Part II of my pamphlet:
"Social Arguments for Evolution"
Some Darwinists argue that the success of "survival of the fittest"
social systems is proof that evolution is true. "Survival of the fittest",
they argue, "makes professors more productive (i.e. 'Publish or Perish'),
economies run better (i.e. free enterprise system) and science itself more
dynamic (i.e. scientific theories benefit from competition). How can you
argue that it isn't a force for improvement or that it couldn't be
responsible for the diversity of life?" Evolutionists are here making a
simple but fundamental error. They are equating a system of punishment and
reward acting on intelligent entities with evolution by natural selection.
The comparison could not be more inappropriate.
The primary distinction between systems like the free enterprise
system and natural selection is the directionality and cause of the
adjustments that are made to improve the system. In the free enterprise
system, for example, changes are made in the way business is conducted
on the basis of an intelligent understanding of the business world.
The reason for the success of such a system is that changes made by an
experienced and intelligent entrepeneur are likely to be beneficial.
In natural selection, on the other hand, the changes that are made are
random with regard to improvements that might be needed. In this sense,
natural selection is more equivalent to the centralized economies used in
countries like the late USSR. This is because the changes made by a central
planning agency are effectively random from the perspective of the needs of
individuals and localities. Eventually the inefficiency of such a system
causes its collapse. If the analysis of social systems has anything to say
about the theory of evolution, therefore, it is that random changes have a
net effect that is detrimental to complex systems.
In Christ,
robert van de water
associate researcher
UCLA