/lit/ - Literature

>BTFOs religion forever

It’s very easy to refute this book (and all the subsequent developments) just from a-priori argumentation. This is because any species-bridging mutation is necessarily going to be evolutionarily disadvantageous and this can be deduced simply from the definition of species. Hence it is impossible (or at least extremely unlikely) for one species to evolve into another.

Argument:
The evolutionary narrative implies as a matter of logical necessity that an individual from one species at one time gave birth to an individual from another species. Incrementalism doesn’t save you here, for we can simply perform a thought-exercise to show that what I am saying must be the case: take any individual from species B and ask “who was its mother?” over and over again. If species B evolved from species A, we will eventually get to a female from species A giving birth to an individual from species B. We can designate this individual “B1” because he’s the first individual from species B. Now, the definition of a species is the ability of its members to produce fertile offspring. If B1’s mother was from species A, and B1 is the first instance of species B, then it logically follows that B1 WILL HAVE NOBODY TO REPRODUCE WITH. Since species B cannot produce fertile offspring with species A (as per the definition of species), nobody in B1’s community is going to be a suitable mate. Unless, by some magical circumstance, someone else from species A, in the same area as B1, also has offspring with the exact same mutation and gives birth to B2, and then B1 and B2 get together and reproduce; unless that improbable circumstance occurs, species B is bound to die out immediately. This argument is one of the strongest proofs against evolutionary theory, and I’ve never even heard anybody else use it.

>>17076346

>>13997983
>Is there any good book that serves as an antithesis for GG&S?
Erectus Walks Among Us

>well received book
Pic related

*disproves religion*

>>9726032

Why on earth is On The Origin Of Species included in some "must-read" lists? Do the people who write those even know what the book is? It's a dry scientific treatise that's 150 years out of date, literally no biology course in the world has it on their reading list. An UG biology textbook would be a far better introduction for the layman.

It's not great literature, because science doesn't work like literature. Is it simply because it's famous that it gets recommended?

>>8102746

How much influence do you believe the book On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life had on the ideologies of racial supremacy that found significant traction over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries?

>>4849762