Quote of the day on the Royal Society meet

rvb8, You now claim that you realize that there are two theories of relativity but you ridiculed me for thinking that there are more than one? Why are you not humble enough to admit your mistake? bornagain77

Yes I do realize there are 'two theories', but according to your crowd, 'theories' are not fact! "his work with worms is not all that well known" heh:) rvb8

I think you'll find that natural selection as a generally recognised process predated Darwin by a considerable margin. However, he was responsible for a novel version of that process. While the classic understanding was that natural selection acts to remove extreme variations and thus works to stabilise a species around its unique norms, Darwin proposed natural selection, working against random variations, as a means of shifting those norms to an altogether different set. It is plain to anyone who observes nature in action that the classic understanding is correct; the "problem" of stasis is well recognised by darwinist and non-darwinist alike. It's not a problem for the non-darwinist, but they recognise it as a problem for his theory. ScuzzaMan

rvb8, claims that "Darwin didn’t practice ‘theology’ he was religious for a time." And yet the plain fact is that Darwin's only degree was in Theology and the arguments in Origin are first and foremost predicated on bad liberal theology instead of any substantiating empirical evidence. Thus, although he did not preach in a church, Darwin did indeed practice bad theology instead of sound science.

Charles Darwin, Theologian: Major New Article on Darwin’s Use of Theology in the Origin of Species – May 2011 Excerpt: The Origin supplies abundant evidence of theology in action; as Dilley observes: I have argued that, in the first edition of the Origin, Darwin drew upon at least the following positiva theological claims in his case for descent with modification (and against special creation): 1. Human beings are not justified in believing that God creates in ways analogous to the intellectual powers of the human mind. 2. A God who is free to create as He wishes would create new biological limbs de novo rather than from a common pattern. 3. A respectable deity would create biological structures in accord with a human conception of the ‘simplest mode’ to accomplish the functions of these structures. 4. God would only create the minimum structure required for a given part’s function. 5. God does not provide false empirical information about the origins of organisms. 6. God impressed the laws of nature on matter. 7. God directly created the first ‘primordial’ life. 8. God did not perform miracles within organic history subsequent to the creation of the first life. 9. A ‘distant’ God is not morally culpable for natural pain and suffering. 10. The God of special creation, who allegedly performed miracles in organic history, is not plausible given the presence of natural pain and suffering. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/05/charles_darwin_theologian_majo046391.html “Religious views were mixed, with the Church of England scientific establishment reacting against the book, while liberal Anglicans strongly supported Darwin’s natural selection as an instrument of God’s design.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactions_to_On_the_Origin_of_Species Someone tries telling the truth: Darwin wasn’t that great but he met an elite need – July 29, 2014 Excerpt: , he (Charles Darwin) devoted almost every bit of his magnum opus (Origin Of Species) to tedious examples of artificial selection in domestic animals. He brushed away the glaring advantage of artificial over natural selection with rhetoric along the lines of “I see no reason why” natural selection might not have fashioned the eye or any other organ or living thing. For such schoolboy ineptitude he was roundly criticized by his contemporaries, all of whom are now consigned to history’s dustbin, regardless of their skills and biological competency. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/someone-tries-telling-the-truth-darwin-wasnt-that-great-but-he-met-an-elite-need/

Moreover, although there were no officially 'trained scientists' during Darwin's day, there were, none-the-less, great scientists who were devoutly Christian, who did indeed practice very good science predicated on empirical evidence and math, For instance, Kelvin, Maxwell and Faraday. All of whom opposed Darwin's theory. Particularly Kelvin. Disingenuous was the right word

disingenuous : not truly honest or sincere

rvb8 states:

“Einstein’s theories?“ Really? He had more than one. I generally read you with a shovel of salt, but can you describe his other theorise of relativity, I don’t understand his first, but I accept it, as smarter people than me say it works, and I trust science as a truth arbiter. Explain to me BA, Einsteins second or third theories of relativity.

You do realize that there are TWO theories of relativity do you not? Special and General? Moreover, each theory of relativity reveals a very distinct 'eternity' from the other one.

Special and General Relativity compared to Heavenly and Hellish Near Death Experiences - video (reworked May 2016 – following two videos referenced in it) https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/1193118270701104/ (Entropic Concerns) The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the Dead is the correct solution for the "Theory of Everything" - video https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/1121720701174195/?pnref=story Albert Einstein vs. "The Now" of Philosophers and of Quantum Mechanics – video https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1129789497033982/?type=2&theater

Then after such a elementary blunder with relativity you accuse me of being " willfully ignorant about what science is, or actually does". No rvb8, that would be you who is 'willfully ignorant' since you refuse to accept what the science is telling you. Moreover, I did not claim that worms were not important for ecology. I claimed that Darwin's work in the area was just not that important to me. Apparently, since his work with worms is not all that well known, then it appears I am far from the only one who considers it of minor importance scientifically. And I also note that rvb8 still did not honestly address the abject failure of Natural Selection to be the designer substitute that Darwin and his followers imagined it to be. As WJM quipped:

