Darwinism is Unfalsifiable: or, “Evolution is a fact”

_{May 9, 2014

Design inference, Intelligent Design, rhetoric}

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I recently read about some study whose results conflict with Darwinian evolution. Despite the conflict, the author’s logic basically said that even though Darwinian thinking could not explain what nature contains, the fact that this happened meant that ‘somehow’ evolution had brought about this result, and that more study was needed to find out just how this had happened.

It occurred to me—for the first time—that this type of argument is made over and over again by Darwinists (evolutionary biologists, for the easily offended).

What do we hear:
(1) Even though the ‘odds’ of all the necessary elements and individual components of the ‘original’ cell and its contained DNA (or RNA, if we want to dream) is astronomically high, meaning that the chance of this happening randomly is effectively zero, we KNOW, that it DID HAPPEN; and, so, therefore no need to talk about the improbability of it all.
(2) The ‘odds’ of any individual protein sequence coming about by chance is astronomical; but we know it DID HAPPEN; therefore, who cares about any talk of improbability.
(3) The Cambrian Explosion happened too quickly for it to be attributed to neo-Darwinian mechanisms, yet, it DID HAPPEN; therefore, it’s just a matter of time before we figure out how “evolution did it.”
(4) Yes, the ‘odds’ of winning the lottery is sky-high; but, guess what, someone always wins; that is, it HAPPENS; therefore let’s just push to the side any talk of the improbability of it all.

If you catch my drift here, you can see that since the work of science is to discover ‘facts,’ then since ‘facts’ always HAPPEN, no one can deny they happened. And, since ‘evolution’ is a ‘fact,’ then every other ‘fact’ MUST BE EXPLAINABLE using Darwinian theory, or neo-Darwinian theory, or some kind of ‘materialistic’ explanation. Yes, that’s right: methodological naturalism.
IOW: “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”

Once Darwinists—-oops!!!, I mean, once evolutionary biologists assume the posture that nothing outside of natural forces can be invoked to explain biological phenomena, then “evolution” can NEVER be disproved, no matter what the next experiment turns up.

I often wondered how it could be that punctuated equilibria and the Neutral Theory, initially denounced by Darwinists, came to be accepted into the mainstream of Darwinian thought. I now see that the answer is that any ‘fact’ about nature/biology can always be integrated into evolutionary thought because these things DID/DO HAPPEN!! Who can argue with that?

“Junk-DNA”?? No problem. If it is shown that 100% of DNA is functional, evolutionary biologists will one day be saying: “But, we always thought this. It only makes sense that “evolution” [“nature” if you want to substitute] would eliminate anything that doesn’t have function.” And they will simply move on.

From the above, I reach this conclusion: It’s really a big waste of time trying to argue with Darwinists because there is nothing we can point to (remember, ‘facts’ are ‘facts’) that will change their minds.

Bottom line: Evolution is NOT falsifiable.

