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Science owes nothing to Darwinism – Jonathan Wells

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Jonathan Wells discusses the scientific status of Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

Comments
Biologists Are Getting to Be Less Reticent About Using the Phrase "Design Principles" - November 28, 2014 Excerpt: The word "design" appears 24 times in the paper. "Selection" appears twice, in the phrase "selective pressure" (one of them is just a repetition from the Abstract). Any form of the word "evolution" appears just once:,,, We see, therefore, that "design" references outnumber evolutionary references eight to one. We also find "machine" or "machinery" four times, "coding" or "encoding" 15 times, "information" (in terms of information to be processed) five times, "accurate" (in terms of sensing accuracy) 11 times, "precision" 29 times, "efficient" four times, and "optimal" or "optimum" 28 times. Taken together, these design words outnumber evolution words 40 to 1. Do the three passing references to evolution/selection add anything to the paper? One would expect to see it in the final Discussion section, but instead, we find these references to design:,,, The paper would lose nothing if its three passing references to evolution/selection were left on the cutting-room floor. All these scientists could do was look at the end product and decide, "Yep, it's fit. It's optimal." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/11/biologists_are091531.htmlbornagain77
December 1, 2014
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If it was such a “failed paradigm”, why bother?
Because it was still masquerading as science.Joe
November 25, 2014
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Seversky, and exactly why should anyone care what your opinion is? Especially since you think that the unfathomed complexity found in life, that our best engineers and programmers can only dream on imitating, arose by completely unguided processes. In case you don't realize it, that is not a rational belief!.bornagain77
November 25, 2014
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Joe @ 8
So because Dr Wells entered science to destroy a failed paradigm Seversky won’t listen to what he says? Really?
If it was such a "failed paradigm", why bother? I doubt he would have gone to all that trouble to destroy Flat Earthism. I didn't say I wouldn't listen to him, just that I wouldn't accept anything he said about evolutionary biology on his word alone.Seversky
November 25, 2014
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Actually Seversky, I don't exactly consider Crick, a staunch atheist, to be a friendly witness. Moreover, as I invited you earlier, you are free to cite the ANY scientific breakthroughs that are directly attributable to Darwin's theory. For instance did it lead to the discovery that there is far less junk DNA than Darwinists originally presupposed? If not, why not? etc.. etc..bornagain77
November 25, 2014
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bornagain77 @ 5
“uncorroborated word” HMMM, as pointed out in post 2, his word is ‘corroborated’.
That's a bit like the word of Don Corleone being corroborated by other Mafia dons.Seversky
November 25, 2014
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Seversky Darwin entered science to undermine Christianity's success in advancing it. His only offered method of falsifying his theory: prove a negative. Some of the spin-offs from Darwinism: - Phrenology - Eugenics - Origin of life studies (a big, fat zero) - Evolutionary Psychologybb
November 25, 2014
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So because Dr Wells entered science to destroy a failed paradigm Seversky won't listen to what he says? Really?Joe
November 25, 2014
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Of note: How Does Modern Medicine Depend on Darwinism? Excerpt: "Undergirds all of modern medicine"? I wonder if Sanders or anyone else can provide, as an example, one modern medical opinion that would be shown to be false if it were generally accepted that bodies are designed. Editor's Note: Readers are invited to submit their suggestions, for possible publication, via the Email Us button at the top of the ENV homepage. Dr. Philip Skell's comments at The Scientist, "Why Do We Invoke Darwin?," seem pertinent here. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/11/how_does_modern091451.htmlbornagain77
November 24, 2014
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Darwin day is needed because his day is over. The old guard just awaits waterloo. Excellent video hiting excellent points. I like especially how these trees of genetics and anatomy are shoehorned into the evolution concept. In fact common design easily explains likeness in looks ans the dna begind looks. Evolutionists , sadly, face being the intellectually inferior thinkers on great ideas in biology. Creationists are headed for being recognized winners in these fights by a future world. We don't dislike our opponents but it is a contacxt sport. they say too much.Robert Byers
November 24, 2014
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"uncorroborated word" HMMM, as pointed out in post 2, his word is 'corroborated'. Moreover, instead of stating your opinion as if it really mattered as to establishing the truth of a matter, why don't you just list all the major scientific breakthroughs that are attributable to Darwin's theory? Surely that would more effectively silence criticism would it not?bornagain77
November 24, 2014
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Dr Wells entered science with the avowed purpose of destroying Darwinism so I find myself unable to accept his uncorroborated word on anything concerning biology or science in general/Seversky
November 24, 2014
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corrected links: Like a Grandfather Clock: The Splicesome’s Intricate Dance of Parts – June 17, 2014 Excerpt: Like a late-model SUV equipped with a buggy whip, this was an elegant design article carrying unnecessary baggage. Intelligent design did the work. Evolution, as a useless narrative gloss, adds mass but no force. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/06/like_a_grandfat086791.html It’s Optimal. It Must Have Evolved! – August 16, 2014 Excerpt: These (optimal) solutions “have been arrived at” — by design? No; read the last sentence in the paper: “It is appealing that one might look to biology for insights into solutions of hard optimization problems, arrived at as a result of evolution within an information niche.” Evolution did it. Give evolution the engineering design award. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/08/its_optimal_it089031.htmlbornagain77
November 24, 2014
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As Dr. Wells pointed out at the 4:32 minute mark of the video, Darwinism has NOT contributed anything to science. Moreover, when scrutinizing details of what makes a theory scientific, we find instead that 'neo-Darwinism is a Pseudo-Science',,
Darwinism is a Pseudo-Science: 1. No Rigid Mathematical Basis 2. No Demonstrated Empirical Basis 3. Random Mutation and Natural Selection Are Both Grossly Inadequate as ‘creative engines’ 4. Information is not reducible to a material basis https://docs.google.com/…/1oaPcK-KCppBztIJmXUBXTvZTZ5l…/edit
Even Darwin himself, in a private corespondence to Asa Gray, professor of biology at Harvard University, admitted that his ‘speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science’,,,
Anti-Science Irony Excerpt: In response to a letter from Asa Gray, professor of biology at Harvard University, Darwin declared: “I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science.” Darwin was “anti-Science”. When questioned further by Gray, Darwin confirmed Gray’s suspicions: “What you hint at generally is very, very true: that my work is grievously hypothetical, and large parts are by no means worthy of being called induction.” Darwin had turned against the use of scientific principles in developing his theory of evolution. http://www.darwinthenandnow.com/2011/10/anti-science-irony/
Another way to clearly see that Darwinism is not really a rigid science in any meaningful sense, but is instead a pseudo-science, is to see if neo-Darwinism has ever led to any profound breakthroughs in science,,, But in spite of the fact that materialists/atheists like to claim evolution is indispensable to experimental biology and led the way to many breakthroughs in biology, in a article entitled “Evolutionary theory contributes little to experimental biology”, this expert author finds neo-Darwinism to be superfluous.
