Darwinism

David Klinghoffer, author of the new book Shattered Tablets: Why We Ignore the Ten Commandments at Our Peril (Doubleday), gives a disconcerting interview in National Review Online about life in Seattle. Here’s a sample: Lopez: What’s the point of a First Commandment protest rally? Klinghoffer: Oh, I attended one, though it wasn’t spoken of explicitly. It was a rally for Richard Dawkins, the atheist Darwinist bestseller guy, at Seattle’s town hall. The First Commandment — “I am the Lord your God…” — really sticks in the craw of materialists like Dawkins, much more so than any other of the Ten Commandments. Everyone was bundled in flannel and they were applauding him for applauding them for being such a bunch of Read More ›

It seems like every other day there’s an article where scientists are discovering the presence of genes thought to have arisen late in evolution to be already present in ancient forms, so-called “living fossils”. In this case what we see in this particular “living fossil”, the shark, is the presence of genetic activity that is associated with ‘digit formation’ in limbed animals. Previously, scientists thought that there was some late phase additional activity which, we may say, was ‘added onto’ fin development. Here’s a quote: “We’ve uncovered a surprising degree of genetic complexity in place at an early point in the evolution of appendages,” said developmental biologist Martin Cohn, Ph.D.” As I say, these types of articles seem commonplace, yet Read More ›

I always find it interesting how Darwinists explain things. Here is a gene that, according to the author, exists in no known species, and simply shows up in this particular fly genome. The way Darwinists want to explain things–knowing that NDE is essentially ‘dead in the water’–is by talking about duplicated genes which are allowed to mutate since their needed function is supplied by the original gene. Well, that can’t be the explanation here since we’re not dealing with a duplicated gene, or a pseudo-gene, or anything like that at all. So, it’s now transposons and viruses inserting this gene into the fly genome. While that’s, hypothetically possible, right now there’s no way of proving that since, per the author, Read More ›

Chuckie’s Ghost visits me regularly and let’s me know what’s happening inside the belly of the beast. Here’s the latest: The 2007 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference in London included a “social” occasion in which Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones, and Lewis Wolpert all participated in a “debate” in the London Museum of Natural History. It was not a conventional debate in that the conference organizers had solicited questions from the registrants prior to the conference on the web and then selected individuals to ask their questions. The panel then took turns responding. Although the topic was supposed to be how complexity could arise from evolution, none of the questions ever really got to the point. It will be interesting to Read More ›

Natural selection …is not the fundamental cause of evolution.

Masatoshi Nei

Science continues to destroy Darwinism. A prominent member of the National Academy of Sciences, Masatoshi Nei, trashed neo-Darwinism in the recent peer-reviewed article: The new mutation theory of phenotypic evolution.

Haldane’s dilemma showed mathematically that natural selection could not be the major driving force of evolution. Haldane’s dilemma lead in part to the non-Darwinian theory of molecular evolution known as the “neutral theory of molecular evolution”. Neutral theory asserted natural selection was not the principal driving force of molecular evolution. However, when molecular neutral theory was presented to the world in the 1960’s, it was politically incorrect to assert the obvious consequence of the neutral theory of molecular evolution, namely: morphology, physiology, and practically anything else made of molecules would NOT be principally shaped by natural selection either.

In What are the speed limits of naturalistic evolution?, I pointed out:

And if Haldane’s dilemma were not enough of a blow to Darwinian evolution, in the 1960’s several population geneticists like Motoo Kimura demonstrated mathematically that the overwhelming majority of molecular evolution was non-Darwinian and invisible to natural selection. Lest he be found guilty for blasphemy, Kimura made an obligatory salute to Darwin by saying his non-Darwinian neutral theory “does not deny the role of natural selection in determining the course of adaptive evolution”. That’s right, according to Kimura, adaptive evolution is visible to natural selection while simultaneously molecular evolution is invisible to natural selection. Is such a position logical? No. Is it politically and intellectually expedient? Absolutely!

But now 4 decades later, the inevitable consequence of Haldane’s dilemma and Kimura’s neutral theory may be ending the uneasy truce between neo-Darwinists and neutralists.
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No, not lysergic acid diethylamide, but LS-Dyna, perhaps the world’s most sophisticated engineering computer simulation program, developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, originally for the development of nuclear weapons. I’m studying LS-Dyna feverishly, since my company is sending me off to LS-Dyna school in Livermore, CA at the end of this month.

