Posted on 03/11/2019 2:51:56 PM PDT by Sopater
Over 1,000 doctoral scientists from around the world have signed a “Dissent” statement expressing skepticism about Darwin’s evolution theory, sparking fresh controversy over an idea that is at the core of many people’s worldview. The significant announcement, made last month, has been all but ignored by the establishment media. But it is making waves nevertheless.
The dissenting scientists all united around one simple statement. “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life,” the Ph.D.s said. “Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged. There is scientific dissent from Darwinism. It deserves to be heard.”
The growing rebellion among scientists from a broad range of scientific disciplines suggests the science may not be as settled as evolution theorists claim, according to analysts. Despite enormous risks to their careers and reputations, the number of experts willing to speak out about their skepticism of Darwin’s theory is growing quickly.
And many of the scientists speaking out about this are prominent and highly respected. More than a dozen of the signatories, for instance, are members of various national academies of science, including those in the United States, Russia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and other nations, as well as the Royal Society.
More than a few come from America's most prestigious universities such as Harvard, MIT, Princeton, and Yale. Others come from prestigious foreign universities and research institutions such as the University of Cambridge, London’s Natural History Museum, Moscow State University, Hong Kong University, University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, Institut de Paléontologie Humaine in France, Ben-Gurion University in Israel, and more.
The experts speaking out also represent a broad array of scientific disciplines and fields. These include molecular biology, biochemistry, biology, entomology, computational quantum chemistry, microbiology, psychiatry, behavioral sciences, astrophysics, marine biology, cellular biology, physics, astronomy, math, geology, anthropology, and many more. Many medical doctors are raising questions, too.
“As a biochemist I became skeptical about Darwinism when I was confronted with the extreme intricacy of the genetic code and its many most intelligent strategies to code, decode, and protect its information,” explained Dr. Marcos Eberlin, founder of the Thomson Mass Spectrometry Laboratory and a member of the Brazilian National Academy of Sciences.
Among the prestigious scientists who have signed the statement are evolutionary biologist and textbook author Dr. Stanley Salthe; quantum chemist Henry Schaefer at the University of Georgia; U.S. National Academy of Sciences member Philip Skell; American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow Lyle Jensen; Russian Academy of Natural Sciences embryologist Lev Beloussov; and geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti, editor emeritus of Rivista di Biologia / Biology Forum and discoverer of genetic recombination in antibiotic-producing Penicillium and Streptomyces.
The project, known as “A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism,” was first launched by the Discovery Institute in 2001. It was started in response to the demonstrably false claim by the tax-funded Public Broadcasting System (PBS) that “virtually every scientist in the world believes the theory to be true.” Obviously, that is not true. So Discovery Institute bought advertisements proving it in the New York Review of Books and other venues.
Since then, the number of public dissenters has grown tenfold. Indeed, many prominent scientists now dispute the evolution theory. A recent documentary that appeared on Netflix, Is Genesis History?, features myriad Ph.D. scientisists outlining their arguments against evolution and in favor of biblical creation.
This writer attended a conference in Turkey recently that brought together respected scientists from all over the world and from all different religions who argued that the evolution theory was a “hoax.” These included prestigious American scientists who have worked for NASA and leading U.S. universities. It also included Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Mormons, and more.
The Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which advocates for Intelligent Design, is still growing its list of well over 1,000 Ph.D. scientists who dissent from Neo-Darwinism and its central tenet — the notion that random mutations and natural selection can generate the massive amount of genetic information present in living organisms. Indeed, critics of the evolution theory say there has never been a documented example of a mutation adding genetic information rather than destroying it.
Neurosurgery Professor Dr. Michael Egnor at State University of New York, Stony Brook, argued that scientists “know intuitively that Darwinism can accomplish some things, but not others.” “The question is what is that boundary? Does the information content in living things exceed that boundary? Darwinists have never faced those questions,” he explained. “They’ve never asked scientifically, can random mutation and natural selection generate the information content in living things.”
And the institute believes that the 1,000 plus scientists who have signed the statement represent the tip of a massive iceberg. “While that number surely represents a scientific minority, it also no doubt vastly understates the number of Darwin-doubting PhD scientists,” wrote Discovery Institute Senior Fellow David Klinghoffer at Evolution News.
