The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #142452   Message #3332783
Posted By: Steve Shaw
02-Apr-12 - 08:00 PM
Thread Name: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
Subject: RE: BS: Young Earth Creationism Eureka!
Selection is a major mechanism in evolution but is not the only one. Therefore it can't be correct to say that selection is evolution. Apart from anything else, it's a fairly inane comment that explains nothing to anybody. Thank goodness no-one's saying it. Certainly Darwin didn't say it. Had he thought that selection was evolution he wouldn't have called his theory what he did.

Selection is the non-random action on heritable material which can miscopy.

Er, no it isn't. That's Lamarckism.


You clearly haven't got the faintest idea what Lamarckism is. OK then. Natural selection (or any selection really) is a non-random process. The heritable material in question is genes (Darwin didn't know that, of course, but we do). When DNA replicates, genes, or sequences of genes can miscopy. We call it mutation. Selection acts in a non-random fashion, differentially if you like, on the different expressions of genes that are brought about by mutation. Tell me where Lamarck trumps Darwin in that lot.