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Key biologist Lynn Margulis tells Discover Magazine “Natural selection doesn’t create “

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The Discover interview with non-Darwinist (whatever she may feel forced to claim) evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis:

“All scientists agree that evolution has occurred… The question is, is natural selection enough to explain evolution? … This is the problem I have with neo-Darwinists: They teach that what is generating novelty is the accumulation of random mutations in DNA, in a direction set by natural selection… Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn’t create. …I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change — led to new species. I believe it until I looked for evidence. …

There is no gradualism in the fossil record… ‘Punctuated equilibrium’ was invented to describe the discontinuity. …

She discusses self-important professor sneers.

Her interview with Suzan Mazur is also revealing, mainly of the difficulty she has had in proposing non-Darwinist theories.

She has controversially said things like:

“The real disagreement about what the neo-Darwinists tout, for which there’s very little evidence, if any, is that random mutations accumulate and when they accumulate enough, new species originate. The source of purposeful inherited novelty in evolution, the underlying reason the new species appear, is not random mutation rather it is symbiogenesis, the acquisition of foreign genomes.When Salthe says we haven’t seen that, he’s talking about new species. He’s not saying we haven’t seen natural selection, he’s saying we haven’t seen natural selection produce new species, this particular aspect of neo-Darwinism.”

Suzan Mazur, The Altenberg 16: An Expose of the Evolution Industry , North Atlantic Books, 2010, p. 279

Comments
Woops. I just saw this post after I had posted my comments on this. I do apologise.Jonathan M
April 9, 2011
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Lynn Margulis' is brave in her criticism of Darwinism but her theory of symbiosis as being the source of novelty only begs the issue. You can't just have infinite regression of organism acquiring genes from other organisms. There must be some novelty introduced at some point in time for these later-acquired gene to exist in the first place.Jehu
April 8, 2011
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