The Sunset of Darwinism

tfp ^ | 06.04.08 | Julio Loredo

[Coleus]

Praised until recently as dogma, Darwin’s theory of evolution is now fading away, discredited by the same science that bore its poisoned fruit. Instead, the Christian vision of a supernatural design is being increasingly affirmed. “Evolution is now a datum proven beyond any reasonable doubt and no longer a theory, it’s not even worth taking the trouble to discuss it.” This is what a spokesman proclaimed at the Festival of Science held in Genoa in November 2005, thereby neglecting a very important aspect of modern science—the need to be open to new perspectives. Instead, the truth is quite the opposite. Paradoxically, evolutionists are taking an ever greater distance from empirical science and are wrapping themselves up in a dogmatism that borders on ideological fanaticism.

Unprovable Hypothesis
“What is left, then, in evolutionism, that is valid according to the scientific method? Nothing, actually nothing!” This is the conclusion of journalist Marco Respinti in his recent book Processo a Darwin (Darwin on Trial, Piemme, 2007). He continues: "Not one of his postulates can be verified or certified based on the method proper to the physical sciences. His whole claim escapes verification. Based on what, therefore, other than on strong prejudices of an ideological nature, can anyone affirm or continue to affirm that the evolutionist hypothesis is true?"  Indeed, the consistency of a scientific theory is founded on its capacity to be verified empirically, be it through observation of the phenomenon in nature or by reproducing it in the laboratory. The evolutionist hypothesis fails on both counts. “Thus,” Respinti shows, “Darwinism remains simply an hypothesis devoid of empirical or demonstrable foundation, besides being unproven. . . . The evolutionist hypothesis is completely unfounded for it does not master the very domain in which it launches its challenge.”

Respinti reaches this “verdict” after a rigorous “trial of Darwin” in which he analyzes the main arguments that debunk the notorious theory, ranging from nonexistent fossil records to the conflict of Darwinism with genetic science and the flimsiness of the “synthetic theory” of neo-Darwinism, without forgetting the countless frauds that have stained notable evolutionists in their insane quest to fabricate the “proofs” that science tenaciously denied them.  Respinti concludes by denouncing the ideological drift of the evolutionist school: “To categorically affirm the absolute validity of the theories of Darwinian and neo-Darwinian evolution based on the claim that discussing them would be unscientific by definition, is the worst proof that human reason can give of itself.”

A Long Sunset
The sunset of the Darwinist hypothesis has picked up speed over the last two decades. For example, consider the work carried out by the Osaka Group for the Study of Dynamic Structures, founded in 1987, in the wake of an international interdisciplinary meeting convened “to present and discuss some opinions opposed to the dominant neo-Darwinist paradigm.” Scientists from all over the world participated, including the outstanding geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti, then a professor at the University of Perugia, Italy. In 1980, together with Roberto Fondi, now a professor at the University of Siena, Sermonti wrote Dopo Darwin—Critica all’evoluzionismo (After Darwin—A Critique of Evolutionism, Rusconi, 1980). “Biology,” Sermonti explains, “has no proof at all of the spontaneous origin of life, or rather biology has proved its impossibility. There is no such thing as a gradation of life from elementary to complex. From a bacterium to a butterfly to man the biochemical complexity is substantially the same.”   For his part, Fondi shows that from the first appearance of fossils to this day, the variety and riches of living beings have not increased. New groups have replaced older ones, but the intermediate forms that the evolutionists have so frantically searched for do not exist. “The theory of evolution,” Sermonti and Fondi conclude, “has been contradicted as have few other scientific theories in the past.”

In Le forme della vita (The Forms of Life, Armando, 1981), Sermonti unveils other obstacles to Darwinism. According to the renowned geneticist, the “random” origin of life and the gradual transformation of the species through “selective change” are no longer sustainable because the most elementary life is incredibly complex and because it is now proven that replacement of living groups takes place “by leaps” rather than “by degrees.”  Putting together forty years of experience, in 1999 he wrote Dimenticare Darwin—Ombre sull’evoluzione (Forgetting Darwin—Shadows on Evolution, Rusconi, 1999). With rigorous argumentation, the author demolishes the three pillars of Darwinism: natural selection, sexual mixing and genetic “change.” According to him, history will remember the theory of evolution as the “Big Joke.”

