The case for natural selection is as follows. There are variations which naturally occur within any particular species. These variations are selected by environmental influences so that, for example, populations of turtles with long necks62 - one of Darwin’s first observations in the Galapagos - occur on those islands which have the least accessible vegetation. The same process is likely to be responsible for the variations in size of bill for populations of finches. Those finches with the largest bills are located on the islands which produce the largest seeds; another of Darwin’s famous observations. For the same reasons, and by the same mechanism, man has also successfully adapted to his environment; thereby producing the variety of peoples and races that we can observe today; though we remain a single species.

Regional variations which occur between geographically isolated populations are no more than different parts of the spectrum of individual possibilities which exist for any given species. We can clearly see this with domestic dogs63, which we humans have been breeding selectively for generations. From the Pekinese to the Great Dane, there is a tremendous amount of variation, but they remain a single species capable of interbreeding - all dogs. Similarly, in agriculture, man has cultivated the highly productive bread wheat plant64 simply by cross breeding the most advantageous wild grasses selectively over many generations.

Let us now move on to examine the further refinement of this process as advanced by advocates of evolution theory. Evolutionists propose that it is through the process of mutation, that new species can be created. They propose that the copying of the genes from individual to individual is an imperfect process65. This leads to an intermittent production of mutants which may be more adept at survival because of some new biological feature. Therefore when the survival of the species is threatened, such better equipped animals are environmentally selected to pass on their mutated genes to the next generation. In so doing, the species becomes subtly changed and hence better adapted to its environment.

There are a number of problems with this proposal. Considerable effort has been expended, in experiments using the fruit fly66 (drosophilia melanogaster), to encourage mutation of the species in order to attempt to observe the selection of the fittest process in action. The results have been rather disappointing: it has been possible to produce numerous fruit fly mutations in the laboratory, but not one which has had any beneficial effect for the species. Mutations are often so poorly adapted that they usually fail to reproduce; they are therefore denied the opportunity to make a contribution to the gene pool. As far as experimental evidence is concerned, the survival of the fittest is the very mechanism which has ensured that laboratory specimens have not evolved. Is this evidence for the existence of some boundary beyond which adaptation cannot operate; acting as a type of negative feedback system and thereby keeping the population within some apparently pre-set parameters?

This process alone - mutation coupled with natural selection - has been proposed as the mechanism responsible for the final emergence of the human animal from a humble amoeba-like beginning. Without the directing agency of some external force (God), not all of these mutations would be beneficial to the species.; it would only be a happy accident if a mutation were to acquire some survival edge. If this process represents the truth then, according to the laws of chance, we would expect that many more mutations would have existed which derived no such survival advantage. So the fossils should have preserved an abundance of mutations, or transitory life forms but, as we have noted, this is not the case.