There are some serious problems with evolutionary theory (I was a minor in anthropology and studied et at length).
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that some evolutionary "scholars" (Stephen J. Gould comes to mind) were perpetrating LIES - such as the spotted moth story.
Curiosity piqued, I started a study and found all kinds of anomalies in et. I'd suggest that others, similarly interested, conduct their own research into how often - and how pathologically - the Left lies.
Better watch out, though. I became a diehard conservative!
Further books of note
Cancer Selection: The New Theory of Evolution by James Graham. Lexington (VA): Aculeus Press, 1992. xiii + 213 pp. $35, cloth. ISBN 0-9630242-0-5.
What brought about the division between plant and animal kingdoms?
James Graham’s answer is, “Cancer”. Graham, who is an amateur and not a professional scientist, published the idea in the early 1980s in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. Disappointed that his insight was not taken up in the scientific mainstream, he published this book in 1992. Unfortunately it has typical shortcomings of self-published works, chiefly that it mixes substantive working through of the idea itself and the evidence for it with argumentation about science’s attitude toward the idea. Nevertheless the book received a supportive review in Nature.
In a nutshell, Graham argues that plants and lower life forms are relatively simple, with nothing like the complexity of animals, which have so varied a set of disparate tissues and organs. For so complex a creature to develop successfully from a single fertilized egg requires a most impeccable control of cell differentiation and multiplication. Cancer, of course, is uncontrolled cell division and multiplication. So for development to be successful, cells must be able to stave off any tendency to become cancerous. Thus the evolution of cancer defenses is what enabled the evolution of complex animals.
The theory demands that all animal cells harbor potentially cancerous tendencies; and in point of fact it seems that all animal cells do indeed possess oncogenes which, when activated, cause cancer. Graham also presents other evidence for his theory and other potential tests of it. The book is well worth reading by anyone who has wondered how “normal gradual Darwinian” evolution could possibly have brought about a new genus or a new family, let alone a new kingdom like that of the animals. (Another mechanism, by no means mutually exclusive with “cancer selection”, is symbiosis, proposed and worked out by Lynn Margulis.)
Henry H. Bauer
Professor Emeritus of Chemistry & Science Studies
Dean Emeritus of Arts & Sciences
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University