A prominent Yale scientist has just publicly denounced Darwinism as not only improbable, but statistically “a dead loss”!
Writing for The Claremont Review of Books, Yale professor of computer science, David Gelernter, explains how he was predisposed to believe in Darwinism, yet when he investigated it, he found it wanting:
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. 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.
Gelernter largely credits the Discovery Institute’s Stephen Meyer, and his “thoughtful and meticulous” book, Darwin’s Doubt, for opening his eyes to the flaws in evolution. Gelernter explains that what’s known as the “Cambrian Explosion” showed the exact opposite of what Darwin predicted the fossil record would show. Instead of change developing in a gradual, step-by-step fashion, the animal-groups that appeared during the Cambrian Explosion arrived fully formed—and their forms resisted all major changes to their body plans.
Next, Gelernter shows how modern molecular biology has essentially destroyed Darwin’s theory by showing the complexity of protein and the impossibility that protein could have formed randomly.
(Molecular biologist Douglas Axe) estimated that, of all 150-link amino acid sequences, 1 in 1074 will be capable of folding into a stable protein. To say that your chances are 1 in 1074 is no different, in practice, from saying that they are zero. It’s not surprising that your chances of hitting a stable protein that performs some useful function, and might therefore play a part in evolution, are even smaller. Axe puts them at 1 in 1077.
In other words: immense is so big, and tiny is so small, that neo-Darwinian evolution is—so far—a dead loss. Try to mutate your way from 150 links of gibberish to a working, useful protein and you are guaranteed to fail. Try it with ten mutations, a thousand, a million—you fail. The odds bury you. It can’t be done.
My husband, Neal, who’s an AP Statistics instructor, has long said the problem with evolutionary biologists is that most don’t know statistics. If they did, they’d see that Darwin’s theory of evolution amounts to a “null hypothesis” that reasonable scientists must reject due to embarrassingly low probabilities. After reading the article, Neal wrote:
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Like it or not, conclusions in science are based on probabilities calculated by mathematicians. And the probability of observing new proteins, when calculated on the assumption that Darwin was right, is too low for the assumption to stand. An intellectually honest scientist is obligated to reject the assumption that Darwin was right. The time has come to admit there is sufficient evidence to conclude that Intelligent Design is the only reasonable alternative, unless you’re willing to resort to blind faith in the religion of naturalism.
Gelernter, who’s Jewish, doesn’t embrace Intelligent Design but he comes close. And he says what very few secular scientists are willing to admit—that the evolutionists are the ideologues while the proponents of I.D. are “dispassionate intellectuals.”:
Meyer doesn’t only demolish Darwin; he defends a replacement theory, intelligent design (I.D.). Although I can’t accept intelligent design as Meyer presents it, he does show that it is a plain case of the emperor’s new clothes: it says aloud what anyone who ponders biology must think, at some point, while sifting possible answers to hard questions. Intelligent design as Meyer explains it never uses religious arguments, draws religious conclusions, or refers to religion in any way. It does underline an obvious but important truth: Darwin’s mission was exactly to explain the flagrant appearance of design in nature.
The religion is all on the other side. Meyer and other proponents of I.D. are the dispassionate intellectuals making orderly scientific arguments. Some I.D.-haters have shown themselves willing to use any argument—fair or not, true or not, ad hominem or not—to keep this dangerous idea locked in a box forever. They remind us of the extent to which Darwinism is no longer just a scientific theory but the basis of a worldview, and an emergency replacement religion for the many troubled souls who need one.
Click here read Gelernter’s full article.
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20 Responses
Yes, if you look for and actually want to know truth, it will reveal itself. (He will reveal Himself.)
Darwinian Evolution was DOA but it has taken years for the advances in science to have an impact on those who have refused to acknowledge that fact. Science is the friend those who support God’s Word as written.
If your interested in much more scientific responses to evolution try ICR.org or, oddly enough Evolutionnews.org. Watch a couple videos by James Tour on that site, they will blow your mind as he talks about above subject.
This applies to the ICR and all other creationist propaganda sites.
David Gelertner is an artist, writer, and professor of computer science who is, shall we say, not stupid. To bill him as a scientist in any way qualified to contribute to scientific conversations on microbiology or paleontology or genetics, though, is misleading at best.
He’s out of his depth here. He argues against understandings that were superseded 50-100 years ago as if they were current, and he takes the term “random” to mean something very different from what geneticists mean by it.
If we believe there is a God who created the universe, and us in it, for a purpose, then as Christians who engage issues and seek truth, we have much better options than to indulge in pseudoscience whenever we think its implications might be helpful to our cause.
“we have much better options than to indulge in pseudoscience whenever we think its implications might be helpful to our cause.”
