Posted on 08/02/2019 7:49:16 PM PDT by robowombat
Famed Yale computer science professor quits believing Darwin’s theories JENNIFER KABBANY - FIX EDITOR •JULY 30, 2019
‘The origin of species is exactly what Darwin cannot explain’
David Gelernter, a famed Yale University professor, has publicly renounced his belief in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, calling it a “beautiful idea” that has been effectively disproven.
Gelernter, who is known for predicting the World Wide Web and has developed many complex computing tools over the years, is today a professor of computer science at Yale, chief scientist at Mirror Worlds Technologies, member of the National Council of the Arts, and a prolific author.
In May, the Claremont Review of Books published a column by Gelernter headlined “Giving Up Darwin.” In it, he explained how his readings and discussions of Darwinian evolution and its competing theories, namely intelligent design, have convinced him Darwin had it wrong.
In particular, he cited Stephen Meyer’s 2013 book Darwin’s Doubt as well as The Deniable Darwin by David Berlinski. The professor expanded on his views in an interview with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution that was published last week.
Gelernter stops short of fully embracing intelligent design, both in his essay and during his interview. He said in his interview he sees intelligence in Earth’s design, and has no quarrel with ID proponents, but notes the world is a mess, its suffering far outweighs its goodness.
“My argument is with people who dismiss intelligent design without considering, it seems to me — it’s widely dismissed in my world of academia as some sort of theological put up job — it’s an absolutely serious scientific argument,” Gelernter said during his interview. “In fact it’s the first and most obvious and intuitive one that comes to mind. It’s got to be dealt with intellectually.”
Gelernter conducted his interview alongside Meyer and Berlinski, and the three weighed in on the problems facing Darwinian and neo-Darwinian evolution.
Gelernter said an ideological bent has taken over the field of science. There are good scientists doing good work, “but we have a cautionary tale in what happened to our English departments and our history departments could happen to us, God forbid,” he said.
Gelernter said he likes many of his colleagues at Yale, that they are his friends, but when he looks at “their intellectual behavior, what they have published — and much more importantly what they tell their students — Darwinism has indeed passed beyond a scientific argument as far as they are concerned. You take your life in your hands to challenge it intellectually. They will destroy you if you challenge it.”
“Now, I haven’t been destroyed, I am not a biologist, and I don’t claim to be an authority on this topic,” Gelernter added, “but what I have seen in their behavior intellectually and at colleges across the West is nothing approaching free speech on this topic. It’s a bitter, fundamental, angry, outraged rejection [of intelligent design], which comes nowhere near scientific or intellectual discussion. I’ve seen that happen again and again.”
Gelernter acknowledges “I am attacking their religion and I don’t blame them for being all head up, it is a big issue for them.”
How does the field of biology get over Darwin? Gelernter said the outlook is bleak.
“Religion is imparted, more than anything else, by the parents to the children,” he said. “And young people are brought up as little Darwinists. Kids I see running around New Haven are all Darwinists. … The students in my class, they’re all Darwinsts. I am not hopeful.”
But in his piece for Claremont Review, Gelernter pointed out that “this is one of the most important intellectual issues of modern times, and every thinking person has the right and duty to judge for himself.”
“There’s no reason to doubt that Darwin successfully explained the small adjustments by which an organism adapts to local circumstances: changes to fur density or wing style or beak shape,” the professor wrote. “Yet there are many reasons to doubt whether he can answer the hard questions and explain the big picture — not the fine-tuning of existing species but the emergence of new ones. The origin of species is exactly what Darwin cannot explain.”
In his piece, Gelernter cited the Cambrian explosion as one insurmountable problem facing Darwinism. That’s because the fossil record shows “a striking variety of new organisms — including the first-ever animals — pop up suddenly in the fossil record over a mere 70-odd million years.” This directly contradicts the expectation by Darwin that “new life forms evolve gradually from old ones in a constantly branching, spreading tree of life.”
What’s more, Gelernter adds Darwin’s main problem is molecular biology, pointing out advances in technology have brought forth vast amounts of new information and understanding about the complexity of life, all of which has shown random mutation plus natural selection cannot generate new and complex creatures.
By the numbers, it’s impossible, the computer scientist points out.
