Natural Selection vs Intelligent Design
Scientific literature is full of statements such as the following: "natural selection does not favor genes because they let us live long and happy lives; they are selected for their ability to propagate their information through the generations".
This particular statement is one of countless references to natural selection in an article regarding cancer. It is entirely consistent with the sort of comment scientists routinely make in describing the workings of evolution. And ... it is manifestly flawed.
Take a look at the statement. What distinguishes this perspective from intelligent design? It practically oozes intimations of some sort of governing directionality.
Here’s another quote from the same article: "Natural selection favors genes that allow children to draw as much nourishment from their mothers as possible. A fetus produces the placenta, which grows aggressively into the mother’s tissue and extracts nutrients. That demand puts the fetus in conflict with its mother. Natural selection also favors genes that allow mothers to give birth to healthy children. If a mother sacrifices too much in the pregnancy of one child, she may be less likely to have healthy children afterward. So mothers produce compounds that slow down the flow of nutrients into the fetus."
There are so many frailties in this statement an entire treatise could be composed challenging its observations and premises. And it comprises just one paragraph in an article that goes on for pages in a similar vein. Yet the whole thrust of the article is to assess cancer in the context of evolutionary biology - to discuss the phenomenon of cellular mechanisms that perpetuate certain cells at the cost of others.
What’s wrong with this picture?
For one thing: the terminology. This should not be called science. Its perpetrators should not be permitted to characterize themselves as scientists. And the theories they propound should not be confused with evolution.
It is easier to identify the kinds of notions quoted above as some form of intelligent design. Nature is described as "selecting for" certain characteristics ... as though by predisposition or direction. One might as well substitute god or allah or yahweh ... or any other terminology that denotes some sort of guiding hand.
Who is engaged in this analysis? Humans are. What are humans? Ah ... indeed, what are humans? What does the word human mean? For that matter, what are words?
The whole phenomenon of what humans call science is a contrivance. We get to decide. The dolphins don’t call us humans. The mice don’t call us humans. The viruses don’t call us humans. (And, coincidentally, the viruses don’t place us at the top of the food chain.)
If humans hope to make any sense of the phenomena they seem constantly at pains to analyze and describe, they might find the exercise a great deal more reliable were they to make more careful use of the intelligence they proclaim from their self-anointed perch at the "top" of the conveniently defined food chain they profess to dominate.
The article from which the above comments are quoted describes experiments with knockout mice - mice bred in laboratories with specific portions of their "natural" genome removed. The laboratories are made by humans. The genetic manipulation is done by humans. The purpose of the manipulations is to indulge humans in their insatiable obsession with self-perpetuation.
Now that is "intelligent design" - provided, of course, one makes allowances for the fact that the term intelligent is defined by humans ... whose track record in this regard is far from convincing - even by their own faltering standards.