Evolutionary Theory of Menopause Exposes Fundamental Flaw

When a theory purports to
explain everything, it runs the
risk of explaining nothing at all

 

Cultivating the Imperial Garden
How Evolutionary Theory Explains Everything by Explaining Nothing

by John Wise, PhD

In a previous article in February on cancer biology, I examined how pathological cellular breakdown, the chaotic gain and loss of whole chromosomes by cancer cells, was heralded as evolution – the increase of cellular “fitness” for pathological tissues.

To call the disintegration of multicellular cooperation an ‘evolutionary leap’ is not merely imprecise; it is a conceptual inversion. It rebrands breakdown as creativity.

In July we commented on the evolutionary account of aging in this journal account: Evolutionary genetics of ageing (Dönertaş and Partridge, Nature Reviews Genetics, 11 May 2026). Quoting myself:

“Evolution, they argue, explains why aging, and by consequence death, evolved.”

Now comes a new report:

Why did menopause evolve? (Amy McDermott, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 5 August 2026). The occasion for the article is fresh demographic data showing that wild mountain gorillas and chimpanzees, like humans and killer whales, live long past their reproductive years.

In light of evolution, menopause has never made much sense. To maximize their evolutionary fitness, individuals should strive to pass on the most genes possible to the next generation, and lifelong reproduction would seem to be the most efficient way to do so. But multiple species undergo menopause and live decades beyond, suggesting that postreproductive life may also offer some evolutionary benefit.

The real question is, why not just die? If the sole measure of evolutionary success is reproduction, when reproduction fails, what possible evolutionary benefit can persist? Shouldn’t selection favor the elimination of those incapable of reproduction?

For decades, the prevailing theory was that grandmothers could secure their genetic legacy by helping younger relatives have more babies. But that may not hold true in some of the more recent examples, including the mountain gorillas. That’s prompting a fresh look at the evolution of menopause.

In classic evolutionary fashion, the existence of a long post-reproductive life is treated not as a somatic boundary or a physiological limit, but as a riddle that must have an adaptive, evolutionary purpose.

Read side by side, these three papers expose the operational structure of modern evolutionary biology. It is what David Coppedge calls the “Stuff Happens” Law.

Whenever stuff happens in nature, Natural Selection explains it. And, because a near-infinite variety of “stuff” happens – organisms reproduce until they drop, or they stop reproducing halfway through life; chimps help their kin, or solitary old chimps steal meat from their grandkids (I didn’t make this stuff up -read the article!) – the narrative must remain infinitely plastic so that natural selection can work its magic.

In the best of all possible worlds, stuff happens, and evolution explains it.

Contradictory stuff happens, and evolution explains that, too.

The Imperial Expansion of “Stuff Happens”

In classic philosophy of science, a theory earns its keep by its boundaries, by specifying what cannot happen if the theory is true. A mechanism that can accommodate any outcome explains no specific outcome.[1]

Yet Darwinian selection long ago abandoned neat boundaries for retrospective biological explanation. Like an expanding empire, it has marched inexorably beyond its original borders to annex every discipline in sight:

• In Geology: Minerals do not merely precipitate or crystallize under thermodynamic constraints; they “evolve” across deep time.
• In Cosmology: Multiverses and black holes do not simply obey general relativity; they undergo “cosmological natural selection.” They evolve.
• And just to mention: evolutionary psychology, social Darwinism, cultural evolution, linguistic evolution, evolutionary economic theory, and even evolutionary ethics.

This imperial expansion relies on equivocation. The verb to evolve has been drained of all mechanistic rigor. Neo-Darwinism cannot require a demonstrated pathway of random mutation and natural selection driving novel, functional architecture. Evolution has become a blanket label for any change over time, or even for the persistence of stasis.

That is, even the lack of evolution is explained, you guessed it, by evolution.

It isn’t that this position is irrational. It isn’t. It simply represents an alternative logic that can accommodate, indeed thrive, under logical contradiction.

Welcome to the dialectical logic of Hegel.