Not Just Creationists
Sermonti has been often accused of being a “creationist” or a “religious fundamentalist” even though he has always said he does not fit his scientific vision into a Christian perspective, and this yet one more aspect to note in the polemic against Darwinism, which many people other than Christians also contest it.  In this sense, it is interesting to note the recent editorial in Il Cerchio, “Seppellire Darwin? Dalla critica del darwinismo agli albori d’una scienza nuova,” ("Bury Darwin? From a Critique of Darwinism to the Dawn of a New Science") containing essays by seven specialists including Sermonti, Fondi and Giovanni Monastra, director of Italy’s National Institute for Food and Nutrition Research. The title refers to the famous phrase by Chandra Wickramasinghe, a professor of applied mathematics of the University College of Cardiff, “The probability that life was formed from inanimate matter is equal to 1 followed by 40,000 zeros . . . . It is large enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution.”

From Dimenticare Darwin—Ombre sull’evoluzione’s introduction: For the first time in Italy, a critique of Darwinism is presented in all its complexity thanks to the interdisciplinary contribution of scholars of several orientations—[b]eyond the polemic between neo-Darwinian fundamentalists and religious integralists, the essay demonstrates how the critique of the now old neo-Darwinist paradigm opens the doors to a new science.

A Crisis of the Positivist Paradigm
Francis Crick, who together with Watson discovered the structure of DNA, openly declared, “An honest man, armed only with the knowledge available to us, could affirm only that, in a certain sense, the origin of life at the moment appears to be rather a miracle,” In the same wavelength, Harold Hurey, a disciple of Stanley Miller who made history with his failed attempt to recreate life in the laboratory from a so-called primordial broth, said, “All of us who studied the origins of life uphold that the more we get into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved in any way.” Indeed, a lot of faith is required to believe in evolutionism, and it is precisely that faith, of a clearly positivist^[1] mold, that is now beginning to weaken.

In Darwinismo: le ragioni di una crisi (Darwinism: The Reasons of a Crisis), Gianluca Marletta sticks his finger in the wound by observing that “The crisis of Darwinism is above all a crisis of the philosophical paradigms that allowed its success.”  “One cannot understand the origin of this doctrine,” Marletta explains, “without going back to the cultural climate of ‘triumphant positivism’ straddling the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” According to Marletta, Darwinism constituted a wonderful occasion to strengthen the positivistic view of the world being affirmed at that time. Darwinism represented the perfect tool to transplant, into the biological field, the mechanic and materialist paradigms already imposed on the social sciences. This is the true motive of this theory’s success. A motive that now begins to subside with the crisis of the positivist paradigm. This explains the almost fanatical tenacity with which evolutionists are defending their convictions. “Many fear,” concludes Marletta, “that the fall of Darwinism can bring down with it the whole positivist vision of the world.”

God’s Comeback
The crumbling of positivism is bringing back to the limelight issues that a certain conventional wisdom thought to have definitively eliminated. Shaken from the sudden crumbling of old certainties, worried about the chaos that increasingly marks this postmodern age, many people are once again asking the fundamental questions: Does my life have a transcendental meaning? Is there an intelligent project in nature? In short, does God exist?   Sociologist Rosa Alberoni wrote about this in her book, Il Dio di Michelangelo e la barba di Darwin (The God of Michelangelo and Darwin’s Beard), published last November by Rizzoli with a preface by Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council Justice and Peace. The onslaught of “Darwin’s worshippers,” Alberoni explains, is carried out by the “usual destructive atheists obsessed with the goal of stamping out Christ and destroying the Judeo-Christian civilization after having sucked its blood and essence.” This sullen assault, however, in the deeply changed ambience of post-modernity, risks being counterproductive: The monkey myth is what really shook ordinary people. Like soldiers woken up by an alarm in the middle of the night, Christian believers and [O]rthodox Jews prepared for the defense. Or rather for the war, because that is what it has become . . . [o]n the symbolic level, the bone of contention is the ancestor of man: God or a monkey? Should one believe in God or in Darwin? This is the substantial nature of the ongoing clash in our civilization.

