In time for Darwin’s birthday February 12:
The Dissent statement represents a splash of cold water on the great man. It reads, “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.” The signers hold professorships or doctorates from Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Berkeley, MIT, UCLA, the University of Pennsylvania, and many other prominent institutions.
They are also an increasingly international group. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, and the Brazilian Academy of Sciences are represented. Discovery Institute began taking names of signatories in 2001 in response to frequently heard assertions that there is no dissent, or “virtually” none … David Klinghoffer, ““Scientific Dissent from Darwinism” List: The Tip of an Iceberg” atEvolution News and Science Today:
Here’s the list. A characteristic statement:
“Darwinism was an interesting idea in the 19th century, when handwaving explanations gave a plausible, if not properly scientific, framework into which we could fit biological facts. However, what we have learned since the days of Darwin throws doubt on natural selection’s ability to create complex biological systems – and we still have little more than handwaving as an argument in its favor.” – Professor Colin Reeves, Dept of Mathematical Sciences Coventry University
and
“As a biochemist I became skeptical about Darwinism when I was confronted with the extreme intricacy of the genetic code and its many most intelligent strategies to code, decode, and protect its information,” said Dr. Marcos Eberlin, founder of the Thomson Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences in Brazil.
See also: Detailed bat and dolphin convergence in echolocation 200 genes? Is this magic, design, or a miracle? a friend asks. Or what?
Does the war on cancer reveal limits to random mutation? Time will tell if their treatment works but note that actual numerical limits are suggested here on the number of mutations that can happen randomly at the same time. Mathematics, not religion, is the enemy of Darwinism.
and
Cultural evolution theories “challenged” by multiple dwelling cave This kind of find is treated as problematic because it means that the missing link is still missing. Nobody is the subhuman. That’s not good news for a Darwinian approach to human evolution, in which someone must be the subhuman.
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