From Pallava Bagla/Debjani Chatterjee at NDTV:
Junior Education minister Satyapal Singh stands by his statement questioning Charles Darwin’s theory, says “I am a man of science”. The scientific community has called it “polarising” and an “insult to scientific community”
“Darwin’s theory is being challenged the world over. Darwinism is a myth,” Mr Singh told NDTV.” If I’m making a statement I can’t make it without a basis… I am a man of science, I’m not coming from Arts background… I have completed my PhD in Chemistry from Delhi University,” he said.
Here the story gets a bit messy because Mr. Singh accuses the Darwinians of claiming that apes morphed into humans, which is not exactly what they say.
Mr Gadagkar, who is the Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, however, said the minister’s statement is untenable at many levels “on the basis of facts”. “It seems to be aimed at politically polarizing science and scientists, and that is the real danger we must guard against,” the former President of Indian National Science Academy, told NDTV.
“At the most elementary level, all evidence indicates that humans diverged from our closest living relative (the chimpanzees) about 5 million years ago. Therefore our ancestors did not have the privilege of witnessing the event and recording it in their scriptures,” he added. More.
But wait, it’s not that simple! Darwinians are constantly promoting nonsense like “apes are entering the the Stone Age, making it legitimately difficult for many people to figure out what the Darwinians do mean, other than that the human mind, by which they themselves can be judged, is an illusion. And what a convenient illusion too…
It’s risky to try to interpret a cultural situation one may not really understand. But if the Minister means is that Darwinism is coming under a lot of fire for good science-based reasons, he’s right.
One hopes Mr. Singh won’t be gone by the time you read this.
Too bad if legacy Indian media can’t catch up. Too many such media think they are Cool when they are just ignorant and lazy – and happy about that.
Hey, it’s worse in North America.
See also: Darwinists know language is against them and they seek a new language
At Aeon: Damage control attempted re the current evolution upheavals
Father of neo-Darwinism (Fisher’s theorem) Ronald Fisher critiqued at his own memorial?
and
Are apes entering the Stone Age?
Under fire? There never was a scientific theory of evolution. Darwin’s was a theory in the general sense- collections of ideas and concepts which needed to be tested and fleshed out. They still need to be tested and fleshed out.
Yes. Despite his PhD in Chemistry, he appears to have fundamental misconceptions about ToE:
daveS:
True- it isn’t “scientifically wrong”, it isn’t even scientific.
Is abiogenesis part of the Theory of Evolution?
Sometimes no.
Sometimes yes (as per Berkeley) https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/origsoflife_01
And this is why it’s hard for thinking people to take evolution seriously. What it means depends entirely on the mood of the person defending it.
Gadagkar is beating a strawman with his oblique reference to Adam and Eve. The Sikh version of creation is much broader and looser, implying that God became all the living and non-living forms together. No Adam and Eve, just God taking on different characters.
(I’m making a fairly safe assumption that a Singh is a Sikh.)
It’s very simple. The BBC reported back in 2015 on anthropological studies of apes using stones as primitive tools. Those studies show that apes have literally entered their own Stone Age. That’s what it means. What that has to do with your obsession with mind as an illusion isn’t clear.
tribune7 @ 4
I would say no, too. Although abiogenesis and evolution are obviously closely linked, Darwin showed that it is perfectly possible to build a theory of how life changed and diversified over time without needing any recourse to a theory of how life originated.
Sev
I would say no, too.
And I suspect you would be consistent in that.
Although abiogenesis and evolution are obviously closely linked
Why should that be the case?
polistra – according to wikipedia Singh is Hindu. I suspect Gadagkar is (culturally, at least), although I don’t know for sure.
“Singh is Hindu.”
Which makes it all the more remarkable that he has rightly rejected Darwinism because of the science:
Seversky:
Except Darwin didn’t do any such thing. And how living organisms arose/ originated directly affects how they subsequently. It is only if the OoL was via blind and mindless processes would we infer the subsequent evolution was via blind and mindless processes. Conversely if the OoL was via Intelligent Design then we would infer the subsequent evolution was also by design.
The BJP party in India these days is in a nationalistic, some say xenophobic furor.
Anything Hindu, Indian, and vaguely sciency is in, anything colonial, and with colonial and Muslim (apparently the Taj Mahal is a Hindu work??), connections is discredited.
Thankfully higher education in India is rigorous, and this religiously based nonsense will be exposed for just that, religiously based nonsense.
Parallels can be drawn with Recip Tyipp Erdogan’s Turkey. He is also using religion and nationalism to protect, ‘Turkish Science’ (whatever the hell that is), and beliefs.
Basically; ‘Let’s let emotion, feeling, religion, and nationalism guide our research.’ A good fit with ID really.
rvb8:
That is the reason for the attacks on evolutionism- it’s religiously based nonsense.
And from the ET school of debate;
a. ‘No it isn’t.’
b. ‘Yes it is.’
a, ‘No it isn’t.’
b. ‘Yes it is.’ etc, and repeat.:)
And from the rvb8 school of debate:
1- Tell a lie
2- Repeat the lie
3- Tell another lie
4- Repeat that lie and repeat 😛
ET,
Heh:)