Your View – Natural selection is most logical explanation

Victor Tanner, Waseca

May 03, 2008 12:37 am

— I am writing in response to a letter to the editor by Jon Kaus, published Thursday.
Kaus asks, if natural selection is non-random process, “what intelligence is doing the selection?” I would ask, why are you assuming an intelligence?
The selection is not made by an intelligence. It’s made by nature (thus, natural selection). In other words, selection is made by a set of environmental circumstances.
Kaus also asks, “Could he please cite evidence of natural selection creating macro-evolution?” Natural selection is a model used to explain where species alive on this planet today came from. It’s the only model we have that has any hard evidence — it comes from the fossils of transitional forms, anatomical atavisms, and more recently DNA evidence.
Every big jump is only the end product of a series of small jumps; a derivative of its history. All the small change can be difficult to see, especially when most of the intermediary species are missing (99 percent of all species that have ever lived are extinct). All those changes that happen over countless generations add up.
Kaus was right on one thing, though: Arguing from majority is faulty logic. Particularly if quoting a majority that has nothing but emotion to run on.
But, the majority of scientists that are advocating evolution are not just running on emotion. They are looking at the evidence of evolution that we have before us on a daily basis. They are looking at it, analyzing it, and using their skill and education to come to a consensus as to what this information means.
That consensus it that natural selection is the most logical explanation to our existence.