Why Darwinism Is Doomed

WorldNetDaily ^ | 09/27/2006 | Jonathan Wells

[freedumb2003]

He echoed me, so it is easy to misfire.

[freedumb2003]

Those who profess hollow and Godless theories like evolution believe they can make a lie into fact by repeating it with enough personal conviction.

IOW if you put your fingers in your ears and go "Nya Nya" loud enough, the data and supporting conclusions will go away (or be banished since we all know science is a popularity contest).

TToE is neither Godless nor Godful. It is silent on God.

[ml1954]

You think what Fred Hoyle said, in or out of context, at one point in time, is evidence of your nutty idea that the earth is the center of the universe? Let's cut this short. Just give us all the core, the kernel, the basis for your assertion that defies all scientific evidence, that the earth is the center of the universe.

[SirLinksalot]

TESTABILITY AND FALISFIABLITY :

Here is what Dembski said about it :

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http://www.uncommondescent.com/archives/1010

SEE HERE ALSO :

THIS IS HIS RESPONSE TO THE TESTABILITY QUESTION POST BY GEORGE WILL :

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Dear Mr. Will:

In the July 4th, 2005 issue of Newsweek, you offered the following criticism of intelligent design (ID):

>Today’s proponents of “intelligent design” theory are
>doing nothing novel when they say the complexity of
>nature is more plausibly explained by postulating a
>designing mind—a.k.a. God—than by natural adapta-
>tion and selection…. The problem with intelligent-
>design theory is not that it is false but that it is not
>falsifiable: Not being susceptible to contradicting
>evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is
>not a scientific but a creedal tenet—a matter of faith,
>unsuited to a public school’s science curriculum.

As for intelligent design bringing nothing new to the discussion of complexity in nature, this claim is difficult to sustain. Darwin, in his Origin of Species, wrote, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” ID, in arguing for design on the basis of complexity, takes up Darwin’s gauntlet. But it does so by looking to novel results from molecular biology and novel methods for assessing the complexity and design characteristics of such systems.

My own book with Cambridge University Press (1998) titled The Design Inference is a case in point. Ask yourself why Cambridge would publish this book if indeed there was nothing new in it. Or consider, why would scholars such as William Wimsatt or Jon Jarrett, neither of whom are ID advocates, offer the following duskjacket endorsements (endorsements for which they have endured considerable heat from Darwinists):

>Dembski has written a sparklingly original book.
>Not since David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning
>Natural Religion has someone taken such a close
>look at the design argument, but it is done now in
>a much broader post-Darwinian context. Now we
>proceed with modern characterizations of proba-
>bility and complexity, and the results bear funda-
>mentally on notions of randomness and on
>strategies for dealing with the explanation of radically
>improbable events. We almost forget that design
>arguments are implicit in criminal arguments
>”beyond a reasonable doubt,” plagiarism, phylogenetic
>inference, cryptography, and a host of other modern
>contexts. Dembski’s analysis of randomness is the most
>sophisticated to be found in the literature, and his
>discussions are an important contribution to the theory
>of explanation, and a timely discussion of a neglected
>and unanticipatedly important topic.
>–William Wimsatt, University of Chicago

>In my view, Dembski has given us a brilliant study of
>the precise connections linking chance, probability,
>and design. A lucidly written work of striking insight
>and originality, The Design Inference provides significant
>progress concerning notoriously difficult questions. I
>expect this to be one of those rare books that genuinely
>transforms its subject.
>–Jon P. Jarrett, University of Illinois at Chicago

Your deeper concern is that intelligent design is not science because it is not testable. If ID were not testable, you would have a point. But the fact is that ID is eminently testable, a fact that is easy to see.

To test ID, it is enough to show how systems that ID claims lie beyond the reach of Darwinian and other evolutionary mechanisms are in fact attainable via such mechanisms. For instance, ID proponents have offered arguments for why non-teleological evolutionary mechanisms should be unable to produce systems like the bacterial flagellum (see chapter 5 of my book No Free Lunch [Rowman & Littlefield, 2002] and Michael Behe’s essay in my co-edited collection titled Debating Design [Cambridge, 2004]). Moreover, critics of ID have tacitly assumed this burden of proof — see Ken Miller’s book Finding Darwin’s God (Harper, 1999) or Ian Musgrave’s failed attempt to provide a plausible evolutionary story for the bacterial flagellum in Why Intelligent Design Fails (Rutgers, 2004).

Intelligent design and evolutionary theory are either both testable or both untestable. Parity of reasoning requires that the testability of one entails the testability of the other. Evolutionary theory claims that certain material mechanisms are able to propel the evolutionary process, gradually transforming organisms with one set of characteristics into another (for instance, transforming bacteria without a flagellum into bacteria with one). Intelligent design, by contrast, claims that intelligence needs to supplement material mechanisms if they are to bring about organisms with certain complex features. Accordingly, testing the adequacy or inadequacy of evolutionary mechanisms constitutes a joint test of both evolutionary theory and intelligent design.

