Why Darwinism Is Doomed

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Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote in 1977: "Biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God." Darwinism teaches that we are accidental byproducts of purposeless natural processes that had no need for God, and this anti-religious dogma enjoys a taxpayer-funded monopoly in America's public schools and universities. Teachers who dare to question it openly have in many cases lost their jobs.

The issue here is not "evolution" – a broad term that can mean simply change within existing species (which no one doubts). The issue is Darwinism – which claims that all living things are descended from a common ancestor, modified by natural selection acting on random genetic mutations.

According to Darwinists, there is such overwhelming evidence for their view that it should be considered a fact. Yet to the Darwinists' dismay, at least three-quarters of the American people – citizens of the most scientifically advanced country in history – reject it.

A study published Aug. 11 in the pro-Darwin magazine Science attributes this primarily to biblical fundamentalism, even though polls have consistently shown that half of the Americans who reject Darwinism are not biblical fundamentalists. Could it be that the American people are skeptical of Darwinism because they're smarter than Darwinists think?

On Aug. 17, the pro-Darwin magazine Nature reported that scientists had just found the "brain evolution gene." There is circumstantial evidence that this gene may be involved in brain development in embryos, and it is surprisingly different in humans and chimpanzees. According to Nature, the gene may thus harbor "the secret of what makes humans different from our nearest primate relatives."

Three things are remarkable about this report. First, it implicitly acknowledges that the evidence for Darwinism was never as overwhelming as its defenders claim. It has been almost 30 years since Gould wrote that biology accounts for human nature, yet Darwinists are just now turning up a gene that may have been involved in brain evolution.

Second, embryologists know that a single gene cannot account for the origin of the human brain. Genes involved in embryo development typically have multiple effects, and complex organs such as the brain are influenced by many genes. The simple-mindedness of the "brain evolution gene" story is breathtaking.

Third, the only thing scientists demonstrated in this case was a correlation between a genetic difference and brain size. Every scientist knows, however, that correlation is not the same as causation. Among elementary school children, reading ability is correlated with shoe size, but this is because young schoolchildren with small feet have not yet learned to read – not because larger feet cause a student to read better or because reading makes the feet grow. Similarly, a genetic difference between humans and chimps cannot tell us anything about what caused differences in their brains unless we know what the gene actually does. In this case, as Nature reports, "what the gene does is a mystery."

So after 150 years, Darwinists are still looking for evidence – any evidence, no matter how skimpy – to justify their speculations. The latest hype over the "brain evolution gene" unwittingly reveals just how underwhelming the evidence for their view really 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.

Get Wells' widely popular "Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design"

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Jonathan Wells is the author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to Darwinism and Intelligent Design" (Regnery, 2006) and Icons of Evolution (Regnery, 2000). He holds a Ph.D. in biology from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in theology from Yale University. Wells is currently a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle

TESTABILITY AND FALISFIABLITY :

Here is what Dembski said about it :

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

SEE HERE ALSO :

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

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

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.

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