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Natural selection and change, yes; Evolution, no

A Review of Darwin’s Brave New World, Episode Three
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by Russell Grigg

First published: 2 December 2009 (GMT+10)

Re-featured on homepage: 17 November 2010 (GMT+10)

Episode Three of the TV series Darwin’s Brave New World, shown in Australia on ABC1 in November 2009, is Image Wikipedia.org
titled “Publish and Be Damned”. In this episode, the speakers bang a drum with “natural selection” on one side
and “change” on the other. They make a lot of noise, but none of it equates to evolution.

Alfred Russel Wallace trumps Darwin

The film opens with a few snippets from the previous episodes, including Prof. Richard Dawkins’ gratuitous
comment that “Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection explains everything about life; its complexity,
its beauty, its diversity.” Then we see Darwin completely frustrated because another naturalist, Alfred Russel
Wallace, living in the jungles of Malaya, has just come up with a theory similar to his own—conceived during a
bout of malarial fever, and in the space of a couple of hours.
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Prof. James Moore tells us that before this, Wallace had “converted to evolution without having a theory; it was
Charles Darwin
just kind of one of the things you converted to if you were a radical young man. You did phrenology, you did
mesmerism, you did evolution, you did all the heresies!”

Prof. Iain McCalman summarizes Darwin’s problem, “Darwin is in the biggest moral dilemma of his life. He oscillates between wanting to do
the honourable thing and give Wallace his due, but also of having some kind of solution to this problem.”

Lyell, Hooker and Huxley trump Wallace

Darwin’s solution is to call for help from his friends, Lyell and Hooker, and the latter enlists Huxley. Lyell,
who was a lawyer by profession, voices the crucial point, “Wallace has published”, to which Hooker
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replies, “And Darwin has not.” End of story? By no means. The three friends now conspire to give Darwin
the credit, as Prof. McCalman explains, Evolution was one of the
“The dilemma is that on the one hand they are ethical people. They don’t know Wallace, but they things you converted to if
know he has done the right thing. On the other hand, he’s a nobody; he’s completely obscure. Their you were a radical young
best friend, Darwin, has been working on this for 20 years, he’s already a famous scientist, he has
man. You did phrenology,
amassed a lot of information. So they justify to themselves that ‘in the interests of science’ they must
publish Darwin alongside Wallace.”
you did mesmerism, you
did evolution, you did all
They persuade Darwin to write a short paper, and then arrange for a public reading of this, together with
the heresies!
the paper Wallace had sent to Darwin, at the Linnean Society in London on 1 July 1858. They
euphemistically call this “a joint paper”, although Wallace knows nothing about it. As a result of this
subterfuge, Darwin gets priority from “alphabetical order by author”. Darwin wasn’t there. On that same
day, the Darwins bury their two-year-old son, the third child they have lost.

Writing the Origin

Darwin now sets to work to write what will become his Origin of Species book. The narrator tells us that “at the heart of his book is the idea
that since the earth came into existence life has been in a state of constant change”. Note that last word; it is about to be equated with
evolution, as if mere change justifies the belief that every living thing has descended from the same ancestor.

Prof. Jared Diamond tells us, “The view of species prior to Darwin was that species were fixed; they did not change; and they were one-by-
one created by God.” Then Prof. Dawkins pontificates, “People believed that rabbits were rabbits and they never changed into anything else;
shrews were shrews … and so on. Not only can rabbits change into something a bit different from rabbits but given enough time bacteria can
change into humans, and that’s what happened over 3 /2 billion years.”
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The narrator tells us that at the beginning of his book Darwin uses pigeons as examples of change—the
original rock pigeon has been modified by breeders to produce the varieties pictured. Then we are told
that in the wild some individuals of animals survive while others perish. Then, “In this struggle for

No one has ever turned a
pigeon into a non-pigeon
by breeding pigeons,
survival, Darwin sees how evolution occurs. He calls it ‘natural selection’. This is what produces new
species.” And Prof. Dawkins chips in with, “The whole idea of natural selection is about how individuals
within a species out-compete rival individuals in the same species to reproduce. That is what drives
evolution in the Darwinian model.”

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because like always However, no one has ever turned a pigeon into a non-pigeon by interbreeding pigeons, because like
always produces like. Darwin’s pigeon examples actually highlight the fact that variation has limits.
produces like.
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Natural selection, as we have often stated, (see Natural selection Q&A) is an easily understandable fact,
but it does not of itself create new things. It operates by culling genetic information. For microbes to
turn into microbiologists, new genetic information is needed. Natural selection does not supply this, and
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the modern evolutionary answer (mutations, of which Darwin knew nothing) does not work either (see
Mutations Q&A).

