The Chapter Five Argument: Explaining Two Megafacts

This is a re-posting in a slightly different form, of an essay originally published in 2009.

I present several arguments in Cancer Selection in favor of my theory, and devote an entire chapter to what I consider the strongest. It’s Chapter Five.

The argument is based on two, to coin a phrase, megafacts about the history of the Bilaterians – the complex animals – that now exist or that existed in the past.

This is the first megafact: No Bilaterian animal that bred—no animal that left behind any descendants —died as a juvenile. Not a single one. Juvenile animals—by definition—are incapable of sexual reproduction, therefore every one of those breeders—all the ancestors of every animal alive today, every ancestor of every dinosaur or other extinct animal—survived into adulthood. Every breeder, in other words, was the beneficiary of meticulous—perfect—development. [See Note.]

Every statement in the prior paragraph is true for the simple reason that each is tautological.