Is there an alternative scientific hypothesis to the theory of evolution?
Many scientific alternatives to Darwinian evolution have been proposed over the years, but none have held up. Lamarkism posited that species evolve because individuals aquire new characteristics and pass them to their offspring. Lysenkoism advanced similar ideas in Russia because Stalin thought they were more in keeping with Communist ideology. These ideas were applied to crops, and the result was a lot of hungry people. (http://www.bookrags.com/research/lysenko… Orthogenesis postulated some sort of intrinsic drive towards perfection, but not resulting in evolutionary common descent, since species were assumed to spontaneously generate. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogenesi… The hypothesis was abandoned as it was shown to be unsupported by the fossil record and unable to provide a mechanism to account for the process. Saltationism:
