What if the species population is decreasing? Who's the fittest then? Imagine the population declined by half, and the second generation was 10 AA, 30 Aa, 10 aa (50 total). Again, Aa is the best survivor or fittest, this time because it declined the least in population. Aa's numbers are 30/30 = 1.0, and 1.0/1.0 (the highest) is 1.0. The aa's again did "half" as well: 10/20 = 0.50, and 0.5/1.0 = 0.5. The AA "losers" got a fitness score of "20 percent" maximum, just as before: 10/50 = 0.2, and 0.2/1.0 = 0.2. Notice, however, the species population is decreasing dramatically.
In this case, being the
"
fittest
" only means being
the high scorer on the losing team!
Being the fittest, then, is no guarantee of survival at all
.
It may only mean you are likely to be the last of your kind to die out!
Fitness has to do with competition
within
a group; survival of the group often depends on competition among different groups, often related to changing environmental factors — loss of habitat, increase or decrease in temperature or moisture levels, changes in the saltiness of aquatic and soil environments, catastrophes like fires, floods, earthquakes, underwater landslides, etc. So, for example, it's
NOT
natural selection that determines whether the dull and sluggish opossum or the sleek and daring cheetah survives; it's ecology, interaction among different groups and the environment (and so far the opossum is outscoring the cheetah in the ecological competition!).
(c)
Intra- versus interspecific competition.
Many people have the mistaken notion that natural selection involves, for example, competition between lions and zebras. Not at all. Natural selection is NOT lion versus zebra; it's
lion versus lion
(which can catch a zebra) and
zebra versus zebra
(which can escape the lion). In other words, natural selection is NOT
INTER
specific
competition (
between
species); it's
INTRA
specific competition
(
within
species). By analogy to humankind, natural selection is competition among classmates and friends for dates on a Saturday night and jobs at McDonald's, or competition among brothers and sisters for family favors. Natural selection is the
ultimate sibling rivalry,
a struggle to the death among members of the same species. Even members of a plant species compete with one another (not consciously, of course) for water and minerals from the soil and a place in the sun. Some variants of a species are more likely to leave more offspring to the next generation than others, but
at most
the
intraspecific competition of natural selection
produces
variation within kind,
NOT change from one kind to another.
Natural selection, yes; evolution, no.
A classic lab kit sold to demonstrate natural selection does nothing of the sort. The kit includes
two different species
of flour beetle,
Tribolium confusum
and
T. castaneum.
By changing temperature and moisture conditions and adding predators and different hiding places, students can see one beetle species survives better under this condition, the other beetle species under that. Competition between different species as conditions change is
ecological competition
, not at all natural selection among members of the same group.
Evolutionists, however, did report an example of natural selection that once occurred in a flour beetle experiment. A mutant beetle occurred in one species, and offspring of that beetle eventually wiped out other members of that species — natural selection in action. The supposedly "new and improved" beetle species then lost the ecological competition with the other beetle species under conditions that the pre-mutant beetle species formerly won. As evolutionists recognize,
winning the natural selection battle can lead to losing the ecological war
— "
mischievous results
" of natural selection one evolutionist called it.
(d)
Succession versus evolution
. Evolution is a
hypothetical
process that is supposed to change a few simple forms over time into many complex and varied forms. There is a real process of change through time in which a few life forms
are
followed by a series of more and more complex and varied forms, but the
real
process is
ecological succession
, NOT evolution. If you watched an area of bare rock over time, as farmers and scientists have, you could observe a series of changes from lichens to moss, ferns, shrubs, and trees, but the lichens didn't evolve into the moss, nor the moss into the ferns, etc. Rather, each living community changed the environment in ways that paved the way for the next community to move in. (Plants "move" by scattering spores and seeds which sprout when conditions are right.) Lichens can break down rock, producing enough soil for mosses. Mosses build more soil, and hold moisture, paving the way for shrubs. Shrubs break up the rock further, anchor the soil, and provide shade to decrease moisture loss, paving the way (in the proper climate) for trees.
As the plant communities change, so do the animals. Protozoans are followed successively by worms, insects, birds, and mammals.
Existing species
from another area move in as conditions become favorable —
ecology, not evolution
. It is
migration
of different kinds,
NOT mutation
of one kind into others, that produces ecological succession. Succession involves only
tens or hundreds of years
, NOT millions.
Death is
not
a necessary part of ecological succession, and at least some kinds in early (pioneer) communities survive through various seral stages into the final (climax) community. Lichens grow on bare rock, for example, but lichens also grow on tree bark in climax forests. Ecological succession on a global scale would have followed both creation ("multiply and fill") and the Flood (migration from Ararat).
41
As discussed later, dramatic environmental changes caused by the Flood would favor both (a) selection for different adaptations among pre- and post-Flood members of the same kind, and also (b) survival of different kinds in different proportions in the pre- and post-Flood ecologies.
Ironically, natural selection and ecological competition don't really provide adequate explanation for presumed evolutionary changes, but they do help explain changes important in the creation model.
(e)
Long term versus short term advantage
. Richard Dawkins, Great Britain's leading spokesman for evolution, refers to evolution by natural selection as the "blind watchmaker."
