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Charles Darwin

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Neo-Darwinists often say ‘no serious scientists disagree’ with Darwinism, or ‘only creationists have problems.’ These contentions are flatly false.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/16/one-third-biologists-now-question-darwinism/

[Keep reading to find out why.]

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“Darwin’s first theory was purely philosophical [not scientific]… It turns out that an unstated yet fundamental premise of Darwin’s entire project — the contention of utter randomness [in the appearance of new species] — was based on a bald, simple-minded theological assumption: God wouldn’t have done it that way. This assumption on Darwin’s part didn’t spring from anything science-related, but from the problem of animal suffering in nature. Here’s how Darwin explained it in a letter to his friend Asa Gray, a Harvard botanist, minus the complicated biological terminology: ‘I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created [life that way. Therefore,] I see no necessity in the belief that [complex life] was expressly designed.‘ It turns out, then, that Darwin’s reasoning, indeed the entire Darwinian proposition, began, not with anything scientific, but with Darwin’s own personal disinclination to countenance theism.”

https://salvomag.com/article/salvo49/darwinism-dissembled

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“Darwin was arguing in a self-confirming circle: the survival of the survivors. In rhetorical terms, this is what’s called a tautology… Darwin’s metaphysical [naturalism] was not a deduction from his science… but was influenced by his [atheistic] theology… [T]he Bible’s place in [Darwin’s] view of the world… was ‘no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian’… [But to] assume that only material causes exist is to assume an unstated claim about metaphysical reality. Furthermore, to do so and call it science constitutes fraud… Listen to biologist-turned-filmmaker Randy Olsen’s explanation for why he knowingly passed off falsehood in his 2007 film Flock of Dodos: The Evolution—Intelligent Design Circus: ‘Scientists must realize that science is a narrative process, that narrative is story, therefore science needs story.’ This is stunning! What [‘scientist’] Olson is saying here is that metaphysical storytelling should override accuracy in science reporting.”

https://salvomag.com/article/salvo42/the-darwin-tales

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“[T]he evidence from both living and dead organisms (i.e., biogeography and fossils) has failed to confirm a Darwinian view of life, according to which all species evolved through common descent with modification. Instead, the record shows that major groups of animals appeared abruptly, without direct evolutionary precursors… [P]rominent [evolutionary] biochemist W. Ford Doolittle… famously lament[ed this fact]: ‘Molecular phylogenists will have failed to find the “true tree,” not because their methods are inadequate or because they have chosen the wrong genes, but because the history of life cannot properly be represented as a tree.‘ He later acknowledged, ‘It is as if we have failed at the task that Darwin set for us: delineating the unique structure of the tree of life.‘… Perhaps the most candid discussion of the [tree of life] problem came in a 2009 review article in New Scientist titled Why Darwin Was Wrong about the Tree of Life. The author quoted researcher Eric Bapteste explaining that ‘the holy grail was to build a tree of life,‘ but ‘today that project lies in tatters, torn to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence.‘ According to the article, ‘many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded.‘ The paper also recounted the results of a study by Michael Syvanen that compared 2,000 genes across six diverse animal phyla: ‘In theory, [Syvanen] should have been able to use the gene sequences to construct an evolutionary tree showing the relationships between the six animals. He failed. The problem was that different genes told contradictory evolutionary stories.‘ Syvanen succinctly summarized the problem: ‘We’ve just annihilated the tree of life. It’s not a tree any more, it’s a different topology entirely.‘… Because biogeography and fossils have failed to bolster common descent [which a ‘tree of life‘ would be able to illustrate], many evolutionary scientists have turned to molecules — the nucleotide and amino acid sequences of genes and proteins — to establish a phylogenetic tree of life showing the evolutionary relationships between all living organisms… [But] biological similarity is constantly being found in places where it wasn’t predicted by common descent, leading to conflicts between phylogenetic trees. When two trees conflict, at least one must be wrong. How do we know that both aren’t? [Not surprisingly,] many [published, peer-reviewed research] papers have noted the prevalence of contradictory molecule-based phylogenetic trees… [In fact, a] review article in Nature titled Bones, Molecules, or Both? explains that… ‘When biologists talk of the ‘evolution wars’… they usually mean the ongoing battle for supremacy in American schoolrooms between Darwinists and their creationist opponents.‘ But the warfare metaphor could also be applied to a debate raging within evolutionary biology… [because] ‘battles between molecules and morphology are being fought across the entire tree of life,‘ leaving readers with a stark assessment: ‘Evolutionary trees constructed by studying biological molecules often don’t resemble those drawn up from morphology.‘… The creator of the TREE exhibit at the London museum stated she was inspired by Darwin’s ‘bravery to profoundly challenge orthodoxy.‘ But the tree of life itself has now become orthodoxy—orthodoxy that needs to be challenged because it’s no longer supported by the evidence.”

