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“Why Darwinism Is Doomed”

September 27, 2006 Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Evolution
69 Comments

Leave it to Jonathan Wells to tell it like it 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. . . .

Source: http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52166

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69 Responses to “Why Darwinism Is Doomed”

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  1. 61
    John A. DavisonOctober 1, 2006 at 3:25 pm

    Gee whiz Pav and I thought I had provided a new “theory” with the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis. I use the word “theory” very lightly of course.

    Am I to understand that the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis is unacceptable to the supporters of the so-called “Intelligent Design movement?” From your comments, so it would seem. If that is so why?

    “A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
    John A. Davison

  2. 62
    John A. DavisonOctober 1, 2006 at 8:57 pm

    Pav

    Science did not begin in the West in Christian seminaries. It began in Greece in preChristian times . It is true that The Catholic Church was instrumental in keeping Greek science alive through the middle ages and was the source of much of applied science and agriculture through the ingenuity of the monks. Geometry was from the Greeks and algebra from the Arabs. Rene Descartes finally united them centuries later when he saw a fly buzzing around in the corner of his bed room or so the story goes. The three intersecting lines became the axes of analytical geometry. Imagine the kick that must have been for him to be able to achieve that great breakthrough.

    “A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undeniable.”
    John A. Davison

  3. 63
    John SingletonOctober 1, 2006 at 11:15 pm

    jpark320 wrote: “Just like your claim that Christianity is not a a historically valid truth is way off the mark. In fact it is one of the reasons I am Christian ie extremely well preserved Biblical writings, archae0logical validation, yes inner revclation of not just me but millions through out the ages, and even nature itself (ID/Creation) makes it clearly 100% evident to me.”

    It may be 100% evident to you but there are very plausible hypotheses by respected scholars that even though the person of Jesus may have lived (and of course some even dispute this) this historical Jesus has very little to do with the Jesus of Christianity. In fact some would even say that there is a controversy over the person of Jesus and that the historical evidence is ambigious and can be interpreted many different ways). Read anything by Bart Ehrman, Robert M. Price, Earl Doherty, Richard Carrier, and you will find plenty of evidence that suggests the traditional story of Christianity is quite easily falsified.

  4. 64
    John A. DavisonOctober 2, 2006 at 9:18 am

    Pav or anyone else for that matter. I would like to hear a response to the questions I posed in my message # 61.

    “A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
    John A. Davison

  5. 65
    John A. DavisonOctober 4, 2006 at 5:50 pm

    Out of sight, out of mind.

    “A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
    John A. Davison

  6. 66
    P. PhillipsOctober 4, 2006 at 6:41 pm

    Caught in the spam filter — again — but:

    “Evolution is debatable; future adaptation is inevitable. John A. Davions is incorrigible.”

    P.S. Phillips

  7. 67
    P. PhillipsOctober 4, 2006 at 6:42 pm

    Oops – I didn’t type/spell John’s name right!

    “Evolution is debatable; future adaptation is inevitable. John A. Davision is incorrigible.”

    P.S. Phillips

  8. 68
    P. PhillipsOctober 4, 2006 at 6:43 pm

    Davison — whatever.

  9. 69
    P. PhillipsOctober 4, 2006 at 6:54 pm

    John A., you never commented on the Spetner link I provided; to some extent, you echo him, but could you simplify what you mean? You wote:

    THE PRESCRIBED EVOLUTIONARY HYPOTHESIS

    I propose that the information for organic evolution has somehow been predetermined in the evolving genome in a way comparable to the way in which the necessary information to produce a complete organism is contained within a single cell, the fertilized egg.

    How is that different from Physicist Lee Spetner, here?

    http://www.trueorigin.org/spetner2.asp

    At the outset, I shall establish an important and necessary guideline in this discussion of evolution. The word evolution is generally used in at least two different senses, and the distinction between them is important. On the one hand, the word evolution is used to denote the descent of all life from a putative single primitive source. It is the grand sweep of evolution that is supposed to have led from a simple beginning, something perhaps simpler than a bacterium, to all organisms living today, including humans. This descent is supposed to have occurred through purely natural means. Neo-Darwinian theory (NDT), which is the prevailing theory of evolution, teaches that this development occurred through random heritable variations in the organisms followed by natural selection. I shall denote the word evolution used in this sense as Evolution A. When evolution is discussed for popular consumption, it is most often Evolution A.

