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.”
I wasn’t aware anyone still believed in evolution. Even most non Christians I know don’t believe Darwin. Darwin himself before he died even admitted that he didn’t believe his own theory.
Lots of people will admit to intelligent design, but still refuse to acknowledge God too.
Darwin’s theories
Man came from apes so why do we still have apes?.
I scanned through Wiki.
Summers got his PhD at age 27 (not the youngest).
He became a tenured full professor of economics at Harvard at age 28 - which was the youngest STEM professor in modern times.
Remarkably, Summers is now back at Harvard, as a full professor and the Director of an endowed “Center” at the Kennedy School of Government.
I killed my 7th grade teacher on eveloution I asked
“What killed the dinosaurs? “
“A giant asteroid”
“How?”
“ well when the asteroid hit, it threw all the dust in the air, blotted out the sun and we had the ice age”
“ how long was the ice age?”
“Thosands of years!”
“ how thick was the ice?”
“ some say thousands of feet high”
“ so let me get this straight, reptiles get wiped out, ice covers the planet were vegetation can’t grow, the sun comes out one day and melts the ice, and suddenly there are mammals. Is that something Darwin just forgot about?”
She never taught Darwinism to our class again.
“In other words, he isn’t a biologist.”
neither was Darwin ...
“Each cell has over 3 Gbits of error-free information “
Obviously posted by a misguided person.
Thanks,my source was wrong!
“I wasn’t aware anyone still believed in evolution.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The percentage of U.S. adults who believe that God created humans in their present form at some time within the last 10,000 years or so — the strict creationist view — has reached a new low. Thirty-eight percent of U.S. adults now accept creationism, while 57% believe in some form of evolution
https://news.gallup.com/poll/210956/belief-creationist-view-humans-new-low.aspx
And a biologist isn't a mathematician ...
-------
Where have we heard this before?
Oh yes. Nobel Prize winning physicist points out absurdities in Global Warming claims.
He's not a Climate Scientist scream the true believers.
Argument by authority has no place in science.
“He became a tenured full professor of economics at Harvard at age 28 - which was the youngest STEM professor in modern times.”
Economics is not STEM.
Hey Tex. My favorite all hat no cattle true believer on the dark side.
I’m still waiting for you to address “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.””
Show us your cattle if you have any.
Yes, I always look to comedians for wisdom and knowledge.
If man evolved from monkeys
Does ANYBODY seriously propose that Man (as we exist today) evolved from monkeys (as they exist today)? This looks like a straw-man argument from the same sort of person as thinks that the question "Why do we park on the driveway and drive on the parkway?" is funny.
It's called "reusable code". Intelligent designers do it all the time.
Is this sacrifice of the individual for the survival of the population something a loving intelligence would design in?
Apparently, He did. Perhaps He is aware that there's more to Man than biology. Perhaps He wishes to relate to Man spiritually, rather than just biologically. Or perhaps some people have forgotten that (according to Genesis) death only entered into creation after Man sinned. It wasn't part of the original design.
Speaking for myself only, I use the term "elegant".
When someone doesn’t give an expert level critique of comparative anatomy and comparative genomics when he is claiming that evolution is false, he isn’t to be taken seriously.
Saying he isn’t a biologist is an act of kindness.
“When someone doesn’t give an expert level critique of comparative anatomy and comparative genomics when he is claiming that evolution is false, he isn’t to be taken seriously.”
Thanks for responding.
Have you read the article in Claremont Review? I have not yet, but downloaded the PDF.
Did he address genomics?
Very well stated.
That doesn’t take into consideration others that still believe in intelligent design.
On another note, FR I find is usually full of intelligent people, so I’d be very shocked to find anyone here believing in a theory (evolution) that has been debunked so thoroughly and so many times by secular and Christian sources that I lost count. I would really think FR wouldn’t have anyone of such dubious intelligence levels though.
But this is not an ordinary memory storage device. Each coil is only 3.4 nanometers across (by comparison, the human hair is 50,000 nanometers thick), and, if stretched out would be approximately 80 inches long. Yet if this information were stored in books, they would fill 48 feet of library shelves – or, in computer terms, over 3 gigabits of data. Yet we cannot even see it with the naked eye! It took over 100 engineers 5 years to write this much code for Microsoft, and they are still de-bugging it!
The truly amazing part, however, is what is written in this code. On June 26, 2000, in a ceremony at the White House, President Clinton was to say, “Today, we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift.” Where else would this code come from? In the same ceremony, Dr. Frances C. Collins, who led the effort to decode the entire human DNA, was to remark, “It’s a happy day for the world. It is humbling for me, and awe-inspiring, to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God.”
Somebody IS misguided, indeed . . .
Well done. It’s the same at the graduate level. They can’t answer questions about evolution but instead of retreating, they mock your for not accepting their religious dogma.
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