42
In contrast to creation by plan and purpose looking toward a goal, natural selection, Dawkins asserts, is a "blind" process that does not plan, has no purpose, and can't look ahead toward goals. Natural selection is merely opportunistic, rewarding chance combinations of traits with a slight advantage in Darwin's ceaseless "war of nature."
Dawkins is right about natural selection, but wrong about the nature of the living world.
Natural selection cannot plan ahead
; selection is only the observation that certain trait combinations will win the immediate struggle for survival, becoming, by definition, the fittest —
no matter what that does to the future of the species
. That can have a devastating impact on living things, the exact opposite of the evolutionist's hopes and dreams.
Consider territorial population control.
43
Many birds and mammals regulate their population through a series of complex instincts and "ritualistic combat" in which no death occurs and no predators are necessary. Sea lions, for example, limit their population by "allowing" breeding only on certain restricted territories on small beaches. Males who fail to stake out a territory one year must wait until later years to breed. That guarantees plenty of food for the species as it cruises the Pacific. Suppose a chance mutation knocked out the instinct for territorial recognition. Such a mutant male might establish a new breeding colony on another island and pass on his unrestricted urge to breed. Descendants of such a male would automatically win the struggle for survival in the
short term,
but the
long term effects
might include over-hunting their range and even bringing the species to extinction — or at least replacing gentle territorial control with harsher predatory control. Indeed, some evolutionists blame a large percentage of extinction on the exploitation of environmental resources automatically rewarded by natural selection, which is "blind" to long term consequences.
Natural selection tends to favor specialists, and that also produces problems long term. In a given environment,
specialists
are usually more efficient at exploiting food sources than
generalists,
and evolutionists recognize the tendency for natural selection to convert generalized ancestral populations into ever more specialized descendants. When the environment changes,
highly adapted, specialized
varieties tend to lose out to the
adaptable, generalized
forms — if there are any left. Again,
natural selection seems to promote short-term survival at the expense of long-term extinction
. As we shall see in the chapter on fossils, the long-term survivors over and over again are the generalized, adaptable forms like those God created to multiply and fill the earth,
not
the specialized forms natural selection generated to exploit short-term advantage.
Dawkins is right about the blindness and failure to plan by natural selection, but that makes him wrong about evolution and the history of life on earth.
(f)
Brake or accelerator
? Remember, evolution may not be true, but natural selection is. Natural selection
is
a process at work in our fallen world; it is a description of what happens when different varieties of the same gene-trading species compete for limited resources. As we have seen, the results of natural selection in action are often the opposite of what evolutionists expected, and the exact opposite of what the public is told.
Calling natural selection "survival of the fittest" conjures up an image of a positive, progressive process. Natural selection really operates as the "great eliminator" or "terminator," and might be better called
"unsurvival of the unfittest."
Think back on the famous peppered moth case. Natural selection did
NOT
produce a "new and improved moth"; the dark moth was already present. Pollution made the light form less camouflaged, and so (presumably) natural selection eliminated more light than dark moths. Had natural selection "gone to completion" and totally eliminated the light moth, the species might now be well on the road to extinction, since reduction in pollution has now made the light moth more camouflaged again.
Note also that natural selection only promoted increased death of less camouflaged moths; it did nothing to produce either dark or light color. Mutations are supposed to produce new traits for selection to select, but known mutations are either neutral (having no effect) or harmful, producing defects, disease, and disease organisms. Perhaps the most important role of natural selection in a fallen world (corrupted creation) is acting as a
brake,
slowing down the accumulation of harmful mutations,
eliminating
or reducing genetic decay by producing
"unsurvival of the unfittest."
All scientists agree that
elimination of the unfit
is a major consequence of natural selection in our present world, but a process that works at best to make tomorrow no worse than today is no process for producing the evolutionist's dream of upward, onward progress. Eliminating defects to repair an old car may keep it running, but it will never turn a mini-van into a Formula 1 race car!
(g)
Fitness versus adaptation.
Adaptations
are features and functions that suit an organism for its roles in its environment
. Fitness is determined by counting survivors in Darwin's "war of nature;"
adaptation is determined by engineering or design analysis
. A woodpecker is admirably designed for drilling holes in wood, regardless of how well it is surviving. Professional evolutionists freely admit that
fitness and adaptation are quite different concepts determined in quite different ways
,
44
but that major difference is almost always overlooked in popular nature programs and children's literature, and is often ignored in introductory college biology textbooks. Professional evolutionists do believe that at least some of the time well-adapted organisms should show greater fitness: i.e., leave more offspring to the next generation than their competitors. Creationists already know, of course, that organisms were created with adaptations for survival so they could multiply and fill the earth.
There is no convincing evidence or argument that fitness or natural selection lead to adaptation, but there is ample evidence and logic for the
reverse: adaptation can lead to natural selection
!
If organisms already have certain adapted or adaptable traits, then, as they multiply over the earth, they will more likely survive as the "fittest" and be "naturally selected" in some environments rather than others. In his article on "Adaptation" in the
Scientific American
book
Evolution,
Lewontin
45
emphasizes this point over and over again:
…evolution cannot be described as a process of adaptation because all organisms are already adapted….
…adaptation leads to natural selection, natural selection does not necessarily lead to greater adaptation….
That is, adaptation has to come
first, before
natural selection can act. Natural selection obviously cannot explain the origin of traits or adaptations if the traits have to be there first.