    The second sense in which the word evolution is used is to denote any kind of change of a population. The change can sometimes occur in response to environmental pressure (artificial or natural selection), and sometimes it can just be random (genetic drift). I shall denote the word used in this second sense as Evolution B. Evolution B has been observed. Evolution A is an inference, but is not observable. The distinction between these two meanings of evolution parallels the distinction between macroevolution and microevolution, but the two pairs of terms are not identical. Evolution A is certainly what is called macroevolution, but what is called macroevolution is not identical with Evolution A. In any case, I prefer to use the A and B to avoid having to carry whatever baggage might go with the macro/micro distinction.

    The distinction between these two meanings of evolution is often ignored by the defenders of Neo-Darwinian evolution. But the distinction is critical. The claim is made for Evolution A, but the proof offered is often limited to Evolution B. The implication is that the observation of Evolution B is a substantiation of Evolution A. But this is not so. Since Evolution A is not an observable, it can only be substantiated by circumstantial evidence. This circumstantial evidence is principally the fossil record, amino-acid-sequence comparisons, and comparative anatomy. Circumstantial evidence must be accompanied by a theory of how it relates to what is to be proved. NDT is generally accepted to be that theory. The strength of the circumstantial evidence for Evolution A can therefore be no better than the strength of NDT.

    Antibiotic Resistance as an Example of Evolution
    Spetner:

    Continuing his effort to show the evolutionary efficacy of beneficial mutations, Max presented in his essay the acquisition of antibiotic resistance by microorganisms as an example of evolution. He said one can “demonstrate a beneficial mutation … with laboratory organisms that multiply rapidly, and indeed such experiments have shown that rare beneficial mutations can occur. For instance, from a single bacterium one can grow a population in the presence of an antibiotic, and demonstrate that organisms surviving this culture have mutations in genes that confer antibiotic resistance.” Such an experiment shows that “de novo beneficial mutations” can arise.

    My response to this is that I have shown in my book that mutations leading to antibiotic resistance fail the test of representing the mutations necessary for evolution. I summarize that argument here. All antibiotics are derived from microorganisms. Recall the story of the serendipitous discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1928, when he noticed that his plate of Staphylococcus bacteria was clear in the vicinity of a bread-mold contaminant. The mold was found to produce something that could lyse and kill the bacteria. That something was a molecule later named penicillin. Afterwards, other antibiotics were found to be produced by other microorganisms, such as soil bacteria. Soil has long been recognized in folk medicine as a cure for infections.

    The antibiotics produced by these microorganisms serve them as a defense against attack by other microorganisms. Some microorganisms are endowed with genes that grant resistance to these antibiotics. This resistance can take the form of degrading the antibiotic molecule or of ejecting it from the cell. Unfortunately for human health care, the organisms having these genes can transfer them to other bacteria making them resistant as well. Although the resistance mechanisms are specific to a particular antibiotic, most pathogenic bacteria have, to our misfortune, succeeded in accumulating several sets of genes granting them resistance to a variety of antibiotics.

    The acquisition of antibiotic resistance in this manner qualifies as evolution only in the sense that it is an adaptive hereditary change. It is an example only of Evolution B. It is not the type of evolution that can make a baboon out of a bacterium. The genetic change is not the kind that can serve as a prototype for the mutations needed to account for Evolution A. The genetic changes that could illustrate the theory must not only add information to the bacterium’s genome, they must add new information to the biocosm. The horizontal transfer of genes only spreads around genes that are already in some species.

    It turns out, however, that a microorganism can sometimes acquire resistance to an antibiotic through a random substitution of a single nucleotide, and this is the kind of example Max presented. Streptomycin, which was discovered by Selman Waksman and Albert Schatz and first reported in 1944, is an antibiotic against which bacteria can acquire resistance in this way. But although the mutation they undergo in the process is beneficial to the microorganism in the presence of streptomycin, it cannot serve as a prototype for the kind of mutations needed by NDT. The type of mutation that grants resistance to streptomycin is manifest in the ribosome and degrades its molecular match with the antibiotic molecule. This change in the surface of the microorganism’s ribosome prevents the streptomycin molecule from attaching and carrying out its antibiotic function. It turns out that this degradation is a loss of specificity and therefore a loss of information. The main point is that Evolution A cannot be achieved by mutations of this sort, no matter how many of them there are. Evolution cannot be built by accumulating mutations that only degrade specificity.

    In the final paragraph of my original critique, I said the following:

    The mutations needed for macroevolution have never been observed. No random mutations that could represent the mutations required by NDT that have been examined on the molecular level have added any information. The question I address is: Are the mutations that have been observed the kind the theory needs for support? The answer turns out to be NO! Many have lost information. To support NDT one would have to show many examples of random mutations that add information. Unless the aggregate results of the genetic experiments performed until now is a grossly biased sample, we can safely dismiss Neo-Darwinian theory as an explanation of how life developed from a single simple source.

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