Fred Reed, who is “a thoroughgoing agnostic”, poses a few questions based on his inferences from observation for the advocates of the Theorum of Evolution by (mostly) Natural Selection In Addition To A Panoply of Less Famous Evolutionary Mechanisms:
Over the years I have occasionally expressed doubts over the tenets of evolutionism which, perhaps wrongly, has seemed to me a sort of political correctness of science, or maybe a metaphysics somewhat related to science. As a consequence I have been severely reprimanded. The editor of a site devoted to genetic expression furiously began deleting any mention of me from his readers. Others, to include Mr. John Derbyshire of Taki’s Magazine, have expressed disdain, though disdaining to explain just why.
In all of this, my inability to get straight answers that do not shift has frustrated me. I decided to address my questions to an expert in the field, preferably one who loathed me and thus might produce his best arguments so as to stick it to me. To this end I have settled on Mr. Derbyshire….
- what selective pressures lead to a desire not to reproduce, and how does this fit into a Darwinian framework?
- Why should I not indulge my hobby of torturing to death the severely genetically retarded?
- How many years would have to pass without replication of the [Abiogenesis]
event, if indeed it be not replicated, before one might begin to suspect
that it didn’t happen?- What are the viable steps needed to evolve from [two-cycle insect] to [four-cycle insect]? Or from anything to four-cycle?
- Does not genetic determinism (with which I have no disagreement) lead to a paradox: that the thoughts we think we are thinking we only think to be thoughts when they are really utterly predetermined by the inexorable working of physics and chemistry?
- Why do seemingly trivial traits proliferate while clearly important ones do not?
- If one believes in or suspects the existence of God or gods, how
does one exclude the possibility that He, She, or It meddles in the
universe—directing evolution, for example?
Of course, anyone here who still subscribes to believe in abiogenesis and evolution by natural selection is more than welcome to take a crack at one or more of these themselves. However, before answering any of them, I would highly recommend reading the complete article, as Fred goes into more details regarding why he is asking each of the questions there.