In other words, a real war of religion looms in the dawn of the Third Millennium. Precisely that which secularists have tried to avoid at all cost.

Footnote:

1. Positivism is the philosophical system created by August Comte (1798–1857), which only accepts the truths that we can reach by direct observation or by experimentation. Thus it denies classical philosophy, theology and all supernatural religion.

[Alamo-Girl]

Er, if I may...

Jim 0216: Intelligent Design on the other hand is basically a self-evident truth.

The intelligent design hypothesis simply states that “certain features of the universe and life are best explained by intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.”

It is "self-evident" in that animals are known to choose their mates and thus affect "certain features" in their offspring.

Also "certain features" is a subset of "all features" and thus the hypothesis does not replace evolution theory.

In my view, the intelligent design hypothesis is so non specific it could have been called a "conjecture" and so self-evident, it could even have been called an "observation."

[LeGrande]

"in every generation of every species a great many more individuals are born than can possibly survive; so that there is in consequence a perpetual battle for life going on among all the constituent individuals of any given generation."

That isn't the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution is inherited changes, it says nothing about how successful those changes will be. Some will be successful and some won't be. But for arguments sake using your human example, how many of your billions of sperm that you produce survive? A couple? A dozen if they are lucky?

Where is the evidence that inherited changes don't exist?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your encouragements, dear brother in Christ!

Wimmer's experiment caused a lot of concern over bioterrorism because he proved that a person could obtain an information sequence even from the internet, order the DNA, synthesize and replicate a deadly virus, a bio weapon:

SCIENTISTS SYNTHESIZE VIRUS FROM SCRATCH

Researchers announced on July 11 that infectious viruses can now be created in the test tube of any modern laboratory. In fact, it has been done most recently at Stony Brook University (SBU), where biochemist Eckard Wimmer’s team has generated active polio virus particles that are capable of infecting living host cells.

According to Wimmer, the viruses were made based on "sequence" information pulled from scientific literature. The word "sequence" refers to the arrangement of chemical base-pairs, which is the chemical spelling of a gene. By getting the "spelling" of each gene in a tiny virus, it is possible to string the genes together in the correct order so they exhibit emergent properties and are fully functional.

Experts can now download a genetic blueprint from the Internet and use mail-order materials to assemble a deadly virus. At a time when the word "bio-terrorism" is a reality, the consequences of this development are both alarming and encouraging, he added. It means that scientists probably can create and prepare vaccines faster and more precisely to fend off biological attacks.

However, this also means anyone could manufacture viruses, or even alter them, potentially making them more dangerous.

According to Wimmer, ready-made chunks of DNA were purchased from commercial sources, and the researchers took the instructions for piecing them together from literature available on the Internet.

"If someone publishes the sequence of any old virus, you can chemically put together a DNA copy of that, and then create the virus," he said. "So with enough money, knowledge, and equipment, you can make any virus for which you can determine the sequence."

The chemical instructions, including the DNA sequence information of many disease organisms, are available on the Internet for scientific use, and more are being added as researchers pursue their work against disease.

In the experiments at SBU, Wimmer and co-workers Jeronimo Cello and Aniko Paul ordered small chunks of viral DNA, called oligonucleotides, and strung the chunks together.

"The most important part of this work is the proof of principle," Wimmer said. "This says that you can generate a virus from the written sequence, and that has consequences."

James LeDuc, at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, told the journal Science that "it is a little sobering to see that folks in the chemistry lab can basically create a virus from scratch."

Given the potential for bio-terrorism, Wimmer said government agencies could monitor what chunks of DNA are being ordered from commercial sources. This would allow the appropriate state authorities to keep track of those who are doing research on dangerous organisms capable of being used for bio-terrorism.

On a more technical note: DNA Replication

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

The above is one of the greatest scandals of darwinism....that they now deny that they ever posited a darwinian abiogenesis.

