Unnatural Selection

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In Memoriam of Life's Unfit • Unnatural Selection

Natural selection is a key foundation of evolution.  Random variations and mutations make some organisms better adapted for survival, allowing the improved characteristics to be passed on to succeeding generations, and ultimately creating new orders and species.  Right?

So how do we explain outcomes that contradict "natural" selection, those that we can explain as being the most likely?

This isn't to say that the end result isn't beneficial, but what mechanism is at work here?  Do instances of unnatural selection indicate supernatural intervention?

What you might expect:


What you find instead:

A single type of life, if the probabilities of life forming are low.

Plants and animals

Complementary life forms (plants and animals), whose inputs (food and respiration sources) and outputs (waste products) provide balance in the biosphere.
Asexual reproduction.

Reproduction through mitosis


spermegg.gif (808 bytes)

Bisexual reproduction, which requires a highly complicated matching of physical organs, hormonal cycles, cells, etc.  (How did genders develop in the first place?  Wouldn't an organism capable of reproducing itself be more likely to survive than the first ones to evolve genders? Who did it mate with if its parent was asexual?)
Life based on the same distribution of amino acids which occur naturally in space and in "Miller-Urey" type experiments.

Amino acids exist in mirror-image pairs, a molecular quality called chirality and are either left-handed or right-handed. For little-known reasons and with rare exceptions, amino acids in living organisms are left-handed.
Highly specialized behaviors and complex physical adaptations evolving only once.   Winged flight, for instance, must have "evolved" independently in insects, birds and mammals (bats) and even "flying" fish.  Sonar must have evolved separately in porpoises and bats.
Mutations adding genetic information, creating new and advantageous characteristics.

Deformed frog

Mutations demonstrating a loss of genetic information, causing crippling deformities.
Many plants and animals in various "incomplete" or transitional states of evolution.

Eagle, perfectly designed for flying and hunting

All plants and animals are complete and highly sophisticated in design and function.  How did their ancestors survive the transition and why is the fossil record missing so many intermediate life forms that must have existed?
Some degree of evolution in all animals.   A number of animals are unchanged since their first appearance in the fossil record.  If they were perfectly adapted then and now, why would some evolve into higher forms and others remain exactly the same?
Clear ancestral paths for all life forms.   Plants seemed to have exploded into existence.  No clear evolutionary ancestors to insects.
Characteristics of higher animals which show only improved adaptations based on "survival of the fittest."

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Qualities in humans which have no evolutionary purpose for survival and no ancestral equivalent in other animals, such as creativity, art, music, poetry, literature and the ability to ponder the meaning of life and to seek God.

The unnatural aspects of our universe aren't limited to biological examples:

What you might expect:


What you find instead:

Non-living matter organizing into higher states of energy and complexity.   Non-living matter settling into lower states of energy and more randomness
A small, odd shaped moon in an odd orbit after being formed by a massive collision with another object (CLICK for current theories for the moon's formation).

Total eclipse of the sun - By a moon 400 times smaller and 400 times closer!

A perfect lunar sphere, precisely distanced and aligned with the sun to create two identical sized spheres in the sky, 93 million miles apart, capable of creating a total solar eclipse.  What are the odds of that happening "naturally?"
Ever increasing sophistication in mankind's technology.

Pyramids of Egypt - Still a mystery!

Technologies of ancient civilizations which surpass ours and are still beyond our comprehension.
No matter, everything collapsing into one black hole or expanding forever after the big bang as energy.   Matter, requiring a precise balance of energy and all the "natural" laws of physics.
And here are some submitted by you, the readers:
Life taking the simplest route for adaptation   Life adding complexity unnecessarily
Evolving laws of physics   Stable laws of physics
One type of life in one environment   Different life in exactly the same environments
Human offspring with new and different features   Children resembling their parents
Occasional mutations that might possibly increase the design or potential of a human    Not a single beneficial mutation, even minor, among billions of humans
Total chaos in human thought   Very organized thinking abilities
The chicken before the egg   The egg before the chicken?
A random arrangement and interaction of electrons around the atom   Highly ordered arrangement of electrons following specific rules of interaction
Life forms arranged in rock strata from simple to complex   Most complex life forms represented in lowest Cambrian layer
Random sexual activity   Many species with life long mates
A link among all of the world's languages   Relatively simultaneous emergence of many different written and spoken languages
An atmosphere that doesn't support life   An atmosphere with a perfect balance of inert and active gases required to support life, unlike that on any other planet.
A sun too close or too far to support life   The sun perfectly positioned and the earth tilted at a perfect angle to provide constant life supporting temperatures.
Thermodynamics of water resembling that of other substances   Thermodynamics of water opposite of other substances making our ecosystem possible
All human societies tending to structure in the same way
  Every cultural group as individual and unique as the last
Continuing variance among human races   Stable patterns of human race
Protons of an atom repelling because of like charges   Nuclei that stay together despite like charges
Man being completely like animals with no moral inclination whatsoever   Man has conscience, feels guilt, knows between right and wrong

Can you think of another example? Send it to:

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Does evolution adequately explain all that we see or are there other possibilities, another side to common beliefs?


In Memoriam of Life's Unfit • Unnatural Selection

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