A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Charles vs. Charles

The notion of one species evolving into another has long puzzled me. I think I understand the mechanism of natural selection, and what I get from it is that it would take huge timespans between members of a species and their descendants to becoming another species.

I don’t get how symbiosis between species who would be doomed without each other could possibly have evolved. If a certain plant needs a certain insect and that insect needs that plant, then how did the one survive without the other while they were evolving to that point?  The complexity of the world of flora and fauna is just too great for me to accept that it came together through such a means.

Nonetheless, it is clear that a species can evolve new attributes that are heritable. For example, the Inuit have a digestive system that can handle the high Omega 3 fat diet they have.  Certain peoples living at very high elevations are able to absorb substantially more oxygen into their blood from the thin air than I am. These are just a few examples of human evolution. I don’t think though that these are natural selection at work. Each isn’t a case of someone accidentally developing the trait and then his descendants surviving more easily than the descendants of the folks who didn’t develop the enhancement.

I suspect that there is something in us that senses need and triggers genetic adaptations…..some latencies that may be triggered by experiences and environment. I can’t prove that of course, but it does seem to me to be more plausible than natural selection.  Charles Hoy Fort answered Charles Darwin assertion of the survival of the fittest by retorting that “weakness and stupidity survive everywhere.”

(Also see

https://gordon-feil-practical-living.blogspot.ca/2017/07/hells-creek-and-other-problems-with.html)

A Big Objection About God

Some time ago I began here a series of short essays on the subject of love.  I side-tracked from my line of thought to explain about God (who is Love) and show how I deal with objections people have about believing in that God. That part of the series wraps up with the post that is at http://gordon-feil-theology.blogspot.ca/2017/04/a-big-question.html and then I shall get back to the main track in subsequent postings.