The narrator declares that “over vast stretches of time traits [such as sharper claws, faster legs, better camouflage, different beak shapes]
add up until the descendants are very different from their ancestors. They have evolved by means of natural selection into a new species.”

Did you spot the sleight of hand? First, long ages are assumed; then “change” is all that is
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Photo stock.xchng
needed to form “very different” kinds of living things—with no indication of what could
provide the needed new information to specify how an organism is to make the new features
(like reptiles growing feathers).

Prof. Dawkins finally gives us one example of natural selection. He tells us, “The beauty and
elegance of a cheetah chasing a gazelle has been bought at the cost of generations of
suffering gazelles, and generations of cheetah ancestors starving to death if they didn’t
manage to make enough kills.”

In a fallen world, the cheetah’s blinding speed may have been fine-tuned by such a process,
as it descended (with the aid of natural selection) from an original “cat kind” on the Ark,
(along with lions, tigers, etc.). But all of this would have mostly been within the limits of the
Cheetahs have descended from an original ‘cat kind’.
(created) information already present in that ancestral kind’s pool of DNA. Breeders’
experience confirms that selection for one trait is often at the expense of other traits. Cheetahs may be able to run incredibly quickly, but
they also tire very rapidly.

The narrator claims that according to Darwin “all species on Earth are modified versions of what has gone before, endlessly reshaped over
time by natural selection, and the evidence is there every time you look at it”.

So what is this evidence? According to Prof. Dawkins, “What Darwin noticed is that if you compare say the hand of a man, the flipper of a
whale, they all have the same structure. All these creatures have their limbs, their hearts, their kidneys, their skulls, their backbones,
modified from a common ancestor.”

A better explanation is that all these features show design, and design points to an Intelligent Designer, God. The reason why creatures
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have similar limbs and such things as hearts, kidneys, skulls, etc. is that these features function well, and so the Creator used His design
many times. There are many instances in which such “homologies”, as they are called, could not have arisen from common ancestry. For
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example, frogs and humans each have five digits. Evolutionists believe that this is because they each descended from a common ancestor
with five digits, but common ancestry implies common genetic and developmental pathways. Yet human and frog digits develop in the
embryo in radically different ways. Ironically, the several-times-repeated clip in the film series of Darwin daydreaming about his own hand
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morphing into a webbed hand, as if human and frog limbs shared similar processes of formation, is plainly scientifically wrong; propaganda,
not science.

Prof. Jerry Coyne than tells us that his ability to wiggle his ears comes from muscles that were in our ancestors like cats, dogs, and horses,
or species descended from them, and presumably the kangaroo shown doing this. But this presumes that these muscles have no function in
humans today—news to those who can move them to help clear water from the ear’s external canal, and more.

The narrator makes the statement that in Origin Darwin says how “the ever-changing surface of the earth, land isolated by water, and high
mountains all influence how plants and animals evolve through the struggle to survive in these environments”. This time, struggle for
survival within (and against) the environment has been equated with evolution. Only one example is given—that of corals, which Darwin
observed at the Cocos Keeling Islands on the Beagle voyage, where he noted that some corals were dead and some were living. But just
how this equates to evolution we are not told.

And then, “As the book comes to a close, Darwin shows there is no need to invoke God to explain why plants and animals appear in various
different parts of the world. They arrived courtesy of wind, ocean currents, even with the help of human beings.” Yes, that’s how they
dispersed over the earth after Noah’s Flood.

Are humans merely animals?

The Origin is now ready for publication. Prof. Michael Ruse tells us,

“Darwin deliberately didn’t talk about humans in the Origin, until right at the end, where he said, ‘Light
will be thrown on man and his history.’ Darwin made it very clear in the Origin that humans are part of
the picture, but at the same time, tactically, if you like, he wanted to get the theory out on the table
first.”

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Interestingly, the film tells us that Lyell, who supported the Origin as it dealt with nature generally, Is man an animal with
stopped short of including humans in Darwin’s evolutionary scheme. “He cannot bring himself to admit
animal lusts, with no
that man is not of divine origin. And this was always a distressing thing for Darwin.”
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morality?—that was the

Prof. McCalman says, “Victorian people started to debate whether man was a beast or a divinely central debate that Darwin
endowed creature. Is man an animal with animal lusts, with no morality—that was the central debate didn’t want, and it became
that Darwin didn’t want, and it became the focus of his Origin of Species.” And Prof. Ruse says, “The
the focus of his Origin of
reason why evolution does play into crises of faith, into religious issues, is because evolution is about
Species.
human beings, where humans came from, where humans are now, and where humans are going to go.
So evolution plays into the crisis of faith because it’s offering an alternative picture. … Huxley basically
said, ‘Well what can we do with evolution? It can be our kind of background ideology, our Christianity
substitute.’ ”

Interestingly, the film notes that, after publication of the Origin on 24 November 1859, most of the newspaper reviews were critical, except
for one in The Times—it was ghost-written by Huxley.