[Actually, it never was. But evidence is not what drives evolutionism. Ideology is .] ”

https://salvomag.com/article/salvo27/logged-out

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“Examples [of natural selection supporting Darwinian evolution] paraded in many standard biology textbooks include Darwin’s finches, peppered moths, and drug resistance. [Darwin’s] finches’ beak size returned to normal within a few years after [each] drought ended, resulting in no directional change [toward a new bird, or even finch, species]. Yet even if a directional change had occurred, it would not have demonstrated how a finch could one day become a falcon any more than it would have shown how a primordial swill of molecules could become a gene… Even with thousands of years of intelligent intervention — i.e., breeding — dogs have always remained dogs… The long history of animal breeding strongly suggests a terminal point of evolution, bounded by genetic limitations…
    [The] ‘discovery’ [that] that light-colored moths turned dark during England’s Industrial Revolution, when pollution buildup on tree trunks made light moths more visible to predators… was touted as ‘evolution in action,’ even though it was later learned that peppered moths do not normally rest on tree trunks and that the photos purportedly supporting the findings had been staged… Nonetheless, the shoddy moth study still adorns school textbooks as a classic “proof” of natural selection…
    While evolution can occur as small, limited changes in an organism’s genome, such changes are far more often detrimental than they are beneficial. In the rare instances where a benefit is conferred (e.g., antibiotic immunity, pesticide resistance), it usually comes about as a result of the loss or suppression of information in certain genes… not of a gain in information, which is necessary for novel life forms to occur. The bottom line is that mutations tend to destroy functions at a far greater rate than they create new ones…
    Just as the lyrics to [songs] are not reducible to the chemical reaction between ink and paper, so also the ‘complex and specified information’ of DNA is not a product of chemical laws. That leaves two options: blind chance or design… [When] Microsoft engineers analyzed the chemical sequences of DNA [they] remarked, ‘Human DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.’ Just think, if the most highly evolved thing in the cosmos — the human mind — using the collective imagination, creativity, cognitive power, and scientific know-how of the brightest software engineers on the planet, is unable to re-create the [complexity of] instructions resident in DNA, then to conjecture that those instructions could have been cobbled together through an aimless process of random variation and adaptation is nothing short of stupefying. If complex and specified information is inexplicable by natural laws or by chance, then it must be a product of design…
    So why do Darwin’s promoters keep backing a champ riddled with so many problems? I think the best answer comes from self-professed atheist Thomas Nagel:

‘It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God… I hope there is no God!… I don’t want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and is responsible for… the overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind.‘

In short, devot[ion] to evolution may stem not so much from… scientific strength as from an emotional aversion to [the] number one contender: intelligent design.”

https://salvomag.com/article/salvo40/champ-change

and…

The Information Enigma

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA-FcnLsF1g

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“Darwinism undercuts the very possibility of rational truth… At the foundation of the [original] efforts [to apply Darwin’s theory to all life sciences, including sociology, psychology and even philosophy] was a naturalistic approach to knowledge itself (epistemology). The logic went like this: If humans are products of Darwinian natural selection, that obviously includes the human brain – which in turn means all our beliefs and values are products of evolutionary forces: Ideas arise in the human brain by chance, just like Darwin’s chance variations in nature; and the ones that stick around to become firm beliefs and convictions are those that give an advantage in the struggle for survival. This view of knowledge came to be called pragmatism (truth is what works) or instrumentalism (ideas are merely tools for survival)…
    In this new evolutionary logic, ideas are not judged by a transcendent standard of Truth, but by how they work in getting us what we want. Ideas do not “reflect reality” but only serve human interests… If evolutionary forces produced the mind, they said, then all are beliefs and convictions are nothing but mental survival strategies, to be judged in terms of their practical success in human conduct… In short, a Darwinian epistemology implies that ideas are merely tools for meeting human goals [a.k.a. pragmatism — which is philosophy, not science]…
    According to the traditional, common-sense approach to knowledge, our ideas are true when the represent or correspond to reality. But according to Darwinian epistemology, ideas are nothing but tools that have evolved to help us control and manipulate the environment… [But i]f all ideas are products of evolution, and thus not really true but only useful for survival, then evolution itself is not true either – and why should the rest of us pay any attention to it?
    Indeed, the theory undercuts itself. For if evolution is true, then it is not true, but only useful. This kind of internal contradiction is fatal, for a theory that asserts something and denies it at the same time is simply nonsense. In short, naturalistic evolution is self-refuting.”