He gives an anecdote on how hard it would be to create just one new protein by chance — the odds are so astronomical that there are fewer atoms in the entire universe in comparison: “The odds bury you. It can’t be done.”
Underscoring all that, the professor notes there are no examples in scientific literature showing that “mutations that affect early development and the body plan as a whole and are not fatal.”
In other words, the idea that random chance and mutations are the driving force behind the vast complexity of life — even with billions of years of time — is not just scientifically improbable, it’s an impossibility, the scholar argues in his piece.
“Darwin would easily have understood that minor mutations are common but can’t create significant evolutionary change; major mutations are rare and fatal,” Gelernter wrote. “It can hardly be surprising that the revolution in biological knowledge over the last half-century should call for a new understanding of the origin of species.”
Whether biology will rise to the challenge, and develop a better theory, remains to be seen, the professor concludes.
“How cleanly and quickly can the field get over Darwin, and move on?—with due allowance for every Darwinist’s having to study all the evidence for himself? There is one of most important questions facing science in the 21st century.”
Darwin’s hypothesis should never have been labeled theory.
I recently read “Darwin’s Doubt” and it is indeed a tour de force.
“Which are the debunked arguments he rehashes?”
All of them.
Why the evasion?
Why don’t you point us to where they are debunked.
No. And I certainly have no standing to judge. But I do get the impression from repeated rumblings in scattered reading over the years that, with regard to Darwinism, biology has become a field in which many people feel unable to speak openly. Officially, virtually everyone is a Darwinist. "Yessiree, Bob, we all be true believers here! No design, because our fundamental axion is that there can be no designer! Everything is an accident!" You won't get into a good graduate program, get hired by a good university, or get tenure if you do not affirm the party line.
But down in the weeds, the design inference refuses to die. Things look designed, and the deeper you go, the more complex and intricately constructed things seem to be. I don't recall who coined the phrase, but it is regularly muttered, sotto voce, that information seems to precede order, which is another way of saying, "it looks designed."
I don't know how the debate will develop, but there does seem clearly to be a silencing of dissent in the academy. That is, of course, a clue that the reigning paradigm is on unsteady ground. Another field where this is apparent is the study of intelligence, especially with regard to heritability, race and gender. A lot of people in the field know that the party line is a lie. But very, very few are willing to speak out.
“Why don’t you point us to where they are debunked.”
Do your own homework. These myths pop up here every week or so. There was a thread yesterday.
I have. But I’m not the one making sweeping claims on an internet forum.
” It’s a bitter, fundamental, angry, outraged rejection [of intelligent design], which comes nowhere near scientific or intellectual discussion.”
The dude is right about one thing. He doesn’t know what he is talking about.
David Berlinski, a mathematician, physicist and scholar has also taken serious heat from the entrenched academy for his views on Darwin. His book is also cited in the article. He defended intelligent design and promptly became persona non grata on American college campuses. Yet he is one of the few who echo comedian George Carlin’s question, “If man evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?”
The evidence that I find most compelling for the hypothesis that all higher life forms are evolved from simpler life forms is the commonality of the genetic code. Every form of life shares the same DNA encoding mechanisms and that mechanism itself evolved as a more stable molecule from its RNA ancestor. The same five nucleotides, the same 20 amino acids, the same drift statistics in the mitochondrial DNA, the same cellular machinery of ribosomes generating proteins from mRNA copied from the nuclear DNA, every species shares the same evolutionary history at the cellular level. An intelligent designer would not constrain every species this way because it would be redundant and inefficient and subject to massive failures due to disease and decay over time. It also is optimized for the survival of populations at the expense of individual members. The most important design feature of life is that it dies hopefully after it reproduces. Is this sacrifice of the individual for the survival of the population something a loving intelligence would design in?
I found “Signature in the Cell” even more impressive. It’s about the origin of life (as opposed to strictly evolution) , and it totally dismantles the notion of the primordial “soup” and lighting creating life.
Stephen Meyer is truly a gift to honest (real) science. He has a PhD in “philosophy of science” which examines what science itself is and its various methodologies. He also has degrees in physics and I believe biology as well.