“When it comes to evolution, persecution is an all too well known fact of academic life. Endorsing Darwinian evolution is the safe careerist move, while questioning it can easily mean the end of your career,” added Klinghoffer. “So for every signer of the Dissent list, there is some multiplier’s worth of private skeptics in science, acting self-protectively. That is beyond reasonable doubt.”
Indeed, the growing willingness of leading scientists to speak out with their doubts about Darwin’s theory of evolution is especially noteworthy because it comes in the face of increased persecution of dissenters.
In 2017, for example, California State University at Northridge (CSUN) fired a Christian scientist after he published explosive evidence indirectly contradicting the theory in a peer-reviewed journal. Basically, Mark Armitage, a microscopist, found soft tissue in a dinosaur bone that was supposed to be around “65 million years old,” strongly indicating that the dinosaur in question died much more recently. The university paid him almost $400,000 in a settlement.
More than a few scientists have argued that peer pressure and fear are preventing an honest examination of the subject. “Because no scientist can show how Darwin’s mechanism can produce the complexity of life, every scientist should be skeptical,” said biologist Douglas Axe, director of the Biologic Institute. “The fact that most won’t admit to this exposes the unhealthy effect of peer pressure on scientific discourse.”
Meanwhile, as more and more scientists speak out, Americans largely continue to reject the evolution theory as well, and interest in the question is surging. Despite the theory being taught to generations of American children in government schools as if it were a fact, recent polls show about half of Americans still believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible's Book of Genesis. In short, they believe that God created humans within fewer than 10,000 years. Only a minority — fewer than 15 percent — believe that godless evolution explains the origin of man, which is what is taught to children at government schools.
“Where there’s a genuine controversy, as there is about Darwinian theory, anyone in search of truth has no choice but to weigh the evidence for himself,” observed the Discovery Institute’s Klinghoffer. "The observation that, beyond doubt, thousands of scientists are skeptical, and that a thousand of them publicly call for further ‘careful examination’ of the question, is one reason every thoughtful adult owes it to herself to consider the evidence without just passively swallowing the majority view.”
Beyond the scientific aspects, there are also profound implications of the theory. One reason religious humanists such as public-education founding father John Dewey latched on to it so fervently is because it allowed them to exclude the existence of a Creator. America's Founding Fathers held as a “self-evident” “truth” that man was created, and endowed by that Creator certain rights. Humanists such as Dewey and his cohorts, who designed the modern public-school system, rejected that — along with the concept of unalienable, God-given rights that governments exist to protect.
Regardless of what one thinks about the evolution theory, it is still a theory. To force Americans who disagree with this controversial theory to fund its propagation in taxpayer-funded government schools — especially when no alternative is even allowed to be mentioned, and when the implications are so huge — is immoral and wrong. Parents and taxpayers should take a lesson from these courageous scientists and speak out.
Sorry--there has not been enough time for that to have happened. The earth can be measured at only about 4.5 billion years, but how much of *that* time is taken up in cooling, forming raw chemicals, water, etc, to get anywhere close to being able to form an amino acid--much less a protein or a molecule?
People throw around numbers like billions and think that is plenty of time, when in reality it is not nearly enough time.
Well... Darwin proposed a grand theory based on very limited data.
Today the data available is orders of magnitude greater than in Darwin's day and remarkably well conforms to his basic theory.
I think all such math is based on faulty assumptions and is therefore G.I.G.O.
Why do you "think" that?
The earliest evidence found of possible life, or "pre-life" is dated as 4.3 billion years ago, only 300 million years after the earth formed and barely 100 million years after the first liquid water.
From 4 billion years ago increasing evidence of very primitive life with "the last universal common ancestor" (LUCA) of bacteria and archaea set around 3.5 billion years ago.
So already, after "just" a billion years the data shows both bacteria and archaea.
The "Cambrian Explosion" came 3 billion years later.
Some people claim this means life had to come from outer space -- panspermia.
Maybe... but so far there's no certain proof it could not have all happened right here.
The short answer is: baby steps, everything in baby steps.
Life at any level of complexity did not come together all at once in a sudden process requiring infinitesimal probabilities, but rather in an infinite number of highly probable interactions such that none by itself was especially noteworthy.
That's what the search for abiogenesis is all about -- what sequence of highly probable interactions could produce increasing organic complexities?
