Remember Yale computer scientist David Gelernter who, like lots of smart people, gave up on Darwinism? Well, Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne got wind of it:
David Gelenrter is a well known computer scientist at Yale, famous for his innovations in parallel computing, and is also a writer and artist. He’s a religious Jew, a conservative, and—as of two years ago—a denier of anthropogenic global warming, a view at odds with his scientific background. In 1993 he was also badly injured in the hand and eye by a mail bomb sent by Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.
Coyne doesn’t think the Unabomber visit excuses Gelernter’s offence:
I’ve pondered at great length how a man can be apparently as intelligent as Gelernter, yet so susceptible to the blandishments of Intelligent Design—and so ignorant of the evidence that refutes it. All I can think of is religion. I may certainly be wrong here, but there’s some mental block that the man has against evidence that has convinced nearly every biologist alive.
Gelenrter has no formal training in biology, and I suppose I could say he doesn’t have the credibility to even attack evolution (he does seem ignorant of the fossil record). But I hate to pull rank and use arguments based on authority. All I can say is that his ignorance is both woeful and harmful, and he is serving as a useful idiot-manqué for the Intelligent Design Creationist movement. Jerry Coyne, “Computer scientist David Gelernter drinks the academic Kool-Aid, buys into intelligent design” at Why Evolution Is True
Gelernter is how likely to read Coyne’s diatribe and conclude he must be all wrong? But then Darwinians tend not to notice what others do. Presumably, it’s an adaptation.
Note: Jerry Coyne doesn’t like David Berlinski, top guy at Inference Review, either and can’t imagine why anyone reads his popular books. Lots of people are talking about Inference Review so be sure to keep the link to its articles handy.
See also: Yale computer scientist gives up on Darwin Whether ID offers correct explanations is separate from the fact that Darwinism does not. Anyway, just think. Gelernter actually read the books, instead of merely opposing them. He goes on to develop his thinking in detail.
Remember David Gelernter On Darwin’s Thugs? He’s Hit The Big Time, Sort Of. “Fiercely Anti-Intellectual” At that point, the “punks, bullies, and hangers-on” were attacking philosopher Thomas Nagel
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Biologists are odd guys…
In 21st century, they still insist on a theory, which force you to believe that miniature autonomous self-navigating flying drones (flying insect) self-assembled with no help from engineers …
Such a miniature flying drone (a fruit fly) is an engineering SCI-FI even in 21st century..
From what I’ve seen the Darwinist arguments always rely on hand wavy terms: overwhelming evidence, science, convinced biologists.
If the evidence is so obviously compelling it’d be great if they could list the specific evidence in layman accessible format and explain how that supports the specifics of Darwin’s theory.
Then they also like to engage in shaming, like a teacher scolding a student. I’ve never found this approach convincing. Whoever uses the shaming approach just tells me they have lost the argument.
Coyne says that Gelenrter doesn’t understand biology (or the fossil record). My question for Coyne is, ‘What in blue blazes does biology have to do with Darwinian evolution in the first place?”.
As Marc Kirschner, founding chair of the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, stated, “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.”
Or as A.S. Wilkins, editor of the journal BioEssays, stated, “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.”
Or as Jerry Coyne himself admitted, ““Truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say. Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably. But hasn’t evolution helped guide animal and plant breeding? Not very much. Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of ‘like begets like’. Even now, as its practitioners admit, the field of quantitative genetics has been of little value in helping improve varieties. Future advances will almost certainly come from transgenics, which is not based on evolution at all.”
Darwinian Evolution has nothing to do with biology. Materialists like to claim evolution is indispensable to experimental biology and led the way to many breakthroughs, yet in an article entitled “Evolutionary theory contributes little to experimental biology”, this expert author begs to differ.
Biology owes nothing to Darwinism. Darwinian evolution is simply a metaphysical belief, i.e. atheistic materialism, that is added onto biological discoveries as a ‘narrative gloss’.
At the 7:00 minute mark of this following video, Dr. Behe gives an example of how positive evidence is falsely attributed to evolution by using the word ‘evolution’ as a narrative gloss in peer-reviewed literature:
Jonathan Wells weigh in here:
Ann Gauger weighs in here:
In fact, not only does Darwinian evolution have nothing to do with Biology, advances in quantum biology have now shown, with its reductive materialistic framework, that Darwinian evolution is not even on the correct theoretical, i.e. metaphysical, foundation in order to properly understand biology in the first place:
By any reasonable measure one may wish to invoke to determine if something is scientific or not, Darwinism fails to qualify as a science.
The main reason that Darwinian evolution fails to qualify as a science is that, although Darwinian evolution has been falsified by numerous lines of evidence, Darwinists themselves simply refuse to accept any reasonable falsification criteria of their theory:
As Karl Popper stated, “In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.”
Here are a few falsifications of Darwinian evolution that Darwinists simply refuse to ever accept as falsifications of their theory:
On top of all that, all of science, every nook and cranny of it, is based on intelligent design and is certainly not based on methodological naturalism as is presupposed by Darwinists.
From the essential Christian presuppositions that undergird the founding of modern science, (i.e. that the universe is rational and that the minds of men, being made in the ‘image of God’, can dare understand that rationality), to the intelligent design of the scientific instruments and experiments themselves, to the logical and mathematical analysis of experimental results, from top to bottom science itself is certainly not ‘natural’.
Not one scientific instrument would ever exist if men did not first intelligently design that scientific instrument. Not one test tube, microscope, telescope, spectroscope, or etc.. etc.., was ever just found laying around on a beach somewhere which was ‘naturally’ constructed by nature. Not one experimental result would ever be rationally analysed since there would be no immaterial minds to rationally analyze the immaterial mathematics that lay behind the intelligently designed experiments in the first place.
In fact, (as I have pointed out several times now), assuming Naturalism instead of Theism as the worldview on which all of science is based leads to the catastrophic epistemological failure of science itself.
Thus, although the Darwinist may firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
Coyne says, “a view at odds with his scientific background”. Usually when someone changes his mind 180 degrees, he has some pretty solid reasons for it. Thus, a Darwin believer changing to an ID supporter is surely more telling than a true-blue Darwinist remaining a true believer.
Then there is, “the evidence that refutes” ID. No evidence is on offer and I have yet to see any that holds up to examination, much less “refutes” ID. I can see why Coyne is angry – it is all he has to go on when his true faith is crumbling around him.