If an animal reproduces until death, evolution selected for maximum direct fitness. If an animal stops reproducing at age 50, evolution selected for post-reproductive inclusive fitness via the Grandmother Hypothesis. And when field researchers observe an elderly chimp like Marlene at Ngogo, who spent her post-reproductive years living alone, taking meat from younger chimps, and offering zero help to her descendants, the narrative simply shrugs. Nature, we are told, is “messy.”

The imperial flag remains planted on the hill regardless.

The Panglossian Inversion

In Voltaire’s satire Candide, the unshakeably optimistic Dr. Pangloss insists that despite earthquakes, plagues, and absurdity, “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

Evolutionary theory suffers from the same ideological compulsion. It cannot allow a biological limit to simply be a limit, a failure in absolute terms. Death cannot be the enemy of life; it must be its evolutionary dance partner.

Evolutionary theory, whatever its most brilliant apologists claim, demands a positive teleology. Death must be creative. Breakdown must be innovation. Menopause must be a brilliant reproductive strategy. Evolutionary biology has become a cottage industry, endlessly coming up with “solutions” like these for menopause.

But when a theory is forced to invert reality to preserve its narrative, it operates like Tantalus in the Greek myth, standing chin-deep in water beneath fruit-laden branches; whenever he bends to drink or reaches to eat, the water recedes and the fruit is blown out of his reach.

The grand macroevolutionary promise that Darwin and his progeny seek to grasp – that point mutations and unguided selection seamlessly build complex, novel organic structures, providing a totalized, rational accounting of all biological reality, is the fruit always beyond their reach. The closer scientific research gets to the actual machinery of life, the more their grandiose narrative shows itself inadequate to the pre-existing structural boundaries and strict engineering constraints of that life.

Cultivating the Private Garden

At the end of Candide, exhausted by the endless, absurd rationalizations of Dr. Pangloss, Candide delivers his famous verdict: “That is well said, but we must cultivate our garden.”

That is precisely where working biologists find themselves today.

Exhausted by the impossible task of forcing living reality into an all-encompassing evolutionary dialectic, the working scientist simply “cultivates his garden.” In laboratories and field stations worldwide, researchers carry out brilliant, localized puzzle-solving:

• Constructing mathematical tools like ALFA-K to map the precise chromosome tolerance thresholds of tumor cells.
• Unraveling the 4D spatial orchestrations that govern chromatin regulation.
• Measuring endocrine baselines across the lifespans of wild primates.

This is genuine science. Yet before these discoveries can reach the public square, they must be stamped with the imperial seal of orthodoxy. The scientific data are real, but the headlines and the institutional power are beholden to the narrative.

This imperial tax exposes the bankruptcy of the whole enterprise. A theory that must turn cellular breakdown into innovation, death into a creative engine, and physiological depletion into an adaptive strategy is no longer explaining nature; it is rationalizing a metaphysical commitment. The Darwinian empire claims everything because its Hegelian logic is a universal solvent; no boundary can stand before it. But outside the empire’s gates (heresy!), the distinction between life and death remains: clear boundaries, exquisite design, and an unbroken testimony.

Life was created for life.

[1] This is, explicitly and unambiguously, the role of Hegelian philosophy – telling a comprehensive story about history after the fact. What if the story isn’t true? There is no truth outside the history, and history just is the process of telling the story. A later history may “correct” the earlier, but that’s the nature of the historical process itself: history becomes true. Errors are part of the process of truth-becoming-true.

Does this sound familiar?

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John Wise received his PhD in philosophy from the University of CA, Irvine in 2004. His dissertation was titled Sartre’s Phenomenological Ontology and the German Idealist Tradition. His area of specialization is 19th to early 20th century continental philosophy.

He tells the story of his 25-year odyssey from atheism to Christianity in the book, Through the Looking Glass: The Imploding of an Atheist Professor’s Worldview (available on Amazon). Since his return to Christ, his research interests include developing a Christian (YEC) philosophy of science and the integration of all human knowledge with God’s word.

He has taught philosophy for the University of CA, Irvine, East Stroudsburg University of PA, Grand Canyon University, American Intercontinental University, and Ashford University. He currently teaches online for the University of Arizona, Global Campus, and is a member of the Heterodox Academy. He and his wife Jenny are known online as The Christian Atheist with a podcast of that name, in addition to a YouTube channel: John and Jenny Wise.