“Certainly, my own research with antibiotics during World War II received no guidance from insights provided by Darwinian evolution. Nor did Alexander Fleming’s discovery of bacterial inhibition by penicillin. I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin’s theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No.,,, In the peer-reviewed literature, the word “evolution” often occurs as a sort of coda to academic papers in experimental biology. Is the term integral or superfluous to the substance of these papers? To find out, I substituted for “evolution” some other word – “Buddhism,” “Aztec cosmology,” or even “creationism.” I found that the substitution never touched the paper’s core. This did not surprise me. From my conversations with leading researchers it had became clear that modern experimental biology gains its strength from the availability of new instruments and methodologies, not from an immersion in historical biology.” Philip S. Skell – (the late) Emeritus Evan Pugh Professor at Pennsylvania State University, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.discovery.org/a/2816
The late Dr. Skell is not alone in his analysis of the 'narrative gloss' nature of Darwin’s theory
“In fact, over the last 100 years, almost all of biology has proceeded independent of evolution, except evolutionary biology itself. Molecular biology, biochemistry, and physiology, have not taken evolution into account at all.” Marc Kirschner, Boston Globe, Oct. 23, 2005 “While the great majority of biologists would probably agree with Theodosius Dobzhansky’s dictum that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”, most can conduct their work quite happily without particular reference to evolutionary ideas. Evolution would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superflous one.” A.S. Wilkins, editor of the journal BioEssays, Introduction to “Evolutionary Processes” – (2000). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9znyGQo2QE
Even the staunch atheist Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, agrees that Darwinism does not guide biological research, (apparently not even his own research in discovering the structure of DNA),
“Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved. It might be thought, therefore, that evolutionary arguments would play a large part in guiding biological research, but this is far from the case. It is difficult enough to study what is happening now. To figure out exactly what happened in evolution is even more difficult. Thus evolutionary achievements can be used as hints to suggest possible lines of research, but it is highly dangerous to trust them too much. It is all too easy to make mistaken inferences unless the process involved is already very well understood.” Francis Crick – What Mad Pursuit (1988)
At the 7:00 minute mark of this following video, Dr. Behe gives an example of how positive evidence is almost always falsely attributed to evolution by using the word ‘evolution’ as a ‘narrative gloss’ in peer-reviewed literature:
Michael Behe – Life Reeks Of Design – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdh-YcNYThY
Here are a few more examples of Darwinists falsely attributing positive evidence to evolution, i.e. as a 'narrative gloss',,
Like a Grandfather Clock: The Splicesome’s Intricate Dance of Parts – June 17, 2014 Excerpt: Like a late-model SUV equipped with a buggy whip, this was an elegant design article carrying unnecessary baggage. Intelligent design did the work. Evolution, as a useless narrative gloss, adds mass but no force. http://www.evolutionnews.org/…/06/like_a_grandfat086791.html It’s Optimal. It Must Have Evolved! – August 16, 2014 Excerpt: These (optimal) solutions “have been arrived at” — by design? No; read the last sentence in the paper: “It is appealing that one might look to biology for insights into solutions of hard optimization problems, arrived at as a result of evolution within an information niche.” Evolution did it. Give evolution the engineering design award. http://www.evolutionnews.org/20…/…/its_optimal_it089031.html
Whereas, unlike Darwinism, ID is ‘a driver of science’ instead of being merely a narrative gloss or useless baggage as neo-Darwinism is:
“It has become clear in the past ten years that the concept of design is not merely an add-on meta-description of biological systems, of no scientific consequence, but is in fact a driver of science. A whole cohort of young scientists is being trained to “think like engineers” when looking at biological systems, using terms explicitly related to engineering design concepts: design, purpose, optimal tradeoffs for multiple goals, information, control, decision making, etc. This approach is widely seen as a successful, predictive, quantitative theory of biology.” – David Snoke - Systems Biology as a Research Program for Intelligent Design – 2014 http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/viewArticle/BIO-C.2014.3
bornagain77
November 24, 2014
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Darwinism and neo-Darwinism have proven to be useless heuristics. Even worse they have obstructed scientific progress. Evo-devo was their last great hope but it too has been a total bust but they won't admit that.Joe
November 24, 2014
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