(With the adoption of the ‘neutral theory’ of evolution by prominent Darwinists, and the casting aside of Natural Selection as a major player in evolution),,, “One wonders what would have become of evolution had Darwin originally claimed that it was simply the accumulation of random, neutral variations that generated all of the deeply complex, organized, interdependent structures we find in biology? Would we even know his name today? What exactly is Darwin really famous for now? Advancing a really popular, disproven idea (of Natural Selection), along the lines of Luminiferous Aether? Without the erroneous but powerful meme of “survival of the fittest” to act as an opiate for the Victorian intelligentsia and as a rationale for 20th century fascism, how might history have proceeded under the influence of the less vitriolic maxim, “Survival of the Happenstance”?” – William J Murray

Perhaps rvb8, if you were to actually question the sufficiency of Darwinian evolution as a 'science' instead of just trying to defend it no matter what the evidence says to the contrary, you would stop embarrassing yourself as you have done repeatedly in this thread? bornagain77

Darwin didn't practice 'theology' he was religious for a time. You are correct, Darwin was not a 'trained scientist', as the world had still not come to grips with 'trained scientist', they were, 'natural philosophers', as apposed to 'supernatural philosophers', or theologians. "you are completly 'disingenuous' to the fact.' Hmmm, not sure 'disingenuous' can be used here, perhaps, 'blind to', or 'unaware of', will suit your purposes better? "Einstein's theories?“ Really? He had more than one. I generally read you with a shovel of salt, but can you describe his other theorise of relativity, I don't understand his first, but I accept it, as smarter people than me say it works, and I trust science as a truth arbiter. Explain to me BA, Einsteins second or third theories of relativity. So, worms and corals do not reach the unfathomable heights of BA's intellect? Well, if worms were to die out the pitiful existance of humanity, would soon follow. Can you follow this reasoning, or do I need to hold your hand and explain how the biosphere works. My 'ad hominem' attacks as you describe them, are fully warranted, as you appear to be willfully ignorant about what science is, or actually does. rvb8

Darwin’s theory is based on an obvious false assumption: It seems obvious to me that the act of being alive — the maintenance of homeostasis — is the mother of all teleological activities. So, why is it, then, that Darwin held that a living organism can be regarded as a starting point for a non-teleological materialistic theory? Is such an idea not somewhat akin to assuming that telephone communication constitutes purely mental causation and use it as a starting point for proving the existence of telepathy? WRT mutations producing viable variation, answer me this: Suppose a DVD copy machine which produces a few random copy-errors every time it makes a copy. Suppose further that we use this machine to make 10 copies of a newly purchased DVD containing Windows 7. Now remove the original DVD and repeat the imperfect copy process starting with functional second generation “mutated” copies (dysfunctional copies are removed from the process at every round). Next remove all second generation copies and repeat the copy process starting with functional third generation mutated copies. And so forth. Who would expect that this imperfect copy process is anything other than the degeneration of Windows 7 eventually leading to mutated copies which are, without exception, dysfunctional? Who of us expects versions of Windows 7 with improved functionality? Of course a DVD with copy errors does not want to be functional, it really doesn’t care whether it is functional or not. But what exactly is the difference between a DVD and an organism under materialism? Similar to a DVD who does not want to be functional, the organism does not want to live. The fermions and bosons that are the organism don’t give a hoot about life. Origenes

"The book Genetic Entropy asserts there is a profound waiting time problem (see 2014 edition, chapter 9, page 133-136). This assertion strongly supports the previous work by Behe and others. Stated most succinctly, the waiting time problem is simply – there is not enough time for evolution to establish even the most trivial amount of new information." http://www.geneticentropy.org/#!latest-development/cqzd We have waited on Darwin's degrading delusion too long, it is time to take back Sinai. To look to true science. mw

RVB8 So Darwin one of the greatest scientists who ever lived, high praise indeed ,but is Darwins fame and position not more due to the fact that it gave atheists an out a way to deny the existence of God rather than any great scientific achievements.Consider Ernest Boris Chain who along with Howard Florey took Alexander Flemmings work with Penicillin and refined it to the point that we could all get antibiotic treatment against infections which were killing people in their millions. So a scientist who saved millions of lives is almost unknown but a part time botanist is a universally known name , now why is that.You might also look into what Chain said about Darwins theory, he use`s the words flimsy, fairy-tale,no evidence. RVB8 look into Ernest Chain and tell me in your opinion who is the better, more scientific,more valuable to mankind, him or Darwin and then tell me who is more famous and why. Marfin

rvb8, besides the usual ad hominem and hand waving that Darwinists are notorious for, and besides mentioning earthworms and corals instead of defending natural selection as the be all end all designer substitute that Darwin and his followers envisioned it to be, you are completely disingenuous to the fact that Darwin's supposedly greatest contribution to science, i.e. Natural Selection, has now been thrown under the bus by the mathematics of population genetics.

