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At Vox Popoli: Neo-Darwinism is dead

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Or it would be, except for one thing:

Some of you will recall that I thoroughly, and in some detail, demonstrated the way in which, according to the present scientific understanding of astrophysics, genetic biology, and mathematics, the modern Neo-Darwinian synthesis of the theory of evolution by (mostly) natural selection is impossible, caught as it is between the Scylla of a fixed amount of time and the Charybdis of the number of fixed mutations required to take place in the evolution between one historical species and a present species.

To put it in the most simple terms that even a biologist should be able to follow, if we are told that a football team has gained 1,500 yards on the ground while averaging three yards per rushing play, and we know that the maximum number of offensive plays per team per game is 84, then we know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the yards reported were not gained in a single 60-minute game. They could not have been. It is impossible.

Vox Day, “Neo-Darwinism is dead” at Mind Matters News

Neo-Darwinism is a religious tenet of naturalism. It conjures impossible complexities out of inert matter by the magic of belief. Objections such as the ones cited above are evidence of disloyalty to the faith.

And the scientific verbiage gymnastics are amazing.

Hat tip: Ken Francis, co-author with Theodore Dalrymple of The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd

Comments
I am waiting for some desperate Darwinist to come up with the following explanation for rapid evolution of major changes in the genome: Consider individual A gets mutation a, while B gets mutation b in the same gene. A and B then mate and 25% of their offspring get a+b. One generation produces two mutations. Now consider four individuals A, B, C & D, each with different mutations in the same gene: a, b, c & d. First generation, A & B mate, producing 1 in 4 offspring with a+b. Meanwhile, C & D mate, producing 1 in 4 offspring with c+d. Second generation, the a+b offspring mate with the c+d one and some percentage (up to 25%) of their offspring get a+b+c+d mutations, all in two generations. Clearly, this could continue, so that after N generations, you could get offspring with 2^N mutations in the same gene -- in principle. So, if you have a duplicate gene at the start, in principle, you could collect 64 mutations in the duplicate after only six generations. Voila, a new functional protein in a geological blink of the eye! Perhaps someone has already made that argument? Of course, the proponents of such rapid evolution would have to ignore reality: the combined tiny probabilities of getting the "correct" mutations in each case (without any foresight!), collecting no adverse mutations along the way, the chance of the 64 individuals meeting and mating with each other successfully among a large population, and the chance of this happening over and over for almost every species through time, in order to get numerous new genes in each age. So many ways for math to undermine neo-Darwinism, and so few biologists willing to take a look!Fasteddious
June 20, 2021
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You should take your own advice when it comes to religionAaronS1978
June 19, 2021
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Why would I listen to an egocentric science-fiction author and video-gamer on evolutionary biology?Seversky
June 19, 2021
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Bob- ironic statement coming from the “just-so story” championszweston
June 19, 2021
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kf - you have to demonstrate that, not just state it.Bob O'H
June 19, 2021
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BO'H, the time to create much less fix the relevant complex, functionally specific organisation and information simply is not there. KFkairosfocus
June 19, 2021
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Ah, he assumes that humans are long-lived bacteria, with similar population sizes. He seems not to be aware of basic neo-Darwinist concepts such as effective population size. Basically, time to fixation is dependent on effective population size. Humans have a smaller effective population size, so time to fixation is shorter. Also - Denyse's inability to correctly identify where things are published has struck again. The posts she links to are on Blogspot, not Mind Matters News.Bob O'H
June 19, 2021
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The problem with Neo-Darwinism is that DNA does not determine biological form. That means changes to DNA cannot produce the diversity of life starting from some unknown populations of prokaryotes.ET
June 19, 2021
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The comments on the link are worth reading too. It’s funny how few comments some of the more direct and blunt the truth is shown but when semantics are debated or some side issue (animals in heaven) the dialogue is unending. What day you on this article, sev?zweston
June 19, 2021
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