Evolution

The same day I first watched “Expelled” in theaters, I also watched the movie “21”. The movie “21” is based on the true story of MIT students who made a fortune in Las Vegas casinos through the use of mathematics.

The real story behind the movie began with an associate of Claude Shannon by the name of Dr. Edward O. Thorp of MIT. In the Early 60’s, Thorp published a landmark mathematical treatise on how to beat casinos. His research was so successful that Las Vegas casinos shut down many of their card tables for an entire year until they could devise counter measures to impede Thorp’s mathematics.

Thorp is arguably the greatest gambler of all time. He extended his gambling science to the stock market and made a fortune. His net worth is in the fractional to low billions. He is credited with some independent discoveries which were the foundation to the Black-Scholes-Merton equation relating heat transfer thermodynamics to stock option pricing. The equation won the Nobel prize and was the subject of the documentary: The Trillion Dollar Bet.

Thorp would probably be even richer today if Rudy Gulliani had not falsely implicated him in the racketeering scandal involving Michael Milken. Thorp, by the way, keeps a dartboard with Gulliani’s picture on it… 🙂

The relevance of Thorp’s math to Darwinism is that Thorp was a pioneer of risk management (which he used to create the world’s first hedge fund). In managing a hedge fund or managing the wagers in casinos, one is confronted with the mathematically defined problem of Gambler’s Ruin. The science of risk management allows a risk manager or a skilled gambler to defend against the perils gamblers ruin. Unfortunately for Darwinism, natural selection has little defense against the perils of gambler’s ruin.
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Derbyshire continues to embarrass himself — it’s as though on the topic of ID and God his emotions take over and he can’t think straight. I’ll spare you his review and simply quote Berlinski’s response, which skillfully shuts him down with very few words: [From] David Berlinski: 1 If I remark that no sane man would hesitate to choose between A and B, it hardly follows that either A or B is insane. This is a point of logic. It is obvious. 2 To suggest that Mbombo or Unkulunkulu have an enduring claim on our attention is to ignore the striking insight achieved by the ancient Hebrews: That various scattered deities are nothing more than local manifestations of a single Read More ›

This just published at the STANFORD REVIEW: The Impact of Darwinism By Tristan Abbey With the premiere of Ben Stein’s new movie, Expelled, many people are pondering the long-term impact of Darwinism on society. We touched base with two experts on the subject. Arguing that Darwinism has had a largely positive impact on society is Michael Ruse, the Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. Arguing that Darwinism has had a largely negative impact on society is Richard Weikart, Professor of History at California State University, Stanislaus. . . . ACCORDING TO WEIKART: “[I]n the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries most leading Darwinists, including Darwin, tended to stress human inequality more than equality, in part because evolution Read More ›

Research often shows no apparent effect (phenotype) of deleting most genes. Hillenmeyer et al now find that 97% of yeast genes have an important biological function. Optimal growth requires nearly all genes in absence of “rich” medium in the lab. Sounds like robust design. Read More ›

Per recommendations, here is a separate thread on:

Michael Le Page weighing in at New Scientist with:

Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions

18:00 16 April 2008
He provides the mother pie statement that:

Darwin presented compelling evidence for evolution in On the Origin and, since his time, the case has become overwhelming. . . . Evolution is as firmly established a scientific fact as the roundness of the Earth.

This might be tolerable if “evolution” is limited to microevolution defined as mutations and heritable variations in populations. e.g., to “fast-changing viruses such as HIV and H5N1 bird flu” — except that he gives equal weight to the controversial “pollution-matching pepper moth”. Read More ›

Richard Weikart summarizes his devastating research into the Darwinian foundations of Nazis – and the continuation of those themes by modern evolutionists.
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Darwin and the Nazis
By Richard Weikart Published 4/16/2008 12:07:03 AM American Spectator

Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, and some other Darwinists are horrified that the forthcoming documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, will promote Intelligent Design to a large audience when it opens at over a thousand theaters nationwide on April 18. Ironically, their campaign to discredit Ben Stein and the film confirms its main point, which is to expose the persecution meted out by Darwinists to those daring to criticize Darwinian theory.

One aspect of Expelled that troubles Dawkins and some of his colleagues is its treatment of the ethical implications of Darwinism, especially its discussion of the historical connections between Darwinism and Nazism. Isn’t this a bit over-the-top, suggesting that Darwinism has something to do with Nazism? After all, Darwinists today are not Nazis, and Darwinism has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Read More ›

[[This blast from the past was originally published here at UD 25oct06. With EXPELLED coming out so soon and given Dawkins’s prominent role in it, I thought it worth moving to the top of the stack (blogs have the data structure of a push-down stack). –WmAD]] Last night Richard Dawkins did a reading from his new book, The God Delusion, at a bookstore in DC. After the reading he fielded questions. A friend of mine was in the front and got to be the first to go. He asked Dawkins if he thought he was being inconsistent by being a determinist while taking credit for writing his book. The answer so shocked my questioner friend that he typed out a Read More ›

Consider the following claims:

Darwinism requires that the Fundamental Theorem [of Natural Selection] does not apply most of the time.

