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.

[Jim W N]

Science has identified hundreds of fossils which indicate a transition between one class and another.

I'm talking about the migration of species one to another. Science has no evidence of this. There's no "missing link" of any kind to show this. Darwinism as I said, is a hoax.

ID, on the other hand, offers no evidence.

If you choose to ignore the nature of design in every living thing around you including yourself, the detailed makeup of your eye, your ear, your brain, the built-in coded structure of DNA, etc., then you are willingly ignorant and blind to that which is before you. Preponderance of evidence is on the side of ID while Darwin loses due to (total) lack of evidence. The court of intellectual inquiry rejects Darwinism and accepts design with purpose and intelligence in living things.

Case dismissed. Next.

[Non-Sequitur]

I'm talking about the migration of species one to another. Science has no evidence of this. There's no "missing link" of any kind to show this. Darwinism as I said, is a hoax.

I think you mistaking species for class. I'm talking about transition from fish to amphibians, amphibians to reptiles, reptiles to mammals and birds. If what you're looking for is a transition from dog to cow, frog to human, things like that then you're looking in vain.

Preponderance of evidence is on the side of ID while Darwin loses due to (total) lack of evidence.

Science attempts to explain all that, you just refuse to accept it. And that's your choice. But ignoring all that science offers and then claiming that there is a "total lack of evidence" is ridiculous.

Case dismissed. Next.

Because you say so? Very much the ID stand. "It is what it is because I say it is." No evidence necessary. No proof required. That's a lot of things, but not science.

[YHAOS]

”That Berkeley website “From soup to cells – the origin of life” and “evolution 101” demonstrates that a person can get advanced degrees in pure junk.”

No disrespect intended, valkyry1, but I’m inclined to think that the good folks of Berkeley are properly certified, and not particularly susceptible to putting out “pure junk,” so I can’t associate myself with your remark. But, despite their pretensions otherwise, scientists shape the chorus they sing to the audience they believe they are addressing, and the result demonstrates that politics will rear its ugly head where ever politics offers the prospect of reward.

[DouglasKC]

Because it certainly LOOKS like the ferns in my backyard. However, that is a pure mathematical construct! A simple sequence repeated over and over, and that sequence happened upon by chance.

It screams intelligent design. Somebody designed the program to make your "fern". Somebody created the electronics to display it. Somebody started the process to create it. It just didn't happen to show up on mine or yours computer screen through a fortunate set of circumstances.

[DouglasKC]

About DNA - we know it can mutate in the presence of radiation, no? And we know that mutations can result in in negative AND positive changes in the animal. Radiation pours down on this rock all the time, 24 hours a day both as solar radiation and high-energy cosmic rays. Does not the complexity and differences of DNA point to evolution? We see a vast amount of overlap between a chimp and human, but very little overlap between seaweed and a human. Like lifeforms tend to have closer-related DNA. Why is that?

It's similar to using the same code for functions that are very close. For those of us who have done any type of computer programming it's pretty evident. Different pieces of code are written to perform the same internal action. There might be a program written that is meant to say, draw a fern like object. There may be another program written that is designed to calculate the number of 2 x 4's in a 4000 square foot house. On the surface these are two entirely different things. Yet the underlying code is going to be essentially the same. It's just going to be re-arranged and combined in different ways. There's going to be subroutines used that do the exact same thing from one program to another.

In the same way, two animals that appear similar are going to have much of the same code arranged the same way. Seaweed and humans don't look alike and they function differently thus their design, their underlying code, isn't arranged the same way.

God is the ultimate designer.

[valkyry1]

Thats quite okay. The Berkeley website “From soup to cells – the origin of life” looks to be all conjecture to me.

[YHAOS]

"The Berkeley website . . . looks to be all conjecture to me."

I'm not sure what it is, but it's clear to me that a number of universities didn't get the memo that we must not - absolutely must not - mix the origin of life with the TOE

[Fichori]

"I'm not sure what it is, but it's clear to me that a number of universities didn't get the memo that we must not - absolutely must not - mix the origin of life with the TOE"

Yes, when you can't win the debate, move the goal posts.