Comments

I'm willing to accept the idea of a Designer (or Creator), but I'm not very hot for Jehovah being the Creator or any of the myths that flow from that story. So I find the mice who commissioned the construction of Earth as an analogue computer in "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" to be a better working paradigm. If the Designer wanted us to know more about them, they would make the Near Death Experience more common, and longer. The fact that we don't know, and probably can't know, anything about the Designer does not mean that the Designer doesn't exist. Kinda the way that flatworms can't imagine what a human Biologist is or what motives the Biologist has for cutting flatworms in half (see "The Worm Runner's Digest"). Immediately jumping from the Theory of a Designer to Jehovah simply ruins the useful parts of Intelligent Design. If the Designer is Jehovah, that requires an entirely separate proof.mahuna_{May 9, 2014
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JLAfan2001 complains:
The same thing could be said about ID/creationism. Anything that comes up that doesn’t fit your theology is either ignored or “God just made it that way”. Bad design or good design, God does it all.
Yet, in actuality nothing could be further from the truth. As has been pointed out numerous times, ID is easily falsifiable:
"Orr maintains that the theory of intelligent design is not falsifiable. He’s wrong. To falsify design theory a scientist need only experimentally demonstrate that a bacterial flagellum, or any other comparably complex system, could arise by natural selection. If that happened I would conclude that neither flagella nor any system of similar or lesser complexity had to have been designed. In short, biochemical design would be neatly disproved."- Dr Behe in 1997 Michael Behe on Falsifying Intelligent Design - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8jXXJN4o_A The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity: David L. Abel - Null Hypothesis For Information Generation - 2009 Excerpt of conclusion pg. 42: "To focus the scientific community’s attention on its own tendencies toward overzealous metaphysical imagination bordering on “wish-fulfillment,” we propose the following readily falsifiable null hypothesis, and invite rigorous experimental attempts to falsify it: “Physicodynamics cannot spontaneously traverse The Cybernetic Cut: physicodynamics alone cannot organize itself into formally functional systems requiring algorithmic optimization, computational halting, and circuit integration.” A single exception of non trivial, unaided spontaneous optimization of formal function by truly natural process would falsify this null hypothesis." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2662469/ Can We Falsify Any Of The Following Null Hypothesis (For Information Generation) 1) Mathematical Logic 2) Algorithmic Optimization 3) Cybernetic Programming 4) Computational Halting 5) Integrated Circuits 6) Organization (e.g. homeostatic optimization far from equilibrium) 7) Material Symbol Systems (e.g. genetics) 8) Any Goal Oriented bona fide system 9) Language 10) Formal function of any kind 11) Utilitarian work
Whereas neo-Darwinism has no demarcation criteria so as to falsify it:
“nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin(ism) can be described as scientific” - Imre Lakatos (November 9, 1922 – February 2, 1974) a philosopher of mathematics and science, quote was as stated in 1973 LSE Scientific Method Lecture Science and Pseudo-science http://www.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/about/lakatos/scienceandpseudoscience.aspx audio of lecture: http://richmedia.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/2002_LakatosScienceAndPseudoscience128.mp3
The reason why it impossible to falsify neo-Darwinism is because it has no rigid mathematical basis like other overarching physical theories of science do (including ID: Marks, Dembski). A rigid mathematical basis in order to potentially falsify it (in fact math, in so far as math can be applied to Darwinian claims, constantly shows us the Darwinian evolution is astronomically unlikely),,
“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) WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Evolution is True - Roger Highfield - January 2014 Excerpt: If evolutionary biologists are really Seekers of the Truth, they need to focus more on finding the mathematical regularities of biology, following in the giant footsteps of Sewall Wright, JBS Haldane, Ronald Fisher and so on. The messiness of biology has made it relatively hard to discern the mathematical fundamentals of evolution. Perhaps the laws of biology are deductive consequences of the laws of physics and chemistry. Perhaps natural selection is not a statistical consequence of physics, but a new and fundamental physical law. 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 Oxford University Seeks Mathemagician — May 5th, 2011 by Douglas Axe Excerpt: “Grand theories in physics are usually expressed in mathematics. Newton’s mechanics and Einstein’s theory of special relativity are essentially equations. Words are needed only to interpret the terms. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection has obstinately remained in words since 1859.”… http://biologicinstitute.org/2011/05/05/oxford-university-seeks-mathemagician/ Active Information in Metabiology – Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, Robert J. Marks II – 2013 Except page 9: Chaitin states [3], “For many years I have thought that it is a mathematical scandal that we do not have proof that Darwinian evolution works.” In fact, mathematics has consistently demonstrated that undirected Darwinian evolution does not work. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2013.4/BIO-C.2013.4 HISTORY OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY – WISTAR DESTROYS EVOLUTION Excerpt: A number of mathematicians, familiar with the biological problems, spoke at that 1966 Wistar Institute,, For example, Murray Eden showed that it would be impossible for even a single ordered pair of genes to be produced by DNA mutations in the bacteria, E. coli,—with 5 billion years in which to produce it! His estimate was based on 5 trillion tons of the bacteria covering the planet to a depth of nearly an inch during that 5 billion years. He then explained that the genes of E. coli contain over a trillion (10^12) bits of data. That is the number 10 followed by 12 zeros. *Eden then showed the mathematical impossibility of protein forming by chance. http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/Encyclopedia/20hist12.htm Darwin's Doubt - Chapter 12 - Complex Adaptations and the Neo-Darwinian Math - Dr. Paul Giem - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFY7oKc34qs&list=SPHDSWJBW3DNUaMy2xdaup5ROw3u0_mK8t&index=7
