The Darwinian Delusion by John A. Davison

It is now 147 years since the publication of Darwin’s celebrated “On the Origin of Species,” yet not a single species has been observed to be formed through the mechanism he proposed. That mechanism, the natural selection of randomly produced variations is apparently incompetent to transform contemporary species even into a new member of the same genus. The most intensive artificial selection has also proven to be unable to transcend the species barrier. Furthermore, there is every reason to believe that evolution is finished as proposed by the anti-Darwinian Robert Broom and the Darwinian Julian Huxley, curiously the same man who coined the term “the modern synthesis.” (Davison, 2004). Pierre Grasse suggested the same.

“Aren’t our plants, our animals lacking some mechanisms which were present in the early flora and fauna?” (Grasse, 1977, page 71).

I realize that some would not agree with us that evolution is finished, but I am now convinced that it is. How then is it possible for an hypothesis to survive without verification? Both the Phlogiston of Chemistry and the Ether of Physics collapsed when controlled experiment demonstrated them to be without foundation. Darwinism also has failed to survive the acid test of experimental verification. Why then has it persisted?

The reason for this paradox is the subject of this brief essay. It is, as my title indicates, because Darwinism is a delusion. The delusion is that evolution (phylogeny) has proceeded as the result of external causes which can be identified and experimentally manipulated. In my opinion that is impossible because such causes do not now and never did exist. They also do not exist for ontogeny, the development of the individual from the egg. Ontogeny and phylogeny are manifestations of the same reproductive continuum. Since only ontogeny remains, we must look to it as a model evolution. Does not ontogeny proceed entirely on the basis of contained information present in the fertilized egg? Of course it does. The only role for exogenous factors is to provide the necessary conditions for development to take place. For the amphibian fertilized egg all that is required is a freshwater environment at a suitable temperature. In a very real sense that is all that is required for the development of a mammal. I can say that because the amniotic fluid in which the mammalian embryo is bathed is very low in dissolved salts, like the ancestral environment in which our amphibian predecessors developed. Even the crab-eating frog of India, which dives into the surf to capture its prey, must go inland to fresh-water ponds in order to reproduce. Thus the mammalian womb retains the properties of the environment in which our ancestors developed in the past as their relatives still do today. This is true also of the amniotic fluid surrounding the bird or reptile embryo. It too is much lower in salts than the blood or tissue fluids, betraying their fresh-water ancestry as well.

In every instance when we look for a role for the environment as a guide to evolutionary change we encounter a blank wall. The most that can be documented is that of acting as a stimulus for a potential already present. That includes the capacity to become resistant to insecticides and all other phasic responses which, unlike evolution, have proven to be reversible. Mendelian allelic mutations are also reversible and accordingly have played no significant role in evolution either. This realization has led me to postulate the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis (PEH) as the only reasonable alternative for the formation of species as well as any of the higher taxonomic categories (Davison, 2005).

Coupled with the Darwinian delusion is the incapacity of certain ideologies to accept the implications of a predetermined evolution. Such a scenario demands one or more past intelligences far beyond our present capacity to comprehend. Such concepts are anathema to the atheist Darwinian perspective. The Darwinians have traditionally pretended that they had no critics. It is evident in the references and citations that are missing from the writings of their primary spokespersons, Ernst Mayr, William Provine, Stephen Jay Gould and most recently Richard Dawkins.

Otto Schindewolf recognized the failure of the experimental approach to phylogeny more than a half century ago. He too has been ignored but not by this investigator.

“Many recent authors have spoken of experimental evolution; there is no such thing, Evolution, a unique, historical course of events that took place in the past, is not repeatable experimentally and cannot be investigated that way.” Basic Questions in Paleontology, page 311, italics his emphasis, bold my emphasis.

References
Davison, JA. [2004], Is Evolution Finished? Rivista di Biologia 97:111-116
Davison, J.A. [2005], A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis. Rivista di Biologia 98: 155-166.
Grasse, P. [1977], Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation. Academic Press, New York. (original French edition 1973)
Schindewolf, O. [1993] Basic Questions in Paleontology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. (Original German edition 1950).