Paleontologists and geneticists against Darwin

by Michele Buonfiglio

1. THE STATEMENTS OF DARWINISM:

In 1859, Charles R. Darwin, at the age of 50 years, published his most famous work: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (The origin of species by means of natural selection), in which he stated that species are subject to variations (evolutionism). There are four fundamental concepts of Darwin's work:

1. Species are subject to variation;
2. The evolutionary process is slow, gradual, continuous and does not show jumps or sudden changes;
3. All organisms are descended from a common and unique ancestor;
4. The formation of a species is exclusively due to the action of natural selection.

According to Darwin, summing up, natural selection (the survival of the fittesi) through an evolutionary process gradual, slow and continuous (gradualism), it would allow the formation of new, better endowed species. In this article we will look at the criticisms of paleontologists, biologists and geneticists to the four fundamental points of Darwinism.

2. SPECIES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGES:

When we talk about biological evolution a fundamental distinction must be made between microevolution e macroevolution. The microevolution it is the set of small changes that are observed within a population.[1] The geneticist Sermonti writes: «The microevoluzione […], that is, variations in the frequencies of genes in populations […] it is a superficial phenomenon, rather obvious ".[2]

Microevolution can explain the small changes within the species, as well as the origin of the breeds and related species. We think, for example, to the diversification of the Galápagos finches, which led to the formation of 14 species of finches. Naturally, being a microevolution, the variations take place within well-established limits, producing only new breeds or related species.

The macroevolution instead, it is the set of large-scale evolutionary changes that would have occurred over long periods of time. It is not easy to reconstruct the past. The study of macro-evolutionary processes is the subject of heated discussions by paleontologists and geneticists.

Evolutionary paleontologist Eldedgre writes: «Macroevolution is counterbalanced by the microevolution […]. The debate revolves around this question: the traditional Darwinian micro-evolutionary processes are sufficient to explain the entire history of life? For ultra-Darwinists, the very term macroevolution automatically suggests an affirmative answer. In their opinion, macroevolution involves the action of processes - including genetic ones - that are unknown for now, but which must be imagined as generating a satisfactory explanation of the history of life. But macroevolution does not necessarily have to carry such a heavy conceptual burden. In its basic meaning, it simply means large-scale evolution ".[3]

3. THE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS IS SLOW, GRADUAL AND CONTINUOUS:

Eldredge writes: "To the question: “What happens to species when the environment changes?”, the standard response of the post-Darwinian era became: “They evolve”. Species undergo a transformation process to meet the new conditions. Failing that, they are destined to die out. Here the imagination contrasts with common sense e, even worse, with empirical reality. With the advantage of approx 130 years of painstaking post-Darwinian analysis of the natural world, it is now more than clear that in the vast majority of cases, species move in response to environmental change, they go to live in another place […] And this the pursuit of the habitat (habitat tracking), that goes on incessantly, generation after generation, within
of every species on the face of the Earth ".[4] And when the species cannot find a suitable habitat, become extinct.

Eldredge and the biologist-paleontologist Gould pointed out that "paleontologists have remained attached to the myth
of gradual adaptive transformation even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. The responsibility for the lack of inclusion in the framework of the evolution of the empirical reality of stasi[5] is due, mostly, to the reluctance of paleontologists to cross arms with the Darwinian tradition ".[6]

Despite the objections made by Eldredge and Gould, But, «The ultra-Darwinists continue to mildly perpetrate the myth original according to which natural selection plus heritable variation plus time inevitably lead to change ".[7]

4. ALL ORGANISMS DESCEND FROM A COMMON ANCESTOR:

This third point, to be considered valid, it should also find confirmation in the fossil record, but even if the ultra-Darwinists affirm that macroevolution is a done now accepted by all, it does not actually find confirmation in the fossil record. "In what", writes the geneticist Sermonti, “This fact consisted? For anyone who was not a paleontology specialist, the fact was obvious: the gradual derivation of species from microscopic forms, up up to the Vertebrates, to the Primates, to Man ".[8] Sermonti always writes: «The fossil record of the first appearance of the living (metazoi) it was thirty years earlier than Darwin's work and was done by Roderick Murchinson in 1830. He had found that in the fossiliferous rocks, refer to the Cambrian period […] fossils of all kinds of living beings were found, while the underlying layers contained no traces of life […] Murchinson's discovery was not contradicted, e, a hundred years after him, the geologist G.G. Simpson confirmed it […] The fundamental types of biological organization appear suddenly and all together, and remain to this day. This is a fact that we must make a good effort to call evolutionary gradualism ".[9]

The paleontologist Fondi writes: "Among the facts that arise from the direct examination of the paleontological documentation, what is perhaps most disconcerting is the sudden appearance at the beginning of the Cambrian period, that is, at the dawn of the Phanerozoic aeon, of a very rich and extraordinarily heterogeneous marine fauna, to include representatives of most of the animal phyla known to us: Protozoa, Archaeociati, Poriferi, Coelenterates, Brachiopodi, Clams, Annelids, Arthropods and Echinoderms. This is all the more enigmatic when we consider the practically complete absence of fossils in the underlying rock formations […] that form the main backbone of all continents […] For more than a century and a half, the pre-Phanerozoic outcrops of every continent have been searched with diligence and hope. […] but the overall result of all this work was meager and bleak ".[10]