"many genomic features could not have emerged without a near-complete disengagement of the power of natural selection" Michael Lynch The Origins of Genome Architecture, intro "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 "a relative lack of natural selection may be the prerequisite for major evolutionary advance" Mae Wan Ho Beyond neo-Darwinism - Evolution by Absence of Selection "We've been told by more than one of our colleagues that, even if Darwin was substantially wrong to claim that natural selection is the mechanism of evolution, nonetheless we shouldn't say so. Not, anyhow, in public. To do that is, however inadvertently, to align oneself with the Forces of Darkness, whose goal it is to bring Science into disrepute. Well, we don't agree. We think the way to discomfort the Forces of Darkness is to follow the arguments wherever they may lead, spreading such light as one can in the course of doing so. What makes the Forces of Darkness dark is that they aren't willing to do that. What makes science scientific is that it is." Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini - “What Darwin Got Wrong”

In comparison, it is as if Einstein's theories of relativity, instead of being the stunning successes that they are in science, were to have been found to be flawed in major ways and thrown out as unworkable, and yet his defenders were now claiming instead, 'well he still got some esoteric point in science right so that still makes him 'one of the greatest scientists who ever lived'. No it wouldn't rvb8. If Einstein were, hypothetically, to have failed in such a major way with relativity as Darwin has been found to have failed with Natural Selection, but still got some minor point in science right, he would be soon rightly be forgotten as 'one of the greatest scientists who ever lived'. And instead Einstein would be footnoted in the history of science with disdain for being so wrong about science. Think of the alchemists of yore. Only someone who idolizes Darwin far more than he should be, for whatever severely misguided philosophical and/or religious reasons, would even dare to pretend the situation should be otherwise as you have done. Of related note, besides failing at the level of population genetics, Natural Selection also fails on two levels of physical reality itself. Natural Selection fails because it works at the gross level of the entire organism instead of at the genetic level where it needs to work. And Natural Selection also fails at the 'quarter-power scaling' level since quarter power scaling operates as if it is 4-Dimensional and yet Natural Selection operates at the 3-Dimensional level of the entire organism.

The GS Principle (The Genetic Selection Principle) - Abel - 2009 Excerpt: The GS Principle, sometimes called “The 2nd Law of Biology,” states that selection must occur at the molecular/genetic level, not just at the fittest phenotypic/organismic level, to produce and explain life.,,, (Yet) Natural selection cannot operate at the genetic level. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19273248 Selection Threshold Severely Constrains Capture of Beneficial Mutations - John C. Sanford – 2013 Concluding comments Our findings raise a very interesting theoretical problem — in a large genome, how do the millions of low-impact (yet functional) nucleotides arise? It is universally agreed that selection works very well for high-impact mutations. However, unless some new and as yet undiscovered process is operating in nature, there should be selection breakdown for the great majority of mutations that have small impact on fitness. We have now shown that this applies equally to both beneficial and deleterious mutations, and we have shown that selection interference is especially important when there are high-impact beneficial mutations. We conclude that only a very small fraction of all non-neutral mutations are selectable within large genomes. Our results reinforce and extend the findings of earlier studies [1–13], which in general employed many simplifying assumptions and rarely included more than a single source of biological noise. We show that selection breakdown is not just a simple function of population size, but is seriously impacted by other factors, especially selection interference. We are convinced that our formulation and methodology (i.e., genetic accounting) provide the most biologically-realistic analysis of selection breakdown to date. http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814508728_0011 Post-Darwinist - Denyse O'Leary - Dec. 2010 Excerpt: They quote West et al. (1999), “Although living things occupy a three-dimensional space, their internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional. Quarter-power scaling laws are perhaps as universal and as uniquely biological as the biochemical pathways of metabolism, the structure and function of the genetic code and the process of natural selection." They comment, "In the words of these authors, natural selection has exploited variations on this fractal theme to produce the incredible variety of biological form and function', but there were severe geometric and physical constraints on metabolic processes." "The conclusion here is inescapable, that the driving force for these invariant scaling laws cannot have been natural selection. It's inconceivable that so many different organisms, spanning different kingdoms and phyla, may have blindly 'tried' all sorts of power laws and that only those that have by chance 'discovered' the one-quarter power law reproduced and thrived." Quotations from Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, What Darwin Got Wrong (London: Profile Books, 2010), p. 78-79. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/16037/ The abject failure of Natural Selection on two levels of physical reality – video (2016) (princess and the pea paradox & quarter power scaling) https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1135217836491148/?type=2&theater

Moreover, although I can't comment on Darwin's work on worms and corals since, frankly, they are just not that importantly to me scientifically, I do know that biogeography and geology in general were not Darwin's strong suits either: The following video is very interesting for it shows a geological formation that is now known to have been formed by a catastrophic flood, yet Charles Darwin himself had 'predicted' the geological formation was formed 'gradually':

Where Darwin Went Wrong - geology video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3darzVqzV2o

Biogeography also fails, in fundamental ways, to uphold Darwin's claim on it:

Problem 9: Neo-Darwinism Struggles to Explain the Biogeographical Distribution of many Species. - Casey Luskin http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/02/problem_9_neo-d091181.html

supplemental notes:

