Quote of the Day
"Indeed, truly junk DNA makes no sense in the context of an intelligent designer, and is in fact possibly evidence of a rather dumb designer. Natural selection is the dumb designer. For this reason, there is a link between seeking function in the junk and creationism."
- Greg Laden on his blog here.
Isn't natural selection responsible for the incredible animal kingdom? This simple principle of "survival of the fittest" produces chameleons, pistol shrimps, octopi and pangolins. Doesn't seem so dumb to me.
ReplyDeleteNatural selection is one of several mechanisms by which evolution happens. When Greg refers to natural selection as being "dumb", he means that it acts blindly without reference to any guiding principle. The diversity of animals seen today reflects an enormous history of ecological interactions among animals, between animals and plants, viruses, bacteria, fungi etc. and between animals and their abiotic environments.
ReplyDeleteNatural selection is not an "intelligent" force that shapes and molds animal diversity but a mechanism that determines, more or less, those members of a population that continue on to donate their genes to subsequent generations.