To take one of the least explosive issues: there is a great deal of overlap on mental and behavioral dimensions between men and women, and there are outliers in both sexes. But in terms of averages across large groups, men and women have (slightly) different aptitudes and significantly different interests and priorities (e.g. desires regarding work-life balance, orientation towards children, risk tolerance, job preferences). Men and women, on average over large groups, tend to make different choices, and while some of this is likely due to social conditioning, some of it is almost certainly biologically based. Saying this, however, is a likely career killer at many universities and, of course, at Google. So people who know better are silent and, when ritual expressions of fealty to the party line are demanded in public, they lie.
Ok. Thanks. Re:
“the professor notes there are no examples in scientific literature showing that “mutations that affect early development and the body plan as a whole and are not fatal.””
Therefore there are examples of mutations that affect early development and the body plan as a whole that are not fatal.
What are they?
(I hope you don’t say “all of them”)
Since professor David Gelernter could not have come from natural selection, which he is trying to invalidate, then where did he come from? Uh. David, think A - B = C. Without A or B, There can’t be a C. So you don’t exist as you deny A and can’t provide a B.
If genius comes from highly educated people, then why are there still idiots like him? (Sorry George)
rwood
Darwin’s Theory of Relativity is so flawed.
Evolution does not equal Mutunt Colonization Squared.
You make a plausible argument, but your inferences are much too sweeping. There are millions of organisms on Earth. A designer that made each one a completely different, molecularly unique type of organism would have created an essentially magical world. It is at least equally plausible that a designer would prefer a universe that was rules based and logically ordered. And-- a big leap here -- if such a designer were actually concerned with us, he might particularly value a universe that is, at least in principle, somewhat predictable and comprehensible to human beings. It's getting too late to develop the argument now, but the idea of directed evolution is a step in that direction. There is nothing implausible about a designer reusing effective tools. If you were writing computer code, you would not deliberately set out to create bloatware. You would probably value parsimony in design. (Or whatever term the computer people use for lean, mean, efficient coding.)
None of this is evidence for a designer. But it does suggest that biological continuities are perfectly consistent with a design hypothesis. They should certainly not be taken as evidence against design.
The odds against evolution are staggering - and that is the point of this mathematician. DNA code is a complete computer language, telling each cell what to do next - and there are thousands of steps in each process. Each cell has over 3 Gbits of error-free information - try that, Microsoft. And this is true for every living thing - animals, plants, even bacteria has unique codes (though not this much). For those who really look at the facts, random selection is really impossible.
When I was in school, they actually taught that the universe was stagnate - had always been here. This meant there was literally unlimited time to make anything happen, however impossible it seemed. But now, the time frame is limited - very limited. Impossible limited. If random selection happened on a linear scale, there would have to be a new - entirely new - species every three years. So where are they? Why did they stop?
So many questions . . . .
George Carlin’s question is one of the more stupid ones I have seen. There are still monkeys because there are still trees which are a good place for monkeys to live and not such a good place for humans to live. Creatures evolve to live in specific suitable environments. Today I was reading about Marsupial evolution compared with Mammalian evolution. There are Marsupial anteaters and mammalian anteaters and they both evolved effective strong claws to tear apart termite mounds. Marsupial moles and Mammal moles both are nearly blind and have powerful digging claws. Unlike almost all other Marsupials which have a baby pouch which aims upward, the Marsupial moles pouch aims downward so they don’t scoop dirt into the pouch as they crawl along. Evolution is amazing. If you want more up to date information try reading Shawn Carrol’s “Endless Forms Most Beautiful” which covers some amazing recent discoveries about evolution and species formation. Perhaps Darwin should not have named his book “The Origin of Species”, but rather “The Evolution of Species.” He did not have the technical equipment to examine the very early precambrian development of living entities or of microbiology, so his theories were based on examination of macrolife, not microlife where it all started.
“Creatures evolve to live in specific suitable environments. Today I was reading about Marsupial evolution compared with Mammalian evolution. There are Marsupial anteaters and mammalian anteaters and they both evolved effective strong claws to tear apart termite mounds. Marsupial moles and Mammal moles both are nearly blind and have powerful digging claws. Unlike almost all other Marsupials which have a baby pouch which aims upward, the Marsupial moles pouch aims downward so they don’t scoop dirt into the pouch as they crawl along. Evolution is amazing.”
What’s interesting is all the things you point out here could be used as arguments for design as well.
I think this question is still well beyond the scope of science and that’s why it’s so “controversial”.
Contrast to, say, the properties of gold, aren’t particularly controversial.
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