If Fundamentalist Evolutionists cannot explain where life came from, they certainly should not be teaching religious dogma about what happened to it once it got here.


Who’s really pushing ‘bad science’?
Evolution Exposed
Evolution or Adaptation?
Evolution: The Anti-science
Evolution Is Religion

[Coyoteman]

Do you actually read the links you post?

From this list:

Who’s really pushing ‘bad science’?
Evolution Exposed
Evolution or Adaptation?
Evolution: The Anti-science
Evolution Is Religion

I selected one at random, "Evolution: The Anti-science" and took a look.

I have rarely seen more anti-science nonsense packed into a single essay.

Here is a sample:

Critical thinkers will realize that these kinds of arguments are quite ironic because evolution is actually contrary to the principles of science. That is, if evolution were true, the concept of science would not make sense. Science actually requires a biblical creation framework in order to be possible.

I keep warning you about the total nonsense you will find at AIG and the other creationist websites, but you don't believe me, and actually promote that stuff.

[TXnMA]

"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." "

Thank you for the ping, dear Sister. That's another insight "right in the X-ring"!

FYI & FWIW, WRT The Word and Creation, I have always been partial to John 1:1...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

OTOH & IMHO, the so-called "Intelligent Design Movement" is best labeled, "Cloaked Creationism" (as in Star Trek's infamous "Klingon cloaking device")...

[valkyry1]

The evolutionist denies the fact that if one follows the theory to its logical end that is where it leads to. At least Berkley does not try to evade it or hide it away.

That somehow molecules self-replicated and then formed cellular membranes etc and became the first cells. From the Berkley site “Replicating molecules evolved and began to undergo natural selection”

The truth is, molecules do not ‘self replicate’ either in or out of the cell. What happens with DNA and RNA in the cell may look like self replication to someone who is already pre-determined to interpreting the events as such.

And outside of the cell the one attempt at molecular self replication produced a reaction that may have mimicked molecular self replication but in fact could have been yet another catalytic reaction begun under certain conditions and undetected contaminants which acted as the catalyst.

[tacticalogic]

Weren’t you telling me that scientists can’t make “statements of fact” about what has happened in the past - that unless it was actually observed and measured it’s only speculation?

[Fichori]

"Weren’t you telling me that scientists can’t make “statements of fact” about what has happened in the past - that unless it was actually observed and measured it’s only speculation?"

Your probably the best strawman salesman I've ever met.

If your going to ask me about something I said, quote me in context.

If you don't have the guts to do that, don't ask me questions.

[tacticalogic]

If your going to ask me about something I said, quote me in context.

If I had a quote handy, I wouldn't need to ask. If you didn't say that, then just tell me you didn't say it.

[Jim W N]

The design of living things (as opposed to a non-living snowflake) points to a designer. If that’s circular reasoning to you then I’m afraid your having a problem with simple logic.

[Jim W N]

Again, Darwinism doesn’t have evidence to support its theory of the origins of life. ID’s evidence is everywhere. The issue is intelligent design because its evidence is commonplace and everywhere. As usual, you people present no rational in your refusal to deal with the reality of the design complexity that demands an acknowledgment of an intelligent designer. Typically you attack the messenger rather than confront the evidence of design (examples are everywhere and I’ve posted a few before and on this thread) that demands an acknowledgment of a designer.

[Fichori]

"If I had a quote handy, I wouldn't need to ask. If you didn't say that, then just tell me you didn't say it."

I'm not going to play that game.

If you want to discuss something I said, reply to the post in question and quote [in context] what you have a question about.

[Alamo-Girl]

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

OTOH & IMHO, the so-called "Intelligent Design Movement" is best labeled, "Cloaked Creationism" (as in Star Trek's infamous "Klingon cloaking device")...

LOLOL!

And I agree with you about John 1:1!

To God be the glory!

[Non-Sequitur]

Again, Darwinism doesn’t have evidence to support its theory of the origins of life. ID’s evidence is everywhere.

Again, just because you say it doesn't make it so. Life exists, we know that. But just because you don't subscribe to evolution and don't accept its findings doesn't make ID right by default.