The same things claim, in their book, the paleontologist Garassino and the geologist Stoppato: "However, suddenly, in the lower strata of the Paleozoic era the fossil evidence almost completely disappears. If the layers of Cambiano (first period of the Paleozoic Era) they preserve a great variety of organisms […] in the layers immediately below the paleontological documentation is missing ".[11]

Another weak point of this third point of Darwinism is certainly the lack of intermediate stages in the paleontological testimony (the so-called "connecting links") between one animal class and another.

5. THE FORMATION OF A SPECIES IS DUE EXCLUSIVELY TO THE ACTION OF NATURAL SELECTION:

Sermonti observes that the main function of natural selection “is to eliminate the abnormals, the marginalized, offenders and to normalize the composition of natural populations, a clearly conservative role […] a process of defense of the species from deviations […] From the molecular point of view, that is, the variation in the DNA text, mutation is the phenomenon par excellence, the copying error […] The cell possesses mutation repair mechanisms, and the organism operates eliminating mutant processes that include selection and sexuality. Without these defenses, the mutation would quickly destroy all genetic texts. In any case its task, since molecular biologists claim it blind, it is demolishing ".[12]

Sermonti observes: “At this point the question arises legitimate: all variations […] rebalanced by the selection or eliminated or ignored by it, they have something to do with the evolution or adaptation of species? They are them the material of evolution? Well no. What neo-Darwinian theory needs are the famous favorable mutations (adaptive). No trace of them […] We are looking for a gene new, produced by the mutation, that makes its way into the population for its beneficial effect, supported by the selection. And not one but countless of these geniuses. And these never showed up ".[13]

Natural selection played an important role in the history of life, but exactly the opposite of Darwin's imagined task: it has rather kept the genetic material exposed to the failure of millennia stable and functional.

Sermonti concludes by saying that "molecular biology has produced a much deeper revolution than what could have been expected from it. […] showed the character substantially astoric of life […] Thousands of bacteria float invisibly in the air around us. They contain life in all its biochemical complexity. In their imperceptible presence there is not already the germ of life, but the whole of life with all its innumerable functional constellations […] In many ways a bacterium (and more specifically a blue seaweed) it is a more complete life structure than a mammal, which needs to use pre-formed biological structures to grow […] But how and where a more complete life began? I don't know […] The reading of nature presents us with this already complete life and demonstrates the impossibility of imagining a more elementary one ".[14]

Such are the difficulties to be overcome and the favorable coincidences to be presumed, so that natural selection can truly be considered as the agent that forms new species, that it is practically impossible to make it the cause of the appearance of the great variety of living beings.

Any scientific theory, to be considered valid, it must be tested experimentally, instead in the case of Darwinism we are faced with various anomalies, namely the following:

■ One of the anomalies concerns a macroevolution that requires the action of processes unknown, which must be imagine yourself.

■ Another anomaly concerns the gradual adaptive transformation that has become a myth to which ultra-Darwinists cling, despite the fact that paleontologists have tried the opposite.

■ Another anomaly concerns a natural selection that plays a role exactly opposite to that imagined by Darwin, a maintenance role that has preserved the genetic material exposed to the failure of millennia.

■ A final anomaly concerns an evolution, finally, produced by pure case which is limited to putting together materials without knowing what it is doing and without any predetermined purpose.

This all makes no sense and certainly could not have formed either plants, neither animals nor man, living beings so well organized as to necessarily require a project defined in detail.

[1]. The population is the set of individuals of the same species who live geographically isolated.

[2]. Giuseppe Sermonti, The moon in the woods (Rusconi, Milano 1985), p. 11.

[3]. Niles Eldredge,
Rethinking Darwin (Einaudi, Torino 1999), p. 127.

[4]. Ibid., pp. 66s.

[5]. By "stasis" we mean that the species, far from evolving, they remain relatively unchanged for the duration of their existence.

[6]. N. Eldredge, on. cit., pp. 66, 71. Italics ours.

[7]. Ibid., p. 106. Italics ours.

[8]. G. Sermonti, on. cit., p. 13.

[9]. Ibid. pp. 13s.

[10]. Giuseppe Sermonti – Roberto Fondi, After Darwin (Rusconi, Milano 1982), pp. 190s.

[11]. Alessandro Garassino – Marco Stoppato, Fossils (Mondadori, Milano 2003), p. 70.

[12]. Giuseppe Sermonti, Forget Darwin (Rusconi, Milano 1999), pp. 9-11.

[13]. G. Sermonti – R. Funds, After Darwin, p. 52.

[14]. Ibid., pp.76s.