Walter ReMine
Biotic Message

and

a relative lack of natural selection may be the prerequisite for major evolutionary advance

Mae Wan Ho
Beyond neo-Darwinism

and

Concerning this theory [Darwinian evolution], I believe that we might question (or at least note) the following:
….
(10) The internal contradiction in its major theoretical cornerstone — Fisher’s fundamental theorem

Stanley Salthe
Analysis and critique of the concept of Natural Selection

and

many genomic features could not have emerged without a near-complete disengagement of the power of natural selection

Michael Lynch
opening, The Origins of Genome Architecture

Distinguished evolutionary biologist Michael Lynch recently published a much anticipated book, The Origins of Genome Architecture. Curiously, in this magnificent 494-page book, only an obligatory mention of the name of Charles Darwin was made. Darwin was mentioned passingly on 3 pages in the chapter entitled “GenomFart”.

It was also in this book Lynch demonstrated his great irritation with the advocates of Natural Selection (like Richard Dawkins). So great was his irritation that he gave the hard core Darwinists the ultimate insult, he likened them to ID proponents!

the uncritical acceptance of natural selection as an explanatory force for all aspects of biodiversity (without any direct evidence) is not much different than invoking an intelligent designer

Michael Lynch
The Origins of Genome Architecture, p 368

Why the disdain for Natural Selection? It follows beautifully from Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection.
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Researchers have discovered two proteins essential for reproductive cells to latch onto each other and then to fuse. Changing at least one of these proteins appears to prevent species from interbreeding. This appears to open up a way to stop malaria. A new species would appear to require at least two changed genes, one for the protein change and the other for the matching protein docking change. What is the probability of these simultaneous changes occurring by random mutation & natural selection – versus – this being a key/lock design with complex specified information? Such simultaneous changes appear to be pushing Behe’s limits of Darwinism. See Edge of Evolution
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Gene blocking could help quash malaria
April 1, 2008

International investigations of an organism that one Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center researcher calls a “silly little green scum” have led to key insights into the basic mechanisms of reproduction.

The findings may help explain why species can almost never interbreed, and also point to a possible way to thwart the spread of malaria, a disease that kills about 1 million people each year, primarily children in sub-Saharan Africa. Read More ›

Here’s the conclusion of Jonathan Wells’s review of Francis Collins’s THE LANGUAGE OF GOD: Darwin of the gaps Recall Collins’s principal objection to ID: “ID is a ‘God of the gaps’ theory, inserting a supposition of the need for supernatural intervention in places that its proponents claim science cannot explain… But those theories have a dismal history. Advances in science ultimately fill in those gaps, to the dismay of those who had attached their faith to them. Ultimately a ‘God of the gaps’ religion runs a huge risk of simply discrediting faith. We must not repeat this mistake in the current era. Intelligent design fits into this discouraging tradition, and faces the same ultimate demise.” Except for the “supernatural” part, Read More ›

John Wakeley1 Abstract Arising from: N. Patterson, D. J. Richter, S. Gnerre, E. Lander & D. Reich Nature 441, 1103–1108 (2006); Patterson et al. Genetic data from two or more species provide information about the process of speciation. In their analysis of DNA from humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and macaques (HCGOM), Patterson et al.1 suggest that the apparently short divergence time between humans and chimpanzees on the X chromosome is explained by a massive interspecific hybridization event in the ancestry of these two species. However, Patterson et al.1 do not statistically test their own null model of simple speciation before concluding that speciation was complex, and—even if the null model could be rejected—they do not consider other explanations of a Read More ›

As every child in our public school system knows, all critics of neo-Darwinism are religious fanatics. Except those who aren’t, such as University of Madrid biologist Maximo Sandin, whose dislike for Darwinism seem to be as much based on its association with capitalism (here) as with its inconsistency with the fossil record and other evidence. The theories which have been proposed to replace neo-Darwinism tell us something about the respect that many biologists have for the official version. Sandin’s alternative theory involves viruses and bacterias (he refers more or less approvingly to Alfred Hoyle’s “Evolution from Space”). The following is excerpted from one of his essays , an English translation is here . Viral and bacterial response capacity to environmental Read More ›

Is is said that in the USA one can criticize politics but not evolution, while in Russia one can criticize evolution but not politics. The Russian author Alexey Melkikh provides the most spectacular improbability of Darwinian evolution that I have seen. He then proposes a mode of evolution without mutation. As some readers have asked for more science based posts, enjoy. ————-
INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLE AND POSSIBLE DETERMINISTIC MECHANISM OF BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION Alexey V. Melkikh, (Ural state technical university, Molecular physics chair,) Entropy 2004, 6, 223–232

It was shown that the probability of new species formation by means of random mutations is negligibly small. . . . The problem is that the Darwin mechanism of the evolution (a random process) cannot explain the known rate of the species evolution. In accordance with the very first estimates, the total number of possible combinations of nucleotides in the DNA is about 4^(2×10^9) (because four types of nucleotides are available, while the number of nucleotides in the DNA of higher organisms is about 2×10^9). . . . Thus, finally we have P = 10^57000000. This figure is vanishingly small. Therefore, a conclusion may be drawn that species could not be formed due to random mutations.

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Evolutionists continue to be much exercised about evolution being treated as “merely a theory,” arguing that to identify it as such is as disreputable as treating gravity or the second law as “merely a theory.” But consider, as a close colleague recently reminded me: The late Ernst Mayr, a Harvard professor called “the Dean of American Evolutionists ” wrote in his 1976 book Evolution and the Diversity of Life: Selected Essays: “When I lectured in the mid-1950’s to a small audience in Copenhagen, the great physicist Niels Bohr stated in the discussion that he could not conceive how accidental mutations could account for the immense diversity of the organic world and its remarkable adaptations. As far as he was concerned, Read More ›