The reason why it is impossible to formulate a rigid mathematical basis for neo-Darwinism, so as to separate it from psuedo-science, is because of the atheistic insistence of 'randomness' at the base of its formulation:
"In discussions with biologists I met large difficulties when they apply the concept of 'natural selection' in a rather wide field, without being able to estimate the probability of the occurrence in a empirically given time of just those events, which have been important for the biological evolution. Treating the empirical time scale of the evolution theoretically as infinity they have then an easy game, apparently to avoid the concept of purposesiveness. While they pretend to stay in this way completely 'scientific' and 'rational,' they become actually very irrational, particularly because they use the word 'chance', not any longer combined with estimations of a mathematically defined probability, in its application to very rare single events more or less synonymous with the old word 'miracle.'" Wolfgang Pauli “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.
Thus, without a rigid mathematical basis to falsify it, (at least no rigid basis that Darwinists will accept), neo-Darwinism will linger on and on being supported by nothing but imagination and the bluff and bluster of militant atheists.bornagain77_{May 9, 2014
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JLAfan2001 complains:
The same thing could be said about ID/creationism. Anything that comes up that doesn’t fit your theology is either ignored or “God just made it that way”. Bad design or good design, God does it all.
Yet, in actuality nothing could be further from the truth. As has been pointed out numerous times, ID is easily falsifiable:
"Orr maintains that the theory of intelligent design is not falsifiable. He’s wrong. To falsify design theory a scientist need only experimentally demonstrate that a bacterial flagellum, or any other comparably complex system, could arise by natural selection. If that happened I would conclude that neither flagella nor any system of similar or lesser complexity had to have been designed. In short, biochemical design would be neatly disproved."- Dr Behe in 1997 Michael Behe on Falsifying Intelligent Design - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8jXXJN4o_A The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity: David L. Abel - Null Hypothesis For Information Generation - 2009 Excerpt of conclusion pg. 42: "To focus the scientific community’s attention on its own tendencies toward overzealous metaphysical imagination bordering on “wish-fulfillment,” we propose the following readily falsifiable null hypothesis, and invite rigorous experimental attempts to falsify it: “Physicodynamics cannot spontaneously traverse The Cybernetic Cut: physicodynamics alone cannot organize itself into formally functional systems requiring algorithmic optimization, computational halting, and circuit integration.” A single exception of non trivial, unaided spontaneous optimization of formal function by truly natural process would falsify this null hypothesis." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2662469/ Can We Falsify Any Of The Following Null Hypothesis (For Information Generation) 1) Mathematical Logic 2) Algorithmic Optimization 3) Cybernetic Programming 4) Computational Halting 5) Integrated Circuits 6) Organization (e.g. homeostatic optimization far from equilibrium) 7) Material Symbol Systems (e.g. genetics) 8) Any Goal Oriented bona fide system 9) Language 10) Formal function of any kind 11) Utilitarian work http://mdpi.com/1422-0067/10/1/247/ag
Whereas neo-Darwinism has no demarcation criteria so as to falsify it:
“nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin(ism) can be described as scientific” - Imre Lakatos (November 9, 1922 – February 2, 1974) a philosopher of mathematics and science, quote was as stated in 1973 LSE Scientific Method Lecture Science and Pseudo-science http://www.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/about/lakatos/scienceandpseudoscience.aspx audio of lecture: http://richmedia.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/2002_LakatosScienceAndPseudoscience128.mp3
The reason why it impossible to falsify neo-Darwinism is because it has no rigid mathematical basis like other overarching physical theories of science do (including ID: Marks, Dembski). A rigid mathematical basis in order to potentially falsify it (in fact math, in so far as math can be applied to Darwinian claims, constantly shows us the Darwinian evolution is astronomically unlikely),,
“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) WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Evolution is True - Roger Highfield - January 2014 Excerpt: If evolutionary biologists are really Seekers of the Truth, they need to focus more on finding the mathematical regularities of biology, following in the giant footsteps of Sewall Wright, JBS Haldane, Ronald Fisher and so on. The messiness of biology has made it relatively hard to discern the mathematical fundamentals of evolution. Perhaps the laws of biology are deductive consequences of the laws of physics and chemistry. Perhaps natural selection is not a statistical consequence of physics, but a new and fundamental physical law. 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 Oxford University Seeks Mathemagician — May 5th, 2011 by Douglas Axe Excerpt: “Grand theories in physics are usually expressed in mathematics. Newton’s mechanics and Einstein’s theory of special relativity are essentially equations. Words are needed only to interpret the terms. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection has obstinately remained in words since 1859.”