Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
The sickening tendency of consensus medicine and natural science to favor the elimination of the “less fit” members of society so that mankind can “evolve” reflects the extent to which the myth of the “survival of the fittest” has been imprinted on our collective consciousness. In this newsletter we will briefly examine this myth and show that it has no foundation in reality.
The full title of Charles Darwin’s book Origin of Species was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. This title reflected Darwin’s belief that the evolution of a one-celled organism into a human being was primarily driven by competition—that the struggle for existence elicited favorable changes in the biological make-up of plants and animals and that these favorable changes gave their beneficiaries an advantage in the struggle for survival which allowed them to prevail and pass on their acquired characteristics to their offspring.
In reality, a “race” is not a “new” population of a species, with new functional biological information that was not possessed by the parent stock. Rather, a “race” in every case loses some of the genetic potential of the larger population from which it descends. From the early days of the Kolbe Center, Polish dendrologist Maciej Giertych demonstrated that the selection of favorable characteristics of plants and animals by plant or animal breeders or in nature results in the loss, not in the gain, of new functional biological information. In his excellent paper “Race Formation vs. Evolution,” which he gave at several Kolbe seminars over the years, Dr. Giertych concluded:
Throughout Europe evolution is taught in schools as a biological fact. The main evidence for this presented in school textbooks is based on the assertion that formation of races is an example of a small step in evolution. This is profoundly wrong. Races form as a consequence of genetic drift, selection and isolation. Genetic drift results from the accidental loss of some genetic variation in small populations due to inbreeding. Selection depends on the elimination from a population of all forms not adapted to the particular environment. With this elimination also some gene variants (alleles) get lost. For natural races to be identifiable they have to remain isolated from the main body of the population. The same is true in breeding, where the breeder reproduces the race formation procedure only applying selection pressures of his own choice and selecting for rather than against specific features. Macroevolution requires increase of genetic variants, thus race formation which depends on their reduction is a process in the opposite direction, comparable to extinctions.
Positive mutations, as a mechanism leading to new functions or organs, are an undemonstrated postulate. We can demonstrate many neutral and negative mutations, but no positive ones. The claim that the appearance of resistance to man-made chemicals (herbicides, fungicides, antibiotics etc) is evidence of positive mutations is questioned on the ground that it belongs to the multitude of defence mechanisms (like healing or acquiring immunity) defending existing life functions of an organism and not creating new ones. http://sciencevsevolution.org/Flier.html
From this we can see the absurdity of the common notion that war, competition and struggle for existence between groups of humans, plants and animals will result in a “new” human, plant or animal, with “new” and better characteristics absent from the original competing stock. In reality, the entire genetic capital of mankind, or of any plant or animal kind, was created by God supernaturally in the six days of creation at the beginning of time. The most that competition can do is to elicit from men, plants or animals, the use of the gifts and powers that God endowed them with in the beginning. That is all.
Once we understand this fundamental reality, it becomes much easier to understand why Our Lord in the Holy Gospel places so much importance on community and on the sharing of goods as things entrusted to us by God rather than as possessions, or things that belong to us by right, as if we were the creators of those goods. This also helps to explain why the more natural scientists learn about the biosphere, the less they find that it resembles the Darwinian world of “survival of the fittest” and the more it reflects the Trinitarian life of unity in multiplicity. In a recent article by the Institute for Creation Research, Dr. Jeffrey Tomkins reports that:
Researchers have just documented how plants use underground fungal networks to warn neighboring plants of impending insect attack, uniquely illustrating the complex and highly designed interconnected cooperation found in nature.
The research study—just published in the July, 2013 issue of Ecology Letters—is the first such report that confirms and reveals how plants have uniquely co-designed physiologies that internetwork with other plants using an underground fungus as an information conduit.1 This amazing and intricate system allows the plants to readily and effectively communicate as a community, like a natural biological internet.
Prior to this study, scientists were aware that mutually beneficial relationships existed between plants and certain fungi that colonize the soil surrounding the plants' root systems. These beneficial soil microorganisms are called "mycorrhizal fungi" and are known to promote overall plant growth and help them cope with insect attacks, pathogens, and drought stress.1 In fact, scientists had been aware of the possibility that mycorrhizal fungi could enable plants growing together in close groups to signal and prime each other's chemical defense systems in response to attacks by insects.2
In a paper published just last year, scientists proposed the idea that this communication occurs through the release and detection of information-carrying chemicals that traverse the soil matrix through mycorrhizal networks that work like information superhighways directly connecting plants below ground.3 This is accomplished because the thread-like fungus grows underground, producing strands called mycelia that connect one set of roots to another. Now this research hypothesis has been spectacularly confirmed.
In this new study, the scientists grew multiple sets of bean plants in communal groups of five individuals. They allowed three plants in each group to access the soil that contained the underground networks of connected fungal mycelia. As a control measure, researchers kept the two remaining plants in each group separated from fungal connections in the soil. The researchers then infested one plant in each group with aphids (a piercing, sucking insect), which triggered the release of plant chemicals that repel aphids and attract wasps, one of the aphid's predators.
Amazingly, the plants that were not under insect attack themselves, but connected to a victimized plant by the underground fungal network, began to produce a defensive chemical response in their cells. The plants not connected to the fungal network did not activate their chemical defense systems. As an extra control measure, the researchers also covered the plants with bags to rule out above-ground signaling that could possibly occur through air-borne chemical signals sensed in their leaves. Because of the carefully controlled conditions, the signals that caused this community defense response were found to be transmitted through the fungal network.
The lead researcher in the study, Dr. David Johnson, stated, "We knew that plants produce volatile chemicals when attacked, and we knew they communicate danger to each other above ground. Now we know they communicate danger through these underground fungal networks as well."
The root systems of many types of agricultural plants studied to date—which not only include beans, but also grasses like wheat, rice, maize and barley—exhibit these types of mycorrhizal fungi interactions. Undoubtedly this amazing interconnected relationship also occurs out in nature given the fact that the plants we use in agriculture have been domesticated from the wild.
Evolutionists are hard-pressed to explain how complex, cooperative networks between completely different types of organisms such as these could have come about through Darwinian evolution—particularly when they involve dynamic biochemical networks of interaction in two separate types of organisms. Instead, this is clear evidence for intelligent design by an omnipotent and wise Creator. https://www.icr.org/article/plants-use-underground-fungal-internet
Original Sin has marred but has not destroyed the harmonious interdependence of all created things, over all of which God has placed man as the steward who will one day have to give an account to the Creator for his use (or abuse) of His gifts. Through the prayers of the Queen of all Creation, during this holy season of Lent may God grant us the grace to be good and generous stewards of all His gifts!
Yours in Christ through the Holy Theotokos, in union with St. Joseph,
Hugh Owen
