Evolution is a god

Every time evolutionists see something new in nature, they point to it as evidence of evolution. This sometimes flies in the face of reason, not to mention Ockham's Razor. Generally, the tipoff to this religious evolutionism is the personification of evolution, endowing it with feelings and intentions, much as ancient pagans endowed the heavenly bodies and natural forces with personalities and mercurial (there you go!) wills.

NYTimes reports on the latest piece of data to come out of anatidine biology:

Part of the answer, [Dr. Patricia Brennan] has discovered, has gone overlooked for decades. Male ducks may have such extreme genitals because the females do too. The birds are locked in an evolutionary struggle for reproductive success.

Wait a sec'! There is an intraspecies struggle for survival? Here's Reuters:

An exception is ducks -- especially mallards. Although mallards pair off to mate, females are often raped by stray males. Yet studies show that these rapes do not pay off for the males. "Even in a species where 40 percent of the copulations are forced copulations, the ducklings still are mostly sired by the mates," Brennan said. "That implies the females may have some kind of mechanism that allows them to keep control of the paternity."

Brennan believes females evolved convoluted oviducts to foil the male rapists.

"You can envision an evolutionary scenario that, as the male phallus increases in size, the female creates more barriers. You get this evolutionary arms race," Brennan said.

Evolution is not like women's liberation: it can't be planned by the participants. So suppose a she-mallard is born with a particular complex oviduct. What are the odds that this bird passes down her genes? Unless there's another layer of complexity (say, if bastards were considered ugly ducklings), good evolutionary sense dictates that such mutations would be quickly exorcised.

According to evolutionist religion, there is an intrinsic desire on the part of each species (or the god behind each species) willing its survival. Brennan wants to split that god into male and female halves which, instead of cooperating for the survival of the species, are fighting over how to do it. What's more, her female ducks care more about spiting rapists and preserving the bloodline of their husbands than preserving their own. What do the she-ducks gain from this? They still get raped and they are less likely to reproduce than their hypothetical kin with simpler oviducts.

But for the true believer, it's not the evidence that matters - it's the ideology. To Brennan, this shows that her god - evolution - is a feminist, presumably like herself. That's an important theological result.

Hat tip to James Taranto. Also, not to be crude, but look at the main photo in the Times article. Who exactly is examining whose phallus?