I have a lot of experience writing computer simulations of the reasoning process in intellectual games such as checkers and chess, and nearly as much experience developing software for guided-airdrop systems, which involves a lot of simulation work. But LS-Dyna has been a real eye-opener.
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Moorad Alexanian makes an interesting comment here: Lee Smolin wrote in his third book, The Trouble with Physics, “He sees string theory as not a theory–only a set of curious conjectures in search of a theory. True, it has great explanatory power, but a viable theory must have more than that. It must make predictions which can be falsified or confirmed.” One can similarly say of Darwinian Theory of evolution, “I see evolutionary theory as not a theory–only a set of curious conjectures in search of a theory. True, it has great explanatory power, but a viable theory must have more than that. It must make predictions which can be falsified or confirmed.” Ken Miller and Richard Dawkins would respond Read More ›

Is it fair to judge scientific theories by their offspring? For the greatest theory ever conceived, Darwinian evolution has begotten an idiot in evolutionary psychology. Here’s Fred Reed on the topic: I find in Psychology Today a piece called “Ten Politically Incorrect Truths about Human Nature,” explaining various aspects of behavior in Darwinian terms. The smugness of that “politically incorrect” is characteristic of those who want a sense of adventure without risk. Nothing is more PC than an evolutionary explanation, unless it explains obvious racial differences that we aren’t supposed to talk about. OK, the authors are going to explain why we mate as we do. “Blue-eyed people,” they write, “are considered attractive as potential mates because it is easiest Read More ›

I blogged once before about one of my favorite ID essayists, Roddy Bullock of idnetohio, who frequently posts at ARN.

Here is another essay that I found most insightful. Roddy is a clear thinker and a superb writer.

Let’s be honest: One of the main reasons that passions tend to run high in the ID versus Darwinism/materialism debate is that the implications are profound concerning ultimate issues and questions, especially, Is there any ultimate plan, design, meaning, or purpose in the universe and, most importantly, our lives?

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I just wanted to bring this article in Science to the attention of this blog. The results are very intriguing–“these gene “inventions” along the lineage leading to animals were likely already well integrated with preexisting eukaryotic genes in the eumetazoan progenitor.” It seems that the very primitive looking sea anenome is a very sophisticated animal. [As an aside, though Darwinists will be quick to deny this—it’s very easy to deny anything (in fact, I deny that I’m writing this right now!)—this is completely contrary to what Charles Darwin himself expected; viz., that such complex regulatory functions developed in so short a period of time. Since it is soft-bodied, it doesn’t fossilze that well; but there is a well-preserved fossil in Read More ›

Coyne contra Behe in The New Republic; Behe contra Coyne at Amazon; and now Coyne contra Behe at TalkReason. The following comment by Coyne caught my eye: Both Richard Dawkins (in his review of The Edge of Evolution in The New York Times) and myself have noted Behe’s remarkable reluctance to submit his claims to peer-reviewed scientific journals. If Behe’s theory is so world-shaking, and so indubitably correct, why doesn’t he submit it to some scientific journals? (The reason is obvious, of course: his theory is flat wrong.) Let me suggest another reason: Coyne is wrong and doesn’t want Behe upsetting his applecart.

I attempted mathematics….but I got on very slowly. The work was repugnant to me, chiefly from my not being able to see any meaning in the early steps in algebra….I do not believe that I should ever have succeeded beyond a very low grade.

Charles Darwin,
writing of his ineptitude and dislike of math

The inability of Darwin and his followers to make the math of their ideas work continues to haunt them. Another mathematical problem for Darwinism comes in the form of the failing molecular clock hypothesis, a statistical theory of molecular evolution. The hypothesis was the brainchild of arch-Darwinist Schlemiel Zuckerkandl (Zuck for short).

It’s gratifying that a hypothesis which Zuck received so much recognition for 45 years ago is now being bludgeoned to death by empirical data, much to the delight of ID proponents. The most recent example of the failure of Zuck’s idea is reported in When did placental and marsupial mammals split?, we read:

“We’re in total discord with the molecular dates,” Wible says. He thinks genetic clocks fail to account for the post-Cretaceous burst of mammalian evolution.
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I’ve read Michael Behe’s The Edge of Evolution. Michael offers hard evidence for what most people recognize. (Those who have been blinded by Darwinist indoctrination are obviously excluded.) Mutations break things. However, on occasion, with huge probabilistic resources, a broken thing can promote survival in a specific environment (e.g., bacterial antibiotic resistance). But broken things represent a downhill process, informationally, and cannot account for an uphill, information-creating process, not to mention the machinery required to process that information. Understanding this is not difficult, unless one has a nearly pathological commitment to the notion that design in the universe and living systems cannot possibly exist.