The debate between Wilberforce and Huxley

The scene shifts to the confrontation between the Anglican Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, and Huxley, at the annual meeting of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science on June 30, 1860. The debate was held in the Oxford Museum library before an audience
of over 700 (not just the 50 shown in the film), and was rather like an open forum, where several speakers gave their views.

The film depicts Wilberforce as asking Huxley whether he was related to the ape on his grandfather’s
Image Wikipedia.org
side or his grandmother’s side or both. And Hooker is depicted as jumping to his feet and shouting,
“It is patently obvious that the Archbishop has never read the book.”

The kindest thing to say about this acted outburst from Hooker is that it shows a shocking lack of
research on the part of the film producers. Wilberforce was not the Archbishop of anywhere; he was
the Bishop of Oxford. And as to whether Wilberforce had read the Origin, some five weeks previously
he had written a review of it, consisting of about 19,000 words, and this was published on pp. 225
–264 of the July 1860 issue of The Quarterly Review. Wilberforce’s speech was a condensed version
of this review. His review shows that he did not prejudge the issue, and most of it was an entirely
scientific assessment of Darwin’s theory. Here is a sample (from p. 231 of The Quarterly Review).

The first edition of Origin of Species was
published on 24 November 1859. There were
five more editions in which Darwin made
multitudinous changes.
“But we are too loyal pupils of inductive philosophy to start back from any conclusion by reason of its
strangeness. Newton’s patient philosophy taught him to find in the falling apple the law which
governs the silent movements of the stars in their courses; and if Mr. Darwin can with the same
correctness of reasoning demonstrate to us our fungular descent, we shall dismiss our pride, and
avow, with the characteristic humility of philosophy, our unsuspected cousinship with the mushrooms
… only we shall ask leave to scrutinise carefully every step of the argument which has such an
ending, and demur if at any point of it we are invited to substitute unlimited hypothesis for patient
observation, or the spasmodic fluttering flight of fancy for the severe conclusions to which logical
accuracy of reasoning has led the way.”
For the benefit of readers who would like to read the rest of
Image Wikipedia.org
Wilberforce’s review, here it is (it’s readily available on the internet):
Review of Darwin’s Origin by Samuel Wilberforce.

As to the alleged question about Huxley’s ape ancestry, and the film’s claim that immediately it became a
media event, again the facts are considerably different from those depicted. It is highly unlikely that the
incident occurred at all. For a full discussion, see our earlier article: “ What did Wilberforce really say to
“Darwin’s bulldog”?”

Final scenes
The film reverts to nature and there is a brief mention of how various people have thought evolution
occurred—such as “by jumps” (i.e. saltation), or “by a kind of momentum”, or that “God directed the
variation”. Note that this latter was a view that was totally and absolutely rejected by Darwin.
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Cartoonists in the 1870s had a
‘field day’ at the expense of
Prof. Coyne assures us, “We have ample evidence for natural Darwin
Image Wikipedia.org
selection … it is occurring daily in nature as Darwin said it did”
(so far we agree) “and it’s changing organisms in the way that Darwin said it would”. (Not so,
and the film has been unable to provide proof of this—it is a faith statement, as shown by
what follows). Prof. Diamond tells us, “An example is an island off New Guinea where I
worked in the 1970s. This island was a volcano that blew up in the 1600s. It was colonized by
two species of honeyeaters, one a little bigger than the other, and over the course of the

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following 300 years the big one got bigger and the small one got smaller to avoid competing
with each other. That’s natural selection within modern times.”

Natural selection, yes. But to infer that this equates to evolution, in the sense in which we are
meant to take it (microbes-to-microbiologists), no.
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After a decade, evolution has been accepted sufficiently for Darwin to write The Descent of
Man (1871), in which he says specifically that man is descended from the apes. The film
closes with the following comments, before it announces that Darwin died at the age of 73
and was buried in Westminster Abbey, due to the intervention of the unbeliever, Huxley.
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The Darwin’s Brave New World television series
Episode 3 presented the above illustrations as evidence
of evolution. Thomas H. Huxley (aka “Darwin’s
Prof. Browne (who also features heavily in our CMI documentary Darwin: The Voyage that
bulldog”) had used such illustrations to argue that
humans and apes have the same basic skeletal Shook the World): “He changed the way human beings thought about themselves. We’re just
structure, therefore must have had common ancestry. part of nature.”
However, there are key differences in skeletal structure
of (quadruped) apes and (bipedal) man—as spine
expert Professor Richard Porter explained. And in any Dr Suzuki: “The Origin of Species gives me a sense of humility, humility that I am another
case, a common designer, rather than a common species like all the others It give us a true understanding of our interrelatedness with other
ancestor, is a coherent explanation for similarity
(“homology”) in anatomical structures of different
life forms.”
kinds of creatures.
Prof. Ruse: “Darwin changed the world that we live in. … ”

