Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

The phrase Natural Selection (NS) is double speak for Darwin’s Falsified Fantasy Mechanism (DFFM)

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A label is a very powerful tool for creating and perpetuating false perceptions. When Darwin called his theory “Natural Selection” it created false perceptions about how nature actually works. If an evolutionary biologist said, “the flagellum evolved via the mechanism of Natural Selection (NS)” we’d think differently than if an evolutionary biologist said saying “the flagellum evolved via Darwin’s Falsified Fantasy Mechanism (DFFM)”. All the difference a label makes, eh?

In my discussion with Darwinists over at Skeptical Zone, they accused me of not understanding how natural selection works since I said disasters leading to mass extinction is an example of Natural Selection.

Evolutionist will say Natural Selection is differential reproductive success, to which I respond, “then why don’t you call it differential reproductive success rather than Natural Selection, since real Natural Selection is the way nature works, not the way Darwin falsely fantasized the way it works.”

The label “Natural Selection” persists, because it serves to perpetuate a false perception of how nature really works. There is a reason Dawkins likes to use the phrase “Natural Selection” versus “differential reproductive success usually by functional loss”, it promotes the illusion that nature behaves like a Designer.

Whatever ends up living is whatever Nature really “selected” to live. If deaths occurred through an natural disaster rather than “differential reproductive success”, then natural disasters were really how nature really “selected” who will live or die. But so infused into the culture is the belief “Natural Selection” doesn’t involve extinction, that people will be inclined to think that natural disasters and resulting extinction aren’t a mechanism of how nature selects who will live or die.

If anything, random accidents, destruction of ecosystems, etc. is exactly how nature “selects” who will live or die, not “differential reproductive success” in general. We know this because of the fine work of Kimura and neutral evolutionists (if I were an evolutionist, I’d be a neutral evolutionist, not a Darwinist).

Extinction, random death, loss of function, loss of complexity — that is more representative of how nature works, it is the true model of Natural Selection. In reality Natural Selection is not differential reproductive success, evolutionists who say so are abusing language, creating false perceptions of how nature really works.

Look at how Wikipedia perpetuates the false perception of what Nature really chooses:

Natural selection is the gradual process by which biological traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of the effect of inherited traits on the differential reproductive success of organisms interacting with their environment. It is a key mechanism of evolution. The term “natural selection” was popularized by Charles Darwin who intended it to be compared with artificial selection, which is now called selective breeding.

Darwin may have believed that’s how nature worked, and thus began the false label, but it’s high time the label be redefined to tell it like it really is. IDists might want to consider that they are perpetuating the false perception by agreeing to let NS be defined this way — they concede ground by doing so. When a Darwinist says, “NS works via reproductive success”, I’ll have to disagree and say, “that’s how you and Darwin think NS works, but it’s not how nature naturally selects”.

Darwin’s Natural Selection is double speak for Darwin’s Falsified Fantasy Mechanism (DFFM), it’s not how nature really works. I don’t know how to cure this double speak because it is so infused into culture that when one says, “Natural Selection” people believe that nature actually “selects” for gradually more complex and more functionally rich offspring, and then they protest when I point out that all lab and field observations show on average nature “selects” for loss of function and out right extinction, it doesn’t “select” on average for pre-cursors of some novel extravagance to evolve in the future.

But the culture has been duped into thinking Darwin’s Falsified Fantasy Mechanism (DFFM) is the way nature really works because DFFM is promoted under the misleading label of Natural Selection. I don’t know the cure for this, but the first step in effecting a cure for the culture is knowing it is sick — it is sick because it has been poisoned with manipulative double speak.

PS
I found the following examples of double speak on my own and in the study of Double Speak Awards.

“Working Girl” is a euphemism for prostitute. It sure sounds more dignified than “whore”.

The Defense department now uses the phrase “Servicing the target” which means bombing the target. “Servicing Hiroshima” sounds a lot more customer friendly than saying “incinerating Hiroshima with an Atomic bomb”

“Opportunity for more participation” was used by one politician as a euphemism for “raising taxes”.

You make a Social Security “contribution”. Contributions are not supposed to be compulsory, we’d have a different perception if it were labeled “politician’s theft”.

“Gay” is used to refer to homosexual to convey that it is a happy, fulfilled lifestyle. I presume being gay is not necessarily happier than being straight, but the “gay” label manipulates perception.

Comments
It's incredible the amount of darwinian mysticism you will see promoted without hesitation. They matter-of-factly speak of the very existence of an environmental "niche" spurring a new type of animal into existence, without the slightest hint of skepticism. It's bizarro twilight-zone stuff.lifepsy
December 5, 2013
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"Natural Selection", along with "compatibilist free will" and "subjective morality", is the atheist/materialist/Darwinist habit of attaching a modifier from one domain to an irreconcilable item from another domain so they can imagine they can still have that which is only within the domain they have dismissed. Darwinists wish to imagine that complex, specified function can be built by a series of random accidents and natural events. They are either evil or deluded. I think Darwin deserves more credit for originating post-modernism with the phrase "natural selection".William J Murray
December 5, 2013
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Nice article. Here's a question for the Darwinists among us. How does natural selection select humans for facial hair and our inordinate infatuation with music and the arts?Mapou
December 4, 2013
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