[Taliesan]

I have no quibble with natural selection being the current favorite mechanism for biological evolution, if that is what the scientists think. I'm not a scientist, nor do i play one on the internet. The part that puzzles me is the tendency for some scientists to speculate on how natural selection explains, say, a preference for blondes, or Methodism.

When natural selection can explain anything no matter what it might be, it is logically indistinct from creationism. It just has an omnipotent agent with no personality or name. I'm not sure how that makes Occam any happier.

[js1138]

The part that puzzles me is the tendency for some scientists to speculate on how natural selection explains, say, a preference for blondes, or Methodism.

If you read actual science you would understand that the popular press only reports findings and speculations that are sexy. There's money to be made in popular science writing, but most of us start to nod off when Stephen Gould starts talking about the history of marine snails.

Darwin wrote hundreds of pages on barnicles. I've yet to see anyone on FR challenge his findings. You are seeing only the National Enquirer branch of science.