https://www.namb.net/apologetics-blog/how-darwinism-dumbs-us-down/

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Darwin & Science:

How to Make Darwinism Impregnable

http://crev.info/2012/06/how-to-make-darwinism-impregnable/

[ASND thought Darwinism was already impregnable .]

and…

“It is a dirty secret in Darwin.”

http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2011/01/17/207081_ntnews.html

[OBJECTION ! Charles Darwin (and Darwinism ) had (and has ) no secrets . Only ignorant fools believe otherwise . End of argument . ]

and…

Darwin’s Predictions

http://www.darwinspredictions.com/

and…

How Darwin Failed His Own Test

http://www.exploregod.com/how-darwin-failed-his-own-test

and…

Seven Nobel Laureates in science who either supported Intelligent Design or attacked Darwinian evolution

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/seven-nobel-laureates-in-science-who-either-supported-intelligent-design-or-attacked-darwinian-evolution/

and…

A world-famous chemist tells the truth: there’s no scientist alive today who understands macroevolution

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/a-world-famous-chemist-tells-the-truth-theres-no-scientist-alive-today-who-understands-macroevolution/

and…

Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini are both atheist scholars. Their analysis of natural selection is meticulous and devastating.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/08/natural_selecti_2075991.html

and…

Scientific study turns understanding about evolution on its head

http://phys.org/news/2013-07-scientific-evolution.html

and…

“We should admit that we don’t fully understand how evolution works at the molecular level”

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7vx5826c8bsbug3/Celebrate%20the%20Unknowns.pdf

and…

“If all the mutations that drive evolution were simply random and equally distributed, it would proceed at an impossibly slow and inefficient pace.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/science/probably-approximately-correct-explores-natures-algorithms.html?ref=science&_r=0&pagewanted=print

[Also from that New York Times article:]

“We need to explain how evolution is possible at all, how we got from no life, or from very simple life, to life as complex as we find it on earth today. This is the BIG question.“

and…

Here’s What the NY Times Was Saying About Evolution in 1980

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/02/heres_what_the082461.html

and…

What Are the Top Ten Problems with Darwinian Evolution?

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/what_are_the_to_1062011.html

and…

The Impotence of Darwinism: A Christian Scientist Looks at the Evidence

http://www.probe.org/site/c.fdKEIMNsEoG/b.4218201/k.8205/The_Impotence_of_Darwinism.htm

EvolutionLaughable

[ASND thanks Wintery Knight for that image.]

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Atheists & Agnostics Who Dare to Doubt Darwin

https://salvomag.com/article/salvo17/neither-god-nor-darwin

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A “Mathematical Proof of Darwinian Evolution” Is Falsified

https://evolutionnews.org/2018/01/peer-reviewed-science-a-mathematical-proof-of-darwinian-evolution-is-falsified/

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Darwin & Racism:

If Darwinism Is Right, Why Is Racism Wrong?

https://stream.org/if-darwinism-is-right-why-is-racism-wrong/

and…

“The thread of racism in Darwinian thinking isn’t a chance thing, a mere byproduct of Charles Darwin’s personal views as a ‘man of his time‘… Racism is implicit in the Darwinian belief system about how things happen… [because] the ‘hierarchy of man‘ is rooted in the fundamental assumptions of the Descent of Man, the idea that Darwin popularized… In any Darwinian scheme, someone must be the subhuman… [But i]f [human antecessors] aren’t found [ not even one has been], the Darwinist is looking down the maw of some sort of creationism… [which] mean[s] that a momentous event happened with explicable swiftness, like the Big Bang or the origin of language , findings naturalists do not like precisely because of their creationist implications. Surely these are the true reasons Darwinists simply can’t confront the race issue and get past it, and so they resort to long-winded special pleading.”