Indeed, they are simply liars on this point. Examine, for example, chapter 1 of Paul Ehrlich's The Process of Evolution (1963).

All of us baby boomers and earlier remember the textbooks with the primordial soup/protein sea/lightning strike stories about the origin of life. Deny as much as they want, I KNOW that darwinianism taught darwinian abiogenesis.

Sure. Remember Molecules to Man? There were many textbooks just like that one. This is a pattern of behavior with evolutionists. They fabricate their own history. They blot out parts of it that they don't want you to know (or are embarrassing to them) and make up fairytales about other parts. They don't really want you to know about their active role in eugenics (see my FR page). They say that Darwin didn't believe in inheritance of acquired characteristics, and that Lamarck believed in inheritance of mutilations, and they teach these lies in textbooks, whereas the truth is that Darwin believed both. This pattern of historical revisionism began with Darwin himself--Samuel Butler exposed it in Evolution Old and New and Luck or Cunning?.

[xzins]

"If someone publishes the sequence of any old virus, you can chemically put together a DNA copy of that, and then create the virus," he said. "So with enough money, knowledge, and equipment, you can make any virus for which you can determine the sequence."

It takes an intelligent researcher with prior knowledge of the information sequence to put this together.

Not to mention, coming up with the "chunks" in the first place.

Thanks for the education, sister.

Also, "natural selection" can be an intelligent process. That simply highlights that we've yet to define intelligence, and more importantly, we have yet to define life.

[philetus]

Given the potential for bio-terrorism, Wimmer said government agencies could monitor what chunks of DNA are being ordered from commercial sources.”

LOL

[AndyJackson]

If Darwin's theory of evolution were true, there would be in every species a constant and ruthless competition to survive: a competition in which only a few in any generation can be winners. But it is perfectly obvious that human life is not like that, however it may be with other species.

Ah but until the development of modern medical practice human life was like that to. The rate of survival to reproduction was very low for humans as well, leading to very very large families up into this century. This patern continues to prevail in many "subsistence level" societies.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

Its the undeniable evidence of intelligent design which points to an Intelligent Designer.

Two questions:

1. What is the undeniable evidence of intelligent design? What is the proof, other than observation (which is the same level of proof used by believers of the theory of evolution)?

2. Why does the presence of an intelligent designer mean that evolution is wrong?

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

Ah but until the development of modern medical practice human life was like that to.

The attempts to escape from Darwinism's dilemma all fall into one or other of three types. These can be usefully labelled "the Cave Man way out," "the Hard Man," and "the Soft Man." All three types are hardy perennials, and have been with us, in one version or another, ever since Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859.

What I call the Cave Man way out is this: you admit that human life is not now what it would be if Darwin's theory were true, but also insist that it used to be like that.

In the olden days (the story goes), human populations always did press relentlessly on their supply of food, and thereby brought about constant competition for survival among the too-numerous competitors, and hence natural selection of those organisms which were best fitted to succeed in the struggle for life. But our species (the story goes on) escaped long ago from the brutal regime of natural selection. We developed a thousand forms of attachment, loyalty, cooperation, and unforced subordination, every one of them quite incompatible with a constant and merciless competition to survive. We have now had for a very long time, at least locally, religions, moralities, laws or customs, respect for life and property, rules of inheritance, specialized social orders, distinctions of rank, and standing provisions for external defense, internal police, education, and health. Even at out lowest ebb we still have ties of blood, and ties of marriage: two things which are quite as incompatible with a universal competition to survive as are, for example, a medical profession, a priesthood, or a state.

But the Cave Man part of it is also utterly incredible in itself. It may be possible, for all I know, that a population of pines or cod should exist with no cooperative as distinct from competitive relations among its members. But no tribe of humans could possibly exist on those terms. Such a tribe could not even raise a second generation: the helplessness of the human young is too extreme and prolonged. So if you ever read a report (as one sometimes does) of the existence of an on-going tribe of just this kind, you should confidently conclude that the reporter is mistaken or lying or both.

