Posted on 09/27/2006 9:56:09 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
Why Darwinism is doomed
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Posted: September 27, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Jonathan Wells, Ph.D.
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© 2006
Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote in 1977: "Biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God." Darwinism teaches that we are accidental byproducts of purposeless natural processes that had no need for God, and this anti-religious dogma enjoys a taxpayer-funded monopoly in America's public schools and universities. Teachers who dare to question it openly have in many cases lost their jobs.
The issue here is not "evolution" – a broad term that can mean simply change within existing species (which no one doubts). The issue is Darwinism – which claims that all living things are descended from a common ancestor, modified by natural selection acting on random genetic mutations.
According to Darwinists, there is such overwhelming evidence for their view that it should be considered a fact. Yet to the Darwinists' dismay, at least three-quarters of the American people – citizens of the most scientifically advanced country in history – reject it.
A study published Aug. 11 in the pro-Darwin magazine Science attributes this primarily to biblical fundamentalism, even though polls have consistently shown that half of the Americans who reject Darwinism are not biblical fundamentalists. Could it be that the American people are skeptical of Darwinism because they're smarter than Darwinists think?
On Aug. 17, the pro-Darwin magazine Nature reported that scientists had just found the "brain evolution gene." There is circumstantial evidence that this gene may be involved in brain development in embryos, and it is surprisingly different in humans and chimpanzees. According to Nature, the gene may thus harbor "the secret of what makes humans different from our nearest primate relatives."
Three things are remarkable about this report. First, it implicitly acknowledges that the evidence for Darwinism was never as overwhelming as its defenders claim. It has been almost 30 years since Gould wrote that biology accounts for human nature, yet Darwinists are just now turning up a gene that may have been involved in brain evolution.
Second, embryologists know that a single gene cannot account for the origin of the human brain. Genes involved in embryo development typically have multiple effects, and complex organs such as the brain are influenced by many genes. The simple-mindedness of the "brain evolution gene" story is breathtaking.
Third, the only thing scientists demonstrated in this case was a correlation between a genetic difference and brain size. Every scientist knows, however, that correlation is not the same as causation. Among elementary school children, reading ability is correlated with shoe size, but this is because young schoolchildren with small feet have not yet learned to read – not because larger feet cause a student to read better or because reading makes the feet grow. Similarly, a genetic difference between humans and chimps cannot tell us anything about what caused differences in their brains unless we know what the gene actually does. In this case, as Nature reports, "what the gene does is a mystery."
So after 150 years, Darwinists are still looking for evidence – any evidence, no matter how skimpy – to justify their speculations. The latest hype over the "brain evolution gene" unwittingly reveals just how underwhelming the evidence for their view really is.
The truth is Darwinism is not a scientific theory, but a materialistic creation myth masquerading as science. It is first and foremost a weapon against religion – especially traditional Christianity. Evidence is brought in afterwards, as window dressing.
This is becoming increasingly obvious to the American people, who are not the ignorant backwoods religious dogmatists that Darwinists make them out to be. Darwinists insult the intelligence of American taxpayers and at the same time depend on them for support. This is an inherently unstable situation, and it cannot last.
If I were a Darwinist, I would be afraid. Very afraid.
Get Wells' widely popular "Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design"
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Jonathan Wells is the author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to Darwinism and Intelligent Design" (Regnery, 2006) and Icons of Evolution (Regnery, 2000). He holds a Ph.D. in biology from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in theology from Yale University. Wells is currently a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle
Congratulations on your escape!
So after admitting that we don't know the history of biogenesis, and that molecular biologists are actively researching the problem, what else is there to say?
When science doesn't know something, it tries to find out.
What is Dumbski doing here?
"It is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science - that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended ultimately in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school". According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world - that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies."
SirLinksalot:
That does not make him a non-skeptic of evolution.
LOL.
Among other things it means he accepts abiogenesis as a natural phenomenon.
His daily self-flagellation.
Indeed. The question at hand seems to be whether curiousity is vice or virtue.
OMG, you have got to be kidding me.
Ever heard of Occam's razor?
Of course. I have no need or intention of proving it.
I really don't care what anyone else believes or thinks, unlike some creationists who wish to have physical proof of God "once and for all."
"Is English your second language?" is an attack.
Don't bother trying to tell me it isn't.
Because I don't accept other men's descriptions of God. How hard is that to understand?
So what's your point? That's just a fancy statement of the anthropic principle, something dreamed up by physicists.
I don't resist religious thoughts unless they contradict the findings of science, or -- much worse -- get used by the anti-science crowd to oppose research.
Very interesting; however Darwinian evolution requires an
evolutionary sequence within one species.
The origin of diversity in life is pretty much settled, and it is stochastic. The constraint being that stochastic variations have to survive and reproduce.
The question of original life cannot be settled by sitting on your ass and thinking about it. Its a matter for research.
I ask you if quantum theory could have been invented by people thinking about first principles, or could have been decided without the two slit experiment.
What does that mean. Evolution assumes that every offspring is of the same species as its parents, if that's what you mean.
That particular question was settled by 1940.
AI have to amend my statement. Plants occasionally speciate by polyploidy, doubling their chromosomes in one generation.
Nearly everything we eat is a result of a polyploidy event within human history.
Because chromosome doubling is so common in plants, you don't have such a severe problem of mutant individuals finding mates.
Except, ironically, in the plants we cultivate for food. They can't mate successfully without human intervention.
It explains everything, and that's what's important.
Research is hard, Barbie. Let's go shopping.
Naturalism.
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