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Guliuzza, Randy J. (2014) Does Natural Selection Exist?—Comment 1, Part III: Creatures' Adaptation Explained by the Design-Based, Organism-Driven Approach. Answers Research Journal, 7: 25. pp. 437-450. ISSN 1937-9056
This third installment is a continuation of my response to a recent critical paper (Jeanson 2013) of a series of Acts & Facts articles published by the Institute for Creation Research (ICR). The series contrasted a programmed design innate to organisms that enables them to fill environmental niches versus natural selection. For brevity, I refer to the critical paper as "the critique" and the Acts & Facts articles as the "series." Part 3 will try to meet the critique's request (at least in part) to provide additional biological evidence supporting the series' claim that organisms self-adjust to external conditions by expressing traits that succeed (or fail) to solve the challenges posed by dynamic external conditions. Representative examples highlight multiple innate mechanisms across diverse taxa demonstrating that successful trait designs determine whether an organism fills a new environment, abides in place, or, post-Fall, possibly dies. A linkage between challenges, traits, and their underlying information-based mechanism is shown that it can be objectively verified. In the selectionist's worldview which is heavily influenced by naturalism, credit for the success or failure of an organism's traits to solve environmental challenges is misacribed to the environment. Traits are said to be "due to" the molding of organisms as they are driven through time by "selective pressures." Primary causality is deflected to the environment when that objective success of an organism's trait is mislabled "selected for" (or its failure misleadingly called "selected against") in an undetectable/mystical selection event as environments exercise their agency. The mechanisms detailed below show, contrary to selectionist scenarios, that traits do not "arise" due to so-called "selective pressures" driving organismal adaptation. But give reason to believe that organism's innate systems a) already possess information or capacity to solve environmental challenges (including some that have not even appeared on earth yet,) and b) control mechanisms to potentially express novel genetic sequence or control genetic information in real time. Other studies elucidate interconnected detection, control, and actuator systems effecting how various environmental exposures are detected by system elements, which for example, can then initiate epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of phenotypic variation. Genomic features are identified associated with sperm epimodifications that could illuminate how these sites are utilized in rapid transgenerational programming. This part demonstrates that all of these outputs are only representative of a broad capacity intrinsic to an organism's systems and, therefore, are not "hidden designs" whose expression is "mediated" by environments exercising agency (via "mediating" actions that are yet undetectable). Finally, recognition is due to several other creationists (e.g., Lightner, Borger) who clearly have been very progressive in encapsulating systems such as those directing specific mutations and Variation Inducing Genetic Elements (VIGEs) designed to control self-adjustments that strongly suggest organisms express incredible engineered adaptability.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | Q Science (General) > QH Natural History. Biology > QH359 Biological Evolution > QH359.3 Natural Selection Q Science (General) > QH Natural History. Biology > QH103 Variation, Adaptation, and Speciation Q Science (General) > QH Natural History. Biology > QH426 Genetics |
| Depositing User: | Admin |
| Date Deposited: | 04 Sep 2026 23:46 |
| Last Modified: | 04 Sep 2026 23:46 |
| URI: | https://crsq.creationresearch.org/id/eprint/1828 |