Doubting Darwin: Algae Findings Surprise Scientists - April 28, 2014 Excerpt: One of Charles Darwin's hypotheses posits that closely related species will compete for food and other resources more strongly with one another than with distant relatives, because they occupy similar ecological niches. Most biologists long have accepted this to be true. Thus, three researchers were more than a little shaken to find that their experiments on fresh water green algae failed to support Darwin's theory — at least in one case. "It was completely unexpected," says Bradley Cardinale, associate professor in the University of Michigan's school of natural resources & environment. "When we saw the results, we said 'this can't be."' We sat there banging our heads against the wall. Darwin's hypothesis has been with us for so long, how can it not be right?" The researchers ,,,— were so uncomfortable with their results that they spent the next several months trying to disprove their own work. But the research held up.,,, The scientists did not set out to disprove Darwin, but, in fact, to learn more about the genetic and ecological uniqueness of fresh water green algae so they could provide conservationists with useful data for decision-making. "We went into it assuming Darwin to be right, and expecting to come up with some real numbers for conservationists," Cardinale says. "When we started coming up with numbers that showed he wasn't right, we were completely baffled.",,, Darwin "was obsessed with competition," Cardinale says. "He assumed the whole world was composed of species competing with each other, but we found that one-third of the species of algae we studied actually like each other. They don't grow as well unless you put them with another species. It may be that nature has a heck of a lot more mutualisms than we ever expected. ",,, Maybe Darwin's presumption that the world may be dominated by competition is wrong." http://www.livescience.com/45205-data-dont-back-up-darwin-in-algae-study-nsf-bts.html Darwin 'Wrong': Species Living Together Does Not Encourage Evolution - December 20, 2013 Excerpt: Charles Darwin's theory of evolution set out in the Origin of Species has been proven wrong by scientists studying ovenbirds. Researchers at Oxford University found that species living together do not evolve differently to avoid competing with one another for food and habitats – a theory put forward by Darwin 150 years ago. The ovenbird is one of the most diverse bird families in the world and researchers were looking to establish the processes causing them to evolve. Published in Nature, the research compared the beaks, legs and songs of 90% of ovenbird species. Findings showed that while the birds living together were consistently more different than those living apart, this was the result of age differences. Once the variation of age was accounted for, birds that live together were more similar than those living separately – directly contradicting Darwin's view. The species that lived together had beaks and legs no more different than those living apart,,, ,,,there is no shortage of evidence for competition driving divergent evolution in some very young lineages. But we found no evidence that this process explains differences across a much larger sample of species.,,, He said that the reasons why birds living together appear to evolve less are "difficult to explain",,, http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/darwin-wrong-species-living-together-does-not-encourage-evolution-1429927

bornagain77

TWSYF, don't know about 'outclassed' but certainly out 'cut and pasted.' And what fine sources BA uses. Atleast at WEIT and Pandas I can get good science source material. Nobody ever asks me to go to 'evolutionnews', or even 'youtube', as a credible science evidence site. 'Darwinconspiracy.com'? Heh:) His two chapters on biogeography started that field of study, he did explain how coral atolls formed, he did bring to light the importance of the humble earthworm, he was a prolific and profound author. And while history will forget most of your favourite 'scientists', his importance will live on; you know this to be true. Now which of the above statements can be disproved by BA? rvb8

BornAgain77...outclassing another atheist/Darwinist. Keep up the great work. It brings joy to my heart every time! Truth Will Set You Free

If the "sofa" is still created by material means without resort to a designer, I don't see how that advances ID theory. Further, most ID proponents want to see materialism defeated, and it doesn't appear that the replacement sofa is capable of such a feat. rhampton7

Woh! The guy that said black people are just above the gorilla and below the white man was a good scientist? Really? What science did he use to observe that? What science did he use to make his conclusion? I wonder...... Andre

supplemental notes on population genetics's mathematical falsification of Darwinian claims:

Whale Evolution vs. Population Genetics - Richard Sternberg and Paul Nelson - (excerpted from 'Living Waters' video) (2015) https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1161131450566453/?type=2&theater Thou Shalt Not Put Evolutionary Theory to a Test - Douglas Axe - July 18, 2012 Excerpt: "For example, McBride criticizes me for not mentioning genetic drift in my discussion of human origins, apparently without realizing that the result of Durrett and Schmidt rules drift out. Each and every specific genetic change needed to produce humans from apes would have to have conferred a significant selective advantage in order for humans to have appeared in the available time (i.e. the mutations cannot be 'neutral'). Any aspect of the transition that requires two or more mutations to act in combination in order to increase fitness would take way too long (greater than 100 million years). My challenge to McBride, and everyone else who believes the evolutionary story of human origins, is not to provide the list of mutations that (they think) did the trick, but rather a list of mutations that (actually) can do it. Otherwise they’re in the position of insisting that something is a scientific fact without having the faintest idea how it even could be.” Doug Axe PhD. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/thou_shalt_not062351.html Doug Axe on What Seduces Us in the “Darwinian Story” - video Quote: “I've recognized that people find something seductive about the evolutionary story. And that is, if you can point out similarities between things then people find it at least intriguing the idea that there can be transitions that go from A to B, because you see the similarities. And the similarities are certainly suggestive. A key take home for me that I would like people to get from reading the book, (Human Origins), is that Darwinists really need to confront not the similarities, but the differences. To say that A and B are similar and that you have a theory that can explain the similarities is to say nothing at all. Because similarities don't really need an explanation. What needs explanation is the differences in all these transitions of going from A to B. So that is the key focus for us. In all of these substantial transitions of form, there are not only similarities , they are there, but there are differences. Can Darwinism explain the differences? If I can get people to think about that, to realize how hard it is for Darwinism to explain even really, really modest differences”,,, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnFs5D-vvnI

Also of note:

