The American Museum of Natural History, in the New York presentation of the Darwin exhibit organized by curator Niles Eldredge, declares

A century and a half ago, Charles Darwin offered the world a single, simple scientific explanation for the diversity of life on Earth: evolution by natural selection.

The exhibit explains – “Natural selection is a simple mechanism that causes populations of living things to change over time.”

“Simple”, according the Answers.com means 1) having or composed of only one thing, element, or part, and 2) not involved or complicated, easy, a simple task. A common antonym of simple is difficult.

Perhaps, the zeal over evolution caused Eldredge to overlook what Charles Darwin actually wrote in The Origin of Species: the term simple was only used 56 times, while difficult was used 213 times. Darwin even entitled Chapter VI – “Difficulties of the Theory.” Chapter VI became an add-on chapter after the 1^st edition. There is no “simple” chapter.

Contrary to Eldredge’s contention, not only is the theory not simple, the theory of natural selection is laced with a litany of inconsistencies and contradictions, at least 15 contradictions on the proposed fundamentals of natural selection can be easily discovered with even a casual reading of The Origin of Species. 

Even Darwin was acutely aware of the contradictions. In a letter to Alfred Wallace in 1868, Darwin acknowledged -

Nevertheless, I myself to a certain extent contradict my own remarks.

As the “Year of Darwin” (2009) approached, the pop-culture ether concentration at the American Museum of Natural History must have caused Eldredge to staggering into Darwin’s natural selection minefield. In the end, Eldredge embraced Darwin’s contradictions in the exhibit acronym for natural selection: V.I.S.T.A. – Variation, Inheritance, Selection, Time, and Adaptation.

Not only is the theory not simple, Darwin even contradicts himself on the evidence for the theory of natural selection –  

Passing from these difficulties, the other great leading facts in paleontology agree admirably with the theory of descent with modification through variation and natural selection.

Then, Darwin argues, the evidence from paleontology fails to support the theory of natural selection,

Existence of many links … does not yield the infinitely many fine gradations between past and present species required on the theory.

In the book Darwin, Discovering the Tree of Life, Niles Eldredge follows Darwin’s same pattern of contradictions -

 It [The Origin of Species] is a mature work in the best, and worst, senses of the term… allowing Darwin to hone his logic as he mustered his arguments.

How can Darwin’s arguments be “the best, and worst”? Is Darwin’s theory simple? In a letter to Hugh Falconer in October 1862, at least Darwin was honest enough to write -   

I look at it as absolutely certain that very much in the Origin will be proved to be rubbish

Evolution continues as a theory in crisis. Based on 150 years of scientific investigation since the publication of The Origin of Species, David Conway of Cambridge University notes that the evidence –  

provides us with reasons for doubting that it is possible to account for existent life-forms in purely materialistic terms and without recourse to design.

Little wonder that Eldredge’s Darwin exhibit failed to attract any major corporate sponsorship for the proposed national tour. Nicholas Wapshott, prominent British journalist for the newspaper Telegraph, said –

The outbreak of corporate cold feet has shocked New York’s intellectuals…. They tried to find corporate sponsors, but everyone backed off.

A consensus on the theory of natural selection continues as a difficulty for the evolution industry. Natural selection is not a simple theory.

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