Prof. Dawkins: “ … he provided the explanation for my existence, yours, and the existence of every living creature. You can explain
everything about life. Now that’s a powerful idea.” (But Darwinism does not provide any explanation for how life started.)

Summary
1. This episode talks much about change and natural selection, but fails to give any evidence that these produce evolution, other than for
the various professors who assert that it does.
2. Darwin’s theory promoted the idea that man is “a beast with animal lusts and no morality”, and this has been gleefully accepted by
much of modern society.
3. We might well ask: Why would any sane professor adopt and propagate a theory for which there is such paltry scientific evidence,
which is an expression of hatred of God, and which demotes man to the level of a beast? For the answer, we quote the words of
another 19 century atheist philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, who pronounced God to be “dead”, and gave as his reason, “We deny
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God; in denying God, we deny accountability.”

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Related Articles
Spot the Spin
Experiments that actually don’t prove evolution
The Heliconius hybrid butterfly: speciation yes, evolution no
Correcting the headline: ‘Coelacanth’ yes; ‘Ancient’ no
The BBC TV series Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
Did Darwin Kill God
Spin from the BBC about Darwin
Intelligent Design—‘A War on Science’ says the BBC

Further Reading
Natural Selection Questions and Answers

References
1. See also A Review of Darwin’s Brave New World, Episode 1; and A Review of Darwin’s Brave New World, Episode 2. Return to text.
2. Grigg, R., Alfred Russel Wallace, co-inventor of Darwinism, Creation 27(4):33–35, 2005. Return to text.
3. See Statham, D., Darwin, Lyell and the Origin of Species. Return to text.
4. Cf. Batten, D., Dogs breeding dogs? That’s not evolution, Creation 18(2):20–23, 1996. Return to text.
5. Williams, A., Meta-information An impossible conundrum for evolutionists Return to text.
6. See Young age for the Earth and Universe Q&A. Return to text.
7. See Grigg, R., A brief history of design, Creation 22(2):50–53, 2000. Return to text.
8. See Batten, D., Are look-alikes related? Creation 19(2):39–41, 1997; Bergman, J., Does homology provide evidence of evolutionary naturalism? Journal of
Creation (formerly TJ) 15(1):26–31, 2001. Return to text.
9. See also, The Creation Answers Book, chapter 7, What about similarities and other such arguments for evolution? Return to text.
10. See Sarfati, J., Refuting Evolution 2, chapter 6, Argument: Common Design Points to Common Ancestry. Return to text.
11. Cf. Grigg, R., Made in the image of God, Creation 16(4):42–45, 1994. Lyell was no Christian; he was a deist. Return to text.
12. See: Wieland, C., Darwin’s real message: have you missed it? Creation 14(4):16–19, 1992. Return to text.
13. See Lightner, J., Separating the sheep from the goats, Creation 29(3):43–45, 2007. Return to text.
14. See Sarfati, J., Loving God with all your mind: logic and creation, Journal of Creation (formerly CEN Tech. Journal) 12((2):142–151, 1998. Return to text.
15. For an account of how the liberal clergy, so despised by Huxley for their readiness to compromise, gave the remains of the agnostic Darwin spiritual
recognition, see Grigg, R., Darwin’s Bulldog Thomas H. Huxley, Creation 31(3):39–41, 2009. Return to text.
16. Nietzsche, F., Twilight of the Idols, trans. by R.J. Hollingdale, Penguin Books, 1990, p. 65. See also Grigg, R., Nietzsche: the evolutionist who was anti-God
and anti-Darwin, Creation 33(1):50–52. Return to text.

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Copyright
notice:http://creation/our-
Darwin’s Brave New World is a 3-part television series on the life of Charles Darwin, produced and
copyright-policy
shown around the world in 2009 as part of the evolutionary hype for the 150 anniversary of the
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publishing of Darwin’s book Origin of Species. As the series is now being reshown in Australia by
ABC-TV (Oct. 31, and Nov. 7 & 14), we are reprinting our review of each episode. The third is
below.

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