Coming in July from Douglas Axe – Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition that Life is Designed http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2016/06/coming-in-july-from-douglas-axe-undeniable-how-biology-confirms-our-intuition-that-life-is-designed/ "Starting with the hallowed halls of academic science, Axe dismantles the widespread belief that Darwin’s theory of evolution is indisputably true, showing instead that a gaping hole has been at its center from the beginning. He then explains in plain English the science that proves our design intuition scientifically valid." - Amazon description https://www.amazon.com/Undeniable-Biology-Confirms-Intuition-Designed/dp/0062349589

bornagain77

In other words, Neutral theory was not developed because of any empirical observation, but was actually developed because it was forced upon Darwinism by the mathematics of population genetics. (i.e. neutral theory is actually the result of a theoretical failure of Darwinism within mathematics!) William J Murray quips:

(With the adoption of the 'neutral theory' of evolution by prominent Darwinists, and the casting aside of Natural Selection as a major player in evolution),,, "One wonders what would have become of evolution had Darwin originally claimed that it was simply the accumulation of random, neutral variations that generated all of the deeply complex, organized, interdependent structures we find in biology? Would we even know his name today? What exactly is Darwin really famous for now? Advancing a really popular, disproven idea (of Natural Selection), along the lines of Luminiferous Aether? Without the erroneous but powerful meme of “survival of the fittest” to act as an opiate for the Victorian intelligentsia and as a rationale for 20th century fascism, how might history have proceeded under the influence of the less vitriolic maxim, “Survival of the Happenstance”?" - William J Murray

Since Darwin's main contribution to science, i.e. Natural Selection, was thrown overboard since it is mathematically unworkable, I would hardly consider him a great scientist! Moreover, the mathematics population genetics goes even further than just throwing natural selection overboard as to undermining the Darwinian worldview from within. In this following video, Donald Hoffman has, through computer simulations of population genetics, clearly illustrated the self-defeating nature of the naturalistic worldview in regards to undermining the reliability of our observations of reality.

Donald Hoffman: Do we see reality as it is? – Video – 9:59 minute mark Quote: “fitness does depend on reality as it is, yes.,,, Fitness is not the same thing as reality as it is, and it is fitness, and not reality as it is, that figures centrally in the equations of evolution. So, in my lab, we have run hundreds of thousands of evolutionary game simulations with lots of different randomly chosen worlds and organisms that compete for resources in those worlds. Some of the organisms see all of the reality. Others see just part of the reality. And some see none of the reality. Only fitness. Who wins? Well I hate to break it to you but perception of reality goes extinct. In almost every simulation, organisms that see none of reality, but are just tuned to fitness, drive to extinction that perceive reality as it is. So the bottom line is, evolution does not favor veridical, or accurate perceptions. Those (accurate) perceptions of reality go extinct. Now this is a bit stunning. How can it be that not seeing the world accurately gives us a survival advantage?” https://youtu.be/oYp5XuGYqqY?t=601 The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality - April 2016 The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman uses evolutionary game theory to show that our perceptions of an independent reality must be illusions. Excerpt: “The classic argument is that those of our ancestors who saw more accurately had a competitive advantage over those who saw less accurately and thus were more likely to pass on their genes that coded for those more accurate perceptions, so after thousands of generations we can be quite confident that we’re the offspring of those who saw accurately, and so we see accurately. That sounds very plausible. But I think it is utterly false. It misunderstands the fundamental fact about evolution, which is that it’s about fitness functions — mathematical functions that describe how well a given strategy achieves the goals of survival and reproduction. The mathematical physicist Chetan Prakash proved a theorem that I devised that says: According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness. Never.” https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160421-the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality/

Thus, in what should be needless to say, a worldview that undermines the scientific method itself by holding all our observations of reality are illusory is NOT a worldview that can be firmly grounded within the scientific method!

Why Evolutionary Theory Cannot Survive Itself – Nancy Pearcey – March 8, 2015 Excerpt: Steven Pinker writes, “Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes the truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not.” The upshot is that survival is no guarantee of truth. If survival is the only standard, we can never know which ideas are true and which are adaptive but false. To make the dilemma even more puzzling, evolutionists tell us that natural selection has produced all sorts of false concepts in the human mind. Many evolutionary materialists maintain that free will is an illusion, consciousness is an illusion, even our sense of self is an illusion — and that all these false ideas were selected for their survival value. So how can we know whether the theory of evolution itself is one of those false ideas? The theory undercuts itself.,,, Of course, the atheist pursuing his research has no choice but to rely on rationality, just as everyone else does. The point is that he has no philosophical basis for doing so. Only those who affirm a rational Creator have a basis for trusting human rationality. The reason so few atheists and materialists seem to recognize the problem is that, like Darwin, they apply their skepticism selectively. They apply it to undercut only ideas they reject, especially ideas about God. They make a tacit exception for their own worldview commitments. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/03/why_evolutionar094171.html

Moreover, Completely contrary to materialistic premises, conscious observation, far from being illusory, is experimentally found to be far more integral to reality, i.e. far more reliable, than materialism had ever predicted. In the following experiment, it was found that reality doesn’t exist without an observer.

New Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It – June 3, 2015 Excerpt: The results of the Australian scientists’ experiment, which were published in the journal Nature Physics, show that this choice is determined by the way the object is measured, which is in accordance with what quantum theory predicts. “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Truscott in a press release.,,, “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,” he said. Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer. http://themindunleashed.org/2015/06/new-mind-blowing-experiment-confirms-that-reality-doesnt-exist-if-you-are-not-looking-at-it.html

Apparently science itself could care less if atheists believe their observations of reality are illusory! bornagain77

In fact, Darwin and his followers, far from being great scientists, have done more harm to modern science, and have even done more great harm to society at large, than any other group of people ever have.

The Threat to the Scientific Method that Explains the Spate of Fraudulent Science Publications - Calvin Beisner | Jul 23, 2014 Excerpt: It is precisely because modern science has abandoned its foundations in the Biblical worldview (which holds, among other things, that a personal, rational God designed a rational universe to be understood and controlled by rational persons made in His image) and the Biblical ethic (which holds, among other things, that we are obligated to tell the truth even when it inconveniences us) that science is collapsing. As such diverse historians and philosophers of science as Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Duhem, Loren Eiseley, Rodney Stark, and many others have observed,, science—not an occasional flash of insight here and there, but a systematic, programmatic, ongoing way of studying and controlling the world—arose only once in history, and only in one place: medieval Europe, once known as “Christendom,” where that Biblical worldview reigned supreme. That is no accident. Science could not have arisen without that worldview. http://townhall.com/columnists/calvinbeisner/2014/07/23/the-threat-to-the-scientific-method-that-explains-the-spate-of-fraudulent-science-publications-n1865201/page/full Several other resources backing up this claim are available, such as Thomas Woods, Stanley Jaki, David Linberg, Edward Grant, J.L. Heilbron, and Christopher Dawson. How Darwin's Theory Changed the World Rejection of Judeo-Christian values Excerpt: Weikart explains how accepting Darwinist dogma shifted society’s thinking on human life: “Before Darwinism burst onto the scene in the mid-nineteenth century, the idea of the sanctity of human life was dominant in European thought and law (though, as with all ethical principles, not always followed in practice). Judeo-Christian ethics proscribed the killing of innocent human life, and the Christian churches explicitly forbade murder, infanticide, abortion, and even suicide. “The sanctity of human life became enshrined in classical liberal human rights ideology as ‘the right to life,’ which according to John Locke and the United States Declaration of Independence, was one of the supreme rights of every individual” (p. 75). Only in the late nineteenth and especially the early twentieth century did significant debate erupt over issues relating to the sanctity of human life, especially infanticide, euthanasia, abortion, and suicide. It was no mere coincidence that these contentious issues emerged at the same time that Darwinism was gaining in influence. Darwinism played an important role in this debate, for it altered many people’s conceptions of the importance and value of human life, as well as the significance of death” (ibid.). http://www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn85/darwin-theory-changed-world.htm also see, 'From Darwin to Hitler' by Richard Weikart

To reiterate, Charles Darwin received his training in (bad) liberal theology and was not even a trained scientist, in any meaningful sense of the word, since he hated mathematics. In fact, Darwin said that he found mathematics to be ‘repugnant’:

“During the three years which I spent at Cambridge my time was wasted, as far as the academical studies were concerned, as completely as at Edinburgh & at school. I attempted mathematics, & even went during the summer of 1828 with a private tutor (a very dull man) to Barmouth, 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.” Charles Darwin, 1887 – Recollections of the Development of my Mind & Character, the work which Darwin himself referred to as his autobiography

Exactly how does one construct a supposedly 'scientific' theory without mathematics?

Evolution is Missing a Mathematical Formula Excerpt: Virtually all scientists acknowledge that mathematics is the real language of science. Every theory uses words to describe and postulate the theory, but the true test of a theory is numbers and mathematics. It is numbers and mathematical formulae that distinguish true science from hocus-pocus.,,, Every scientific theory that has been promoted to the status of being a scientific law has been quantified and/or embodied into one or more mathematical formulae that make accurate predictions. But no scientist has been able to derive any working formula from the Theory of Evolution and no one has been able to quantify its dictums. Millions of scientists have tried to quantify the Theory of Evolution and they have all failed to do so. http://darwinconspiracy.com/article_1_rev2.php

Moreover, even if Darwin were trained in mathematics instead of in liberal theology, There simply were and are no physical laws for Darwin and his followers to build a rigid, matheatically based, and testable, theory of evolution on. i.e. There simply is no mathematically defined 'law of evolution' within the physical universe as there is a mathematically defined 'law of gravity' within the physical universe:

WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Evolution is True – Roger Highfield – January 2014 Excerpt:,,, Whatever the case, those universal truths—’laws’—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology. Little seems to have changed from a decade ago when the late and great John Maynard Smith wrote a chapter on evolutionary game theory for a book on the most powerful equations of science: his contribution did not include a single equation. http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25468 “It is our contention that if ‘random’ is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.” Murray Eden, “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory,” Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, editors Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, June 1967, p. 109. The Evolution of Ernst: Interview with Ernst Mayr – 2004 Excerpt: biology (Darwinian Evolution) differs from the physical sciences in that in the physical sciences, all theories, I don’t know exceptions so I think it’s probably a safe statement, all theories are based somehow or other on natural laws. In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences.,,, And so that’s what I do in this book. I show that the theoretical basis, you might call it, or I prefer to call it the philosophy of biology, has a totally different basis than the theories of physics. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-evolution-of-ernst-in/