Even if such a tribe could somehow continue in existence, it is extremely difficult to imagine how our species, as we now know it to be, could ever have graduated from so very hard a school. We need to remember how severe the rule of natural selection is, and what it means to say that a species is subject to it. It means, among other things, that of all the rabbits, flies, cod, pines, etc., that are born, the enormous majority must suffer early death; and it means no less of our species. How could we have escaped from this set up, supposing we once were in it? Please don't say that a god came down, and pointed out to Darwinian Cave Men a better way, or that the Cave Men themselves got together and adopted a Social Contract (with a Department of Family Planning). Either of those explanations is logically possible, of course, but they are just too improbably to be worth talking about. Yet some explanation, of the same order of improbability, seems to be required, if we once allow ourselves to believe that though we are not subject now to natural selection, we used to be.

The Cave Man way out, despite its absurdity, is easily the most popular of the three ways of trying to get out of Darwinism's dilemma. It has been progressively permeating popular thought for nearly one hundred and fifty years. By now it is enshrined in a thousand cartoons and comic-strips, and it is as immovable as Christmas. But we should not infer from this that it lacks high scientific authorities in its favor. Quite the contrary, Cave man has been all along, and still is, the preferred way out of Darwinism's dilemma among the learned, as well as among the vulgar.

- David Stove, Darwinian Fairytales.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your encouragements, dear brother in Christ!

That simply highlights that we've yet to define intelligence, and more importantly, we have yet to define life.

Precisely so.

It is illogical for anyone to claim a theory of abiogenesis without first defining life v. non-life/death in nature.

[Alamo-Girl]

Yep, and all over the world too. LOLOL!

[xzins]

Outstanding personal page you’ve put together, Ethan.

Check out mine.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

The caveman social compact? Here are a few examples from the animal world showing the same basic thing:

1. Group hunting by Harris hawks (I had a family of them on my property in Chile - beautiful animals). Predatory birds are solitary hunters, right? Not the Harris hawk - it hunts in packs, with some corraling the prey and others making the kill-dive. And the kill is then shared by all.

2. Lions. Unlike the other great cats, they hunt as a team, and share the spoils with the entire family. And it is the females that do the hunting. The males, on the other hand, provide protection for the pride, that is their role.

3. Orca (killer whales). They also hunt as packs, taking turns diving deep under herring balls, bundling the herring with their expelled air (a bubble curtain), and letting others take passes through the herring to eat. They will also all turn to defend calves, and even will stay with a dead calf to mourn.

How are any of these behaviors anything BUT cooperation and a form of societal structure? In each case, individuals will put the needs and desires of other individuals first - cooperation means that sometimes you give up what you want, and you wait your turn.

if behavior like that exists in animals, then why not in people?

[AndyJackson]

Darwinism's dilemma

Your whole incomprehensible screed is based on this fine bit of question begging. There is no so-called dilemma. Second, the "olden days" you cite, are not so old, since those same conditions can be observed in substantial parts of Africa, South America and the middle east.

And this fine bit of nonsense Even at out lowest ebb we still have ties of blood, and ties of marriage: two things which are quite as incompatible with a universal competition to survive

But the aetiology of many species includes just those sorts of social evolution that enhance the survival of the species. Your fallacious and unexamined underlying assumption is that the only kind of competition allowable under evolution is mano a mano fight to the death between individuals. But that is nowhere stated at all, and the evolution of social cooperation is an intimately connect, highly fruitful and important field of investigation.

One even sees this kind of cooperation in what is probably the most brutally competitive of mammals, lions. Male lions frequently band together (commonly in pairs and very rarely trios) to hold territory and maintain breeding rights.

[AndyJackson]

typo: aetiology should read ethology.

[xzins]

Some day you need to try again to have a non-partisan thread devoted to defining “life vs non-life/death.”

Ping me when you do.

[bert]

Bible babble

[RightWhale]

Darwiniswm is nothing biologists or social scientists even think about but is a construct of Creationists. It should disappear on its own.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

if behavior like that exists in animals, then why not in people?

Well obviously it exists in people and animals. The question is whether it is consistent with the picture painted by Darwinians of people and animals.

[Alamo-Girl]

It could be fun! Enough time has passed there may be new discoveries to add to the mix.

If we do it, we'll ping you!