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From: long@oliveb.UUCP (A Panther Modern)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: A Corollary
Message-ID: <417@oliveb.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 22-May-85 20:52:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: oliveb.417
Posted: Wed May 22 20:52:05 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 25-May-85 06:33:07 EDT
Reply-To: long@oliveb.UUCP (A Panther Modern)
Organization: the Sprawl
Lines: 23
Summary: 

> [Paul DuBois]
> We say "Natural selection - Ah!  Now I understand."  But do we?  Of
> course we don't.  What do you understand?  It's a buzzword that tells
> us exactly nothing except that what happened, happened.

    But isn't the whole basis of creationism that natural selection did not
happen?  I thought that creationism held that species were created essentially
as they are now.  In what way does natural selection support that hypothesis?

>                                                          Now, surely we
> could have deduced that without natural selection.  I'm not denying the
> concept _per se_.  Of course selection occurs.  But the real question
> is why one thing should be selected and not another.

    Something is selected because it enables a group to succeed better than an-
other group, which leads to an increasing amount of the population having that
success trait compared with the decreasing amount of the population without it.
This positive-feedback situation results in the 'selection' of a trait.  Natural
selection is not active, it is passive.

						Dave Long
-- 
{hplabs,fortune,idi,ihnp4,tolerant,allegra,tymix}!oliveb!long