In fact, not only does Evolution not have any universal law to appeal to as other overarching theories of science have, Entropy, i.e. the second law of thermodynamics, a law with great mathematical explanatory power in science, almost directly contradicts Darwinian claims that increases in functional complexity can be easily had:

How the Scientific Consensus is Maintained -- and How it Can be Challenged - Granville Sewell - September 3, 2013 Conclusion: the journal BIO-Complexity has just published my new article "Entropy and Evolution," which I believe contains the strongest and clearest presentation of my viewpoint to date. The first thought that will occur to many people who read it will be, how could this illogical compensation argument have gone unchallenged for so long in the scientific literature? Well, now you know how. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/09/how_the_scienti_1076101.html “Darwin’s theory is easily the dumbest idea ever taken seriously by science." Granville Sewell - Professor Of Mathematics - University Of Texas - El Paso

In fact, without a rigidly defined mathematical basis based on a physical law to test against, Darwinian evolution is more properly classified as a pseudo-science rather than a proper science:

Darwinian Evolution is a Pseudo-Science - Mathematics – video (2016) https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1132659110080354/?type=2&theater

Some Darwinists take umbrage to being told that their theory is not a even testable science in the first place since it has no rigidly defined mathematical basis to test against as other overarching theories of science have.,,,

“On the other hand, I disagree that Darwin’s theory is as `solid as any explanation in science.; Disagree? I regard the claim as preposterous. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to thirteen or so decimal places; so, too, general relativity. A leaf trembling in the wrong way would suffice to shatter either theory. What can Darwinian theory offer in comparison?” - Berlinski, D., “A Scientific Scandal?: David Berlinski & Critics,” Commentary, July 8, 2003

To counter this, Darwinists will often point to population genetics to try to counter the fact that Darwinian evolution is without a testable mathematical foundation. Yet, in so far as the math of population genetics can be applied to Darwinian claims, this move backfires on Darwinists since the mathematics of population genetics undermines the Darwinian worldview from within. First off, population genetics, far from bolstering the claims of Darwinists, removed natural selection as a major player in the theory of evolution

Haldane's Dilemma Excerpt: Haldane was the first to recognize there was a cost to selection which limited what it realistically could be expected to do. He did not fully realize that his thinking would create major problems for evolutionary theory. He calculated that in man it would take 6 million years to fix just 1,000 mutations (assuming 20 years per generation).,,, Man and chimp differ by at least 150 million nucleotides representing at least 40 million hypothetical mutations (Britten, 2002). So if man evolved from a chimp-like creature, then during that process there were at least 20 million mutations fixed within the human lineage (40 million divided by 2), yet natural selection could only have selected for 1,000 of those. All the rest would have had to been fixed by random drift - creating millions of nearly-neutral deleterious mutations. This would not just have made us inferior to our chimp-like ancestors - it surely would have killed us. Since Haldane's dilemma there have been a number of efforts to sweep the problem under the rug, but the problem is still exactly the same. ReMine (1993, 2005) has extensively reviewed the problem, and has analyzed it using an entirely different mathematical formulation - but has obtained identical results. John Sanford PhD. - "Genetic Entropy and The Mystery of the Genome" - pg. 159-160 Kimura's Quandary Excerpt: Kimura realized that Haldane was correct,,, He developed his neutral theory in response to this overwhelming evolutionary problem. Paradoxically, his theory led him to believe that most mutations are unselectable, and therefore,,, most 'evolution' must be independent of selection! Because he was totally committed to the primary axiom (neo-Darwinism), Kimura apparently never considered his cost arguments could most rationally be used to argue against the Axiom's (neo-Darwinism's) very validity. John Sanford PhD. - "Genetic Entropy and The Mystery of the Genome" - pg. 161 - 162 Genetic Entropy – references to several numerical simulations of population genetics analyzing and falsifying all flavors of Darwinian evolution (neutral theory included),, (via John Sanford and company) http://www.geneticentropy.org/#!properties/ctzx

bornagain77

rvb8, as to this claim:

"Darwin is one of the greatest scientists who has ever lived."

Actually Charles Darwin was NOT one of the "greatest scientists who has ever lived." Far from it. Darwin was primarily a liberal theologian who practiced bad theology rather than a great scientist who practiced good science. In fact, 'Origin of Species' itself was primarily based on (bad) theology rather than on any sound science.

Someone tries telling the truth: Darwin wasn’t that great but he met an elite need - July 29, 2014 Excerpt: , he (Charles Darwin) devoted almost every bit of his magnum opus (Origin Of Species) to tedious examples of artificial selection in domestic animals. He brushed away the glaring advantage of artificial over natural selection with rhetoric along the lines of “I see no reason why” natural selection might not have fashioned the eye or any other organ or living thing. For such schoolboy ineptitude he was roundly criticized by his contemporaries, all of whom are now consigned to history’s dustbin, regardless of their skills and biological competency. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/someone-tries-telling-the-truth-darwin-wasnt-that-great-but-he-met-an-elite-need/ Charles Darwin, Theologian: Major New Article on Darwin's Use of Theology in the Origin of Species - May 2011 Excerpt: The Origin supplies abundant evidence of theology in action; as Dilley observes: I have argued that, in the first edition of the Origin, Darwin drew upon at least the following positiva theological claims in his case for descent with modification (and against special creation): 1. Human beings are not justified in believing that God creates in ways analogous to the intellectual powers of the human mind. 2. A God who is free to create as He wishes would create new biological limbs de novo rather than from a common pattern. 3. A respectable deity would create biological structures in accord with a human conception of the 'simplest mode' to accomplish the functions of these structures. 4. God would only create the minimum structure required for a given part's function. 5. God does not provide false empirical information about the origins of organisms. 6. God impressed the laws of nature on matter. 7. God directly created the first 'primordial' life. 8. God did not perform miracles within organic history subsequent to the creation of the first life. 9. A 'distant' God is not morally culpable for natural pain and suffering. 10. The God of special creation, who allegedly performed miracles in organic history, is not plausible given the presence of natural pain and suffering. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/05/charles_darwin_theologian_majo046391.html

