Common misconception about natural selection #2: Evolution by natural selection is just a theory, and people who accept it as fact are as dogmatic as any religious person.
First, gravity is also a theory, but believing that when you drop something it will fall, obviously does not make you a dogmatist. But more importantly, natural selection is actually an inevitable conclusion that results from only two premises which everyone accepts as true. Premise #1: Human traits (height, eye color, skin color, propensity for violence, etc.) vary. Premise #2: Human traits (which vary) are heritable (transmitted from generation to generation through some medium). Premise #2 also highlights the power of the theory of natural selection. Darwin created this premise before DNA was even discovered. But more importantly, if human traits vary from person to person, and those varied traits are heritable, then obviously those traits that make a person more likely to have fertile children are going to come to dominate the population. The opposite certainly couldn't be true-i.e. traits that make an organism less likely to produce viable (fertile with functional reproductive organs) aren't going to become more and more numerous in the gene pool of future generations. Natural selection is merely the name we give that process by which beneficial inherited traits become more numerous in the gene pool, and detrimental traits become less numerous. Therefore, in order to deny natural selection, one must also deny the existence of DNA and the process of meiosis (the biological process that leads to the variation of individuals), which would defy reason, therefore such a belief would be by definition dogmatic. However, since the existence of natural selection is a conclusion arrived at by logical reasoning, and dogmatism is belief without reason, then believing in natural selection is the very opposite of dogmatism.
One significant reason for the misconception are the common misuses and misunderstandings of the theory. As noted in my previous post, there is still a taint of social evolution in people's understanding (Social Darwinism refers to various ideologies based on a concept that competition among all individuals, groups, nations, or ideas drives social evolution in human societies. - Wikipedia, see also my previous "You don't know as much about evolution as you think you do" post). People still think that evolution is kind of like a God-substitute which has some kind of direction, goal, or purpose for us. To be fair, the fact that evolution has two very different definitions certainly doesn't help. Evolution originally meant "change in one direction," and it is still often used in that sense, which is why I generally use either "natural selection" or "evolution by natural selection." Many things evolve not by natural selection, but everything with DNA also has evolved by natural selection.
Common Misconception about evolution #3: Cro-magnon Man (anatomically modern humans) killed off the Neanderthals (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis or Homo neanderthalensis ). There are actually a couple of misconceptions here. First, that Neandertals were dumb (both literally and figuratively, and that's why Cro-Magnon man could kill them. There is no indication either that they were stupid or incapable of speaking. The myth that they couldn't speak, and only could grunt was due to an insufficient fossil record, an error which has since been corrected. It is now known that Neanderthal Man possessed the necessary bone structure and musculature which makes speech possible. In addition, their brains were the same size if not bigger than the Homo Sapien's, while their bodies were about the same size, though they were much stronger. Second, there is evidence that Cro-Magnon Man and Neanderthal Man coexisted for around 60,000.
Milford Wolpoff is the leading proponent of a theory which holds that Cro-Magnon Man did not kill off Neanderthal Man, but instead they interbred with Neanderthal Man, and basically bred them out of existence, which would mean that Neanderthal Man is one of our ancestors. I was fortunate enough to take a class of Wolpoff's at the University of Michigan and he made a point I'll never forget. It was something like, "The question isn't whether they interbred, it's whether they were capable of interbreeding. Knowing humans if they could breed with it... they did." If it looks kinda a human (and in some, hopefully rare, cases even if it doesn't) we'll bang it. Just assuming that Cro-Magnon Man didn't breed with Neanderthal Man just because he/she looked different, doesn't jive with what we all know about human nature. As to why humans no longer have any Neanderthal traits, he simply replied, "Are you kidding,
just look at me!"
Update: Apparently, over a hundred years ago Alfred Wallace already addressed the issue of the public's confusion over natural selection, here's an excerpt from a recent article of scientific american:
On July 2, 1866, Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection, wrote to Charles Darwin to lament how he had been “so repeatedly struck by the utter inability of numbers of intelligent persons to see clearly or at all, the self acting & necessary effects of Nat Selection, that I am led to conclude that the term itself & your mode of illustrating it, however clear & beautiful to many of us are yet not the best adapted to impress it on the general naturalist public.” The source of the misunderstanding, Wallace continued, was the name itself, in that it implies “the constant watching of an intelligent ‘chooser’ like man’s selection to which you so often compare it,” and that “thought and direction are essential to the action of ‘Natural Selection.’” Wallace suggested redacting the term and adopting Herbert Spencer’s phrase “survival of the fittest.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=darwin-misunderstood
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