As of today nobody knows the full answer, but that's where they're looking.
And you know this how?
The protein discussed consists of string of 150 specific amino acids. There are 20 different types of amino acids and they each have to be the right one for the protein to be a protein. So imagine entering a lottery where they have to call out 150 numbers from 1-20 and each one has to be the right number or you loose.
So imagine entering a lottery where they have to call out 150 numbers from 1-20 and each one has to be the right number or you loose.
In chemistry, a trillion is a small number. A trillion to one chance is a trivial fraction.
I hope that is understandable.
There are 1.67 Sextillion molecules in a drop of water. About 5 Sextillion atoms in the same drop.
“Here is a fact: in over 150 years basic evolution theory has never been strongly falsified.”
Can you be more precise in what you term, “basic evolutionary theory”?
And I am not asking just to yank your chain... that term could mean totally different things to different people. What specifically are you referring to when you use the term?
What is a trillion compared to 1 with 164 zeros behind it? That is what people don't understand.
How does 10 to the 164th power compare to the number of atoms in the known universe? That is what evolution believers don't understand.
What does your number refer to?
What does your number refer to?
10 to the 164th is the probability of producing a protein.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1_KEVaCyaA
Nifty video, I love the amoeba carrying an atom illustration.
“Carbon dating puts first modern humans at 300,000 years ago.”
Carbon dating is really not much good after 50,000 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating
There are many other techniques:
Other methods include:
Samarium–neodymium dating method
Uranium–lead dating method
Potassium–argon dating method
Rubidium–strontium dating method
Uranium–thorium dating method
Fission track dating method
Chlorine-36 dating method
Luminescence dating methods
argon–argon (Ar–Ar)
iodine–xenon (I–Xe)
lanthanum–barium (La–Ba)
lead–lead (Pb–Pb)
lutetium–hafnium (Lu–Hf)
potassium–calcium (K–Ca)
rhenium–osmium (Re–Os)
uranium–lead–helium (U–Pb–He)
uranium–uranium (U–U)
krypton–krypton (Kr–Kr)
beryllium (10Be–9Be)[30]
If this stuff is all a lie then quantum mechanics doesn’t work, chemistry doesn’t work & how are we pounding this computer? Because its not here!
OK, so let's consider the other side of that equation.
The numbers of bacteria on earth today is estimated as five nonillion -- that's 5 X 10 to the 30th power.
Bacteria can multiply, let's say about once per hour or 10,000 times per year on average.
So, in a million years that's 10 billion multiplications.
In a billion years that's 10 trillion multiplications = 10 to the 12th power.
Multiply 10 trillion times 50 nonillion and we're up to 50 tredecillion or 5 times 10 to the 42nd power.
That's how many opportunities for useful mutations happen amongst bacteria over a billion years.
Of course, for abiogenesis life didn't begin as bacteria but with amino acids bumping into each other to form interesting combinations under many different conditions.
Combinations which lasted might react with others to form even more interesting and complex molecules -- decillions of times per year for hundreds of millions of years.
So Murphy's Law would seem to dictate that if a reaction is possible, it will eventually happen, regardless of the probabilities.
No, not a sudden appearance of highly complex life, but a slow accumulation of complexity among interesting organic molecules.
That's the proposal, anyway.
Not a problem, note my response in post #119 above to Peter Principle's same question.
I don't invent any terms or definitions, strictly go by the book which is summarized there.
That's a ludicrous "theoretical" number with no demonstrated relationship to the known world.
It is very convenient to start out with; a miracle happened and we have a bacterium, now just imagine that lots and lots of them are having babies and eventually one of their kids is a bit better than his parents etc etc etc and then we have man.
I have an analogy for a bacterium. Imagine you are in an NFL football stadium. Imagine said stadium is a complete oval spheroid rather than mostly flat and that it is made entirely of Legos. That represents the scale of a bacterium such that the Legos are atoms. Each atom is part of a very complex protein or DNA or RNA or some other structure and each one has a specific job. What a massively complex thing it is.
On a different note I found Dave Berlinski's discussion about whales to be fascinating because they are supposed to have evolved from a land based mammal. Dave considers it from an engineering perspective and all of the changes you'd have to make to a cow to have a whale. Dave said he quit counting at 50,000 changes and the evolutionary time frame is very short from cow to whale. Only a few million years.
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