And bad theology is is still present in Darwinian 'science'

Methodological Naturalism: A Rule That No One Needs or Obeys - Paul Nelson - September 22, 2014 Excerpt: It is a little-remarked but nonetheless deeply significant irony that evolutionary biology is the most theologically entangled science going. Open a book like Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True (2009) or John Avise's Inside the Human Genome (2010), and the theology leaps off the page. A wise creator, say Coyne, Avise, and many other evolutionary biologists, would not have made this or that structure; therefore, the structure evolved by undirected processes. Coyne and Avise, like many other evolutionary theorists going back to Darwin himself, make numerous "God-wouldn't-have-done-it-that-way" arguments, thus predicating their arguments for the creative power of natural selection and random mutation on implicit theological assumptions about the character of God and what such an agent (if He existed) would or would not be likely to do.,,, ,,,with respect to one of the most famous texts in 20th-century biology, Theodosius Dobzhansky's essay "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" (1973). Although its title is widely cited as an aphorism, the text of Dobzhansky's essay is rarely read. It is, in fact, a theological treatise. As Dilley (2013, p. 774) observes: "Strikingly, all seven of Dobzhansky's arguments hinge upon claims about God's nature, actions, purposes, or duties. In fact, without God-talk, the geneticist's arguments for evolution are logically invalid. In short, theology is essential to Dobzhansky's arguments.",, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/09/methodological_1089971.html

As briefly mentioned previously, the scientists of Darwin's day largely rejected his theory as being unscientific whilst the liberal, unscientific, clergy of his day (and today) readily accept(ed) it.

Was Darwin a Scholar or a Pitchman? - Michael Flannery - October 20, 2015 Excerpt: By and large, the scientists of his day were not much impressed with Darwin's theory. John Herschel called natural selection "the law of higgledy-piggledy," and William Whewell thought the theory consisted of "speculations" that were "quite unproved by facts," so much so that he refused to put the book on the shelves of the Trinity College Library. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/10/was_darwin_a_sc100191.html 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.” 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/ An Early Critique of Darwin Warned of a Lower Grade of Degradation - Cornelius Hunter - Dec. 22, 2012 Excerpt: "Many of your wide conclusions are based upon assumptions which can neither be proved nor disproved. Why then express them in the language & arrangements of philosophical induction?" (Sedgwick to Darwin - 1859),,, And anticipating the fixity-of-species strawman, Sedgwick explained to the Sage of Kent (Darwin) that he had conflated the observable fact of change of time (development) with the explanation of how it came about. Everyone agreed on development, but the key question of its causes and mechanisms remained. Darwin had used the former as a sort of proof of a particular explanation for the latter. “We all admit development as a fact of history;” explained Sedgwick, “but how came it about?”,,, For Darwin, warned Sedgwick, had made claims well beyond the limits of science. Darwin issued truths that were not likely ever to be found anywhere “but in the fertile womb of man’s imagination.” The fertile womb of man’s imagination. What a cogent summary of evolutionary theory. Sedgwick made more correct predictions in his short letter than all the volumes of evolutionary literature to come. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2012/12/an-early-critique-of-darwin-warned-of.html SKEPTICS OF DARWINIAN THEORY Sedgwick to Darwin "...I have read your book with more pain than pleasure. Parts of it I admired greatly, parts I laughed at till my sides were almost sore; other parts I read with absolute sorrow, because I think them utterly false and grievously mischievous." Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) - one of the founders of modern geology. - The Spectator, 1860 http://veritas-ucsb.org/library/origins/quotes/critics.html “Religious views were mixed, with the Church of England scientific establishment reacting against the book, while liberal Anglicans strongly supported Darwin’s natural selection as an instrument of God’s design.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactions_to_On_the_Origin_of_Species

bornagain77

Darwin is one of the greatest scientists who has ever lived. His breadth of work and contribution to disciplines as diverse as geology to bio-geography, mean his legacy, and meory are assured. He solved "the puzzle" of coral atolls, he wrote extensively on barnacles. "The Voyage of the Beagal", a best seller, at the time and I recommend it to any one with a curious, and literary bent. "On The Origin of Species", "The Descent of Man", need I say more? OK! “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals", perhaps the primordial work leading to new branches of scientifc disciplines: More? OK! "The Power of Movement in Plants", "The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms". Papers, monographs, letters the list is endless, and indistructable; people have been trying for decades. And now Suzan Mazur is on the job, and she will bring the whole foul ediface down; I think not! rvb8