Unhappy with thus allowing ID on the playing field of science, evolutionary theorist now typically try the following gambit: Intelligent design, they say, constitutes an argument from ignorance or god-of-the-gaps, in which gaps in the evolutionary story are plugged by invoking intelligence. But if intelligent design by definition constitutes such a god-of-the-gaps, then evolutionary theory in turn becomes untestable, for in that case no failures in evolutionary explanation or positive evidence for ID could ever overturn evolutionary theory.

I cited earlier Darwin’s well-known statement, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Immediately after this statement Darwin added, “But I can find out no such case.” Darwin so much as admits here that his theory is immune to disconfirmation. Indeed, how could any contravening evidence ever be found if the burden of proof on the evolution critic is to rule out all conceivable evolutionary pathways — pathways that are left completely unspecified.

In consequence, Darwin’s own criterion for defeating his theory is impossible to meet and effectively shields his theory from disconfirmation. Unless ID is admitted onto the scientific playing field, mechanistic theories of evolution win the day in the absence of evidence, making them a priori, untestable principles rather than inferences from scientific evidence.

Bottom line: For a claim to ascertainably true it must be possible for it to be ascertainably false. The fate of ID and evolutionary theory, whether as science or non-science, are thus inextricably bound. No surprise therefore that Darwin’s Origin of Species requires ID as a foil throughout.

Sincerely,
Bill Dembski

[Jorge]

A very nice mis-interpretative cartoon.

Thank you.

As an X-evolutionist it grieves me to the degree of self deception they resort to in order to maintain their fables.

I thank God that He rescued me from the deceit of evolution. I have never looked back, nor doubted creation and God's Word since that day.

[Jorge]

TToE is neither Godless nor Godful. It is silent on God.

Keep telling yourself that. Maybe you will believe it one day.

[Dimensio]

Do you believe that repeating the lie that the theory of evolution is "Godless", despite the clear evidence that the statement is false, constitutes a valid, logical argument?

[SirLinksalot]

Ah. Agnostic but believing in some sort of Q Continuum interloper. By defintion this is neither falsifiable nor testable. You have but to produce the Designer for an interview and ID wins the day. But if said Dsigner keeps skulking in the shadows, ID is useless as a scientific idea and fails as a Scientific Theory.

HA HA HA, and you have produced the testable and repeatable random mutation plus natural selection producing life ? Producing complexity ?

That would be news to me.

[phoenix0468]

Jorge, in what reality does evolution (as a theory) deny the existence of God? I will agree that there may be evolutionary scientists who might deny it, but the theory itself has no opinion on creationism or order from chaos theories. It simply attempts to explain the order of life on this planet.

[freedumb2003]

So Dembski disengenuously feels that TToE should be immune from the same standards as all the other branches of science.

Can you imagine allowing ID into Chemistry? Physics? Astronomy?

No, only Evolution has the Q reaching in to meddle.

ID is a theology not a scientific pursuit. It is the same thing as saying "God did this."

[freedumb2003]

Keep telling yourself that. Maybe you will believe it one day

I believe it now. And I am a Christian.

I assume this means you think the Earth is 6,000 years old? (I am asking to be sure).

[freedumb2003]

HA HA HA, and you have produced the testable and repeatable random mutation plus natural selection producing life ? Producing complexity ?

TToE is not the same as Abogenesis.

Nice try though.

[Coyoteman]

ID is a theology not a scientific pursuit. It is the same thing as saying "God did this."

Its all going according to the plan laid out in The Wedge Strategy, leaked out of the Discovery Institute.

[freedumb2003]

r/Abogenesis/Abiogenesis/

[freedumb2003]

Its all going according to the plan laid out in The Wedge Strategy, leaked out of the Discovery Institute.

Yes it is. Nice to know our grandchildren will be looking to the future scientific meccas of Mexico, Vietnam and Nigeria for leadership and discoveries in the Life Sciences.

Nehemiah Scudder lives.

[Boiler Plate]

TToE is not the same as Abogenesis.

Unfortunately you can't have the one without the other.

[GourmetDan]

What scientific evidence is that?

[ml1954]

Apparently it's nothing but crickets, all the way down. An empty bit of nothing that MakesALotOfNoise.

[freedumb2003]

Unfortunately you can't have the one without the other.

Not true. You can have astronomy without the Origins of the Universe.

TToE does not deal with the origins of life. It deals with what happened after life began that led to humans.

Again, you have to look at the evidence. The picture the fossil record paints, combined with observed microevolution paint a clear picture and the forces that create that picture.

What preceded the picture isn't of direct importance.

[Coyoteman]

TToE is not the same as Abogenesis.

Unfortunately you can't have the one without the other.

From a post by Dimensio here.

I submit five hypothesis regarding the origin of the first life forms.

a) Natural processes occuring entirely upon earth resulted in chains of self-replicating molecular strands that eventually became the first life forms.

b) Aliens from another planet and/or dimension travelled to this planet and -- deliberately or accidentally -- seeded the planet with the first life forms.

c) In the future, humans will develop a means to travel back in time. They will use this technology to plant the first life forms in Earth's past, making the existence of life a causality loop.

d) A divine agent of unspecified nature zap-poofed the first life forms into existence.

e) Any method other than the four described above led to the existence of the first life forms.

Evolution can proceed just fine with any of these five scenarios. Looks like you may be wrong.