, the larvae leave the Thyme and wander about apparently at random, then after a time a section of their body between the head and the gland swells up.

5. When this happens an ant meeting such a larva will pick it up in its tiny jaws and carry it off to the nest.

6. For the rest of the summer, the larva then survives by eating the young of the ants.

7. There the larva hibernates over the winter, and wakes up in the spring and starts feeding on the young of the ants again.

8. Next it turns into a pupa, inside which it metamorphoses into a butterfly.

9. After three weeks, the butterfly emerges from the pupa shell and crawls through the passages of the ant nest, back to outside world.

10. Safely outside, the butterfly pumps up and expands its wings and flies away.

[Ed: I bet old Karl would make something of that situation, G-Man. Lots of exploitation, greed and oppression there.]

Professor Sheppard, to whom I am indebted for this incredible information, actually says that: “even more extraordinary examples could have been picked”. Apparently totally unfazed by this marvel, he sets about explaining how it all came about, bit by bit, a la Darwin, pointing out, for example, that it was an “advantage” for the defenceless larvae to have ants guarding them – that the tiny gland had been “evolved” earlier to get rid of waste products – that offering the ants the sweet fluid stopped them eating the larvae instead – that the larvae only developed one gland rather than several so that the fluid would be more concentrated and therefore more attractive to the ants – and so on ad infinitum! [Ed: I wonder if the strong stuff was 35% proof, G-Man, like a good malt, so much more to their liking? ]

In typical Darwinian fashion, this ludicrous “explanation” is characterised by the repeated use of broad generalities and the avoidance of essential detail – e.g. “the production of such a fluid could be evolved from cells originally evolved to get rid of waste products, or to coat the larvae with wax in order to keep down water loss by evaporation”. And so on – and all this by the fortuitous combination of zillions of accidental DNA copying errors! [Ed: Yes, but “given enough time”, G-Man, “given enough time”. Be fair, old chap.]

And it Was Very Good
Despite his theological training, Darwin seemingly overlooked the fact the original ecology created for man as described in Genesis was “very good”. There was no violence or death in Eden – and Adam and Eve did not eat animals, nor did animals attack or eat one another. All that changed, however, when our ancestors decided that they could work out how to live and operate this planet without God poking his nose into their affairs, and that the devil’s advice seemed more appealing anyway – including the insanity, despite a stern warning, of trying out the forbidden fruit for themselves, confident that because it looked good and tasted good, then it must be good. But it killed them.

At that point, an ecological transformation took place, and good turned to evil, and Pandora’s mythical box was opened. As the Old Testament prophets predict, and Christian Churches should be proclaiming, that benign original ecology will one day be restored – when the viper will become a child’s plaything, and the lion will eat straw with the ox, and violence will come to an end once and for all and for ever (Isaiah 11:7 & 65:25).