rationalskepticism.org

Others have already pointed out here, that Darwin was restricting his remit to biological phenomena, and that the cack-handed transplanting of his ideas to other disciplines has no bearing on the correctness thereof within their proper remit. But even within the purely biological remit Darwin restricted his ideas to, any proper understanding of his work leads to the conclusion that he viewed natural selection not as "survival of the fittest", but survival of the sufficiently competent. But of course, what counts as 'competent' in one ecological setting, may count as incompetent in another. Polar bears would be incompetent on the African savannah, and ostriches would be incompetent north of the Arctic Circle. Even more telling, what counts as 'competent' in the present, may cease to be competent in the future, and indeed, one of the possibilities that evolutionary biology opens up, is that a species that is competent now, may seal its fate in the future, by traversing a part of the fitness landscape that leads to that species being boxed in to an emerging local minimum from which it cannot escape.