… http://biologicinstitute.org/2011/05/05/oxford-university-seeks-mathemagician/ Active Information in Metabiology – Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, Robert J. Marks II – 2013 Except page 9: Chaitin states [3], “For many years I have thought that it is a mathematical scandal that we do not have proof that Darwinian evolution works.” In fact, mathematics has consistently demonstrated that undirected Darwinian evolution does not work. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2013.4/BIO-C.2013.4 HISTORY OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY – WISTAR DESTROYS EVOLUTION Excerpt: A number of mathematicians, familiar with the biological problems, spoke at that 1966 Wistar Institute,, For example, Murray Eden showed that it would be impossible for even a single ordered pair of genes to be produced by DNA mutations in the bacteria, E. coli,—with 5 billion years in which to produce it! His estimate was based on 5 trillion tons of the bacteria covering the planet to a depth of nearly an inch during that 5 billion years. He then explained that the genes of E. coli contain over a trillion (10^12) bits of data. That is the number 10 followed by 12 zeros. *Eden then showed the mathematical impossibility of protein forming by chance. http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/Encyclopedia/20hist12.htm Darwin's Doubt - Chapter 12 - Complex Adaptations and the Neo-Darwinian Math - Dr. Paul Giem - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFY7oKc34qs&list=SPHDSWJBW3DNUaMy2xdaup5ROw3u0_mK8t&index=7
The reason why it is impossible to formulate a rigid mathematical basis for neo-Darwinism, so as to separate it from psuedo-science, is because of the atheistic insistence of 'randomness' at the base of its formulation:
"In discussions with biologists I met large difficulties when they apply the concept of 'natural selection' in a rather wide field, without being able to estimate the probability of the occurrence in a empirically given time of just those events, which have been important for the biological evolution. Treating the empirical time scale of the evolution theoretically as infinity they have then an easy game, apparently to avoid the concept of purposesiveness. While they pretend to stay in this way completely 'scientific' and 'rational,' they become actually very irrational, particularly because they use the word 'chance', not any longer combined with estimations of a mathematically defined probability, in its application to very rare single events more or less synonymous with the old word 'miracle.'" Wolfgang Pauli “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.
Thus, without a rigid mathematical basis to falsify it, (at least no rigid basis that Darwinists will accept), neo-Darwinism will linger on and on being supported by nothing but imagination and the bluff and bluster of militant atheists.bornagain77_{May 9, 2014
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JLAfan2001 "The same thing could be said about ID/creationism. Anything that comes up that doesn’t fit your theology is either ignored or “God just made it that way”. Bad design or good design, God does it all." Actually, you miss a major point in your argument. If one begins with "God is like this ..." then your position holds validity. Certainly many of IDers and the YEC crowd very much so, come with a pre-definition of the nature of God. However, if one lets nature be honest, and one acknowledges that ID is the best explanation then one finds that nature informs characteristics of that designer(s). For instance, we can gather that the (s) in the above statement is unnecessary. There seems to have been one big bang. Therefore the cause of the big bang is one. (The cause may be a conglomerate working together, but if so they work as one.) So also with life. We have clearly determined that all life has a unified mechanism. I believe that a good case has been made for universal common descent -- ultimately causing the conclusion that back, way back, there was one event where "life" started which has sustained to this day. (It may be that a soup was bubbling away creating a bazillion little initial life-forms, but only one of these has persisted.) One tree of life, one causal agent. I know, so far I have followed the ID/creationist party line perfectly -- but the data DECLARES this! The data also declares that there has been conflict and death from the beginning of life. Predators have existed since well before the development of multi-cellularity. This does not fit as comfortably into the pre-existing God model. However, it is fact. Further, "can do it" but not "optimized" is a phenomenon of nature. (You refer to this as "bad design" though sometimes you see bad design where no bad design exists.) This too must factor into our interpretation of the nature of the designer. There can be no detection of design without discovering something about the nature of the designer.Moose Dr_{May 9, 2014
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If all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail.fryether_{May 9, 2014
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It makes a whole lot more sense than nothing turning itself into everything. What is it about the word 'no', as in 'no-thing' that you don't understand? I feel sure you would all understand the word, 'no' in any other context. Or have I made an unwarranted, wantonly gratuitous assumption. Is 'nothing', rather, a concept as open-ended and intriguing as the conjectured multiworld?Axel_{May 9, 2014
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PaV The same thing could be said about ID/creationism. Anything that comes up that doesn't fit your theology is either ignored or "God just made it that way". Bad design or good design, God does it all.JLAfan2001_{May 9, 2014
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An eye is an ordinary thing you see, a matter of chance, incidentally. From a bumpy, light sensitive spot, to lenses, cones, rods and whatnot. Oh, it has formed time and again as Evolution so blindly demands. You see, as Darwin so aptly explained, that natural selection still reigns. It explains why things are as they be, and of course, the things you don't see. How does it all work, I am hearing from you? Silly, silly you, just know it is true.OldArmy94_{May 9, 2014
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