Saturday, January 30, 2010

Natural Selection Vs. Evolution

What! What do you mean natural selection versus evolution?! How is that possible?!
- Natural selection was around way before evolution was dreamed up.. Natural selection is what happens.. naturally.. A good example is if we had two islands, home to a certain kind of moth which comes in the variation of white or brown. On one island the trees where the moths hang out, are covered with a white lichen and a lot of the brown moths are picked off by their predators. And of course the white moths multiply filling the island with lots of white moths. But on the other island the opposite is true. The trees are free of the white lichen and it's the white moths which get picked off and decrease. And the island is full of brown moths. The two variations of these moths on the two islands are the result of natural selection, which is a selecting (and separating) of traits present. It's not a branching out in two directions from a previous moth, or trait, into a different kind, or even a new trait.
- Another, better example are trees involved in a drought. The trees which have the ability to grow deeper roots, are the tree types which will survive the drought. But the only trees with this ability will be the ones with it written into their DNA code. It's not a growing or evolving of something new, which is what evolution as origins is about, or what is called macro evolution. What is referred to as micro evolution is more accurate to be called natural selection and we observe that all the time. "Observe" is claimed by science, to be a key word when pondering scientific thought.

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