This is a red herring example and a logical fallacy. It is a prime example of circular reasoning calling it “pseudoscience” and then coming to the conclusion that it is “pseudoscience.” There is also the logical fallacy of the “appeal to authority” and also an appeal to “the fallacy of the majority opinion” and some true ad hominem attack too in this statement, “To bill him as a scientist in any way qualified to contribute to scientific conversations on microbiology or paleontology or genetics, though, is misleading at best.” Computer scientists are involved in pure science. Everything they do has to have real world applications. Just because a majority of people in any field believe something is true does not mean that they are right. Every breakthrough in science has come by someone outside of the box, who was initially ridiculed, but the facts later won out. Computer scientists deal in the real world and not some aspect of theoretical physics or biology. There are theoretical sciences and they are full of people promoting unproven theories, 99.999% of which are either untestable by any kind of possible experiments or which are later disproven. This man is more than qualified to write about this matter.
When looking at probability and statistics it becomes evident to someone who works in any mathematical field that evolution is preposterous. Looking over the evidence as in the book “Improbable Planet” by Dr. Hugh Ross just shows how extraordinarily fine tuned the universe is on all scales for advanced life. Others have written books about the need for design in life because natural processes have no workable theory for the origin either of the first lifeforms “abiogenesis” or the emergence of totally new species “speciation.” Evolutionary theory has gone for the extremes at this point, grasping at straws and embracing all kinds of weird theories that are based on the fallacy that infinity exists and is a real world thing. Yet that statement itself can never be proven by science. Infinity is a useful mathematical axiom, but there is no proof that it really exists anywhere in this universe, nor is that idea even testable. Without infinity then all the improbabilities show that there has to be a God. To the materialist, infinity is actually the name of their God they believe in. And it is pure belief in something every bit as “irrational” to them as a belief in God. I would propose that their beliefs and religion is actually much more irrational.
If I pointed to a brand new 2020 car and told people that it just assembled itself through random processes over hundreds of millions of years, the evolutionist would rightly ridicule what I said. Yet even the smallest and simplest life forms are much more complex then that car. The reality is that the car had a head designer and so did the lifeforms that we see everywhere. Otherwise you are pointing to things that have an effective probability of zero. To the pure scientist that is absurd and all other theories need to be proven to the margin of five sigma margin before they are widely accepted by scientists. Abiogenesis is an exception as there is currently no plausible theory for it that is testable by today’s science. Its probability is effectively zero and yet it is believed just as much as Einsteins two theories of relativity that are tested more thoroughly than anything other theory of science, way above the five sigma margin of error.
A thoughtful and knowledgeable reply!
Anything that sets out with an end goal and then sets out to prove it is not science. Science takes you where the evidence leads. Because modern science will ignore anything that is not materialistic, then evolution MUST employ mechanisms that are solely driven by that process no matter how unlikely. This is agenda driven. It is clear, to the unbiased mind that all life is designed. if not for anything else than the fact that multiple systems are redundant without all aspects in place simultaneously.
Why shouldn’t science ignore anything it cannot test? Please read that sentence multiple times before committing more logic errors.
So, is this guy not allowed to come to his own conclusions and share it with the world?
Of course the man is ‘allowed’ to say whatever he wishes because we will always need the extremes of an argument to push ideas and develop and test theories.
It’s just a pity he has been selective.
Just because something has a low probability of occurring doesn’t mean it can’t or won’t. Ultimately, a hypothesis is something to be tested over time. Evolution as a theory only needs one piece of conclusive proof to prove it’s fallaciousness.
There isn’t one, and to employ semantically elegant structures like those often used to weed out errors of logic with the purpose of itself ‘hiding’ falsehoods and unsupported opinions, is doubly unsavoury. Screams of desperation… But that’s just me. Go on, which type of fallacy can you find now?
Stumpy, so you do not like logic? Sounds to me like you must hate real science because without logic you do not have any…
thats sad and all that, but so what, not like he represents the majority of scientist
Besides, these are his fields of study. I don’t see one science there that has anything to do with biology, paleontology etc:
Computer science
Parallel computing
>>Judaism<<
Literature
Visual arts
Maybe all you who find fault with Mr Gerlernter’s views should read the books he suggested before branding him a pseudoscientist. I live with someone who won’t read anything contrary to what he believes. He’s afraid to find out that there are evidences for the other point of view. He’d rather remain in the dark. “They loved darkness rather than light”.
Weesie, here is a link that talks in scientific detail about this process: https://www.reasons.org/explore/blogs/voices/read/voices/2019/08/09/i-think-therefore-it-must-be-true-part-2-the-science-of-certainty
Part 1 is good too. Together they demonstrate how the less humble an individual is, the more often they end up being wrong.
I’m not a statistician but how does 1 in 10^74 equal zero? I think Darwin went to Cambridge and was a Christian, so I understand that this is not about science at all. The gentleman labels himself as Jewish and went to Yale, it’s like an attack on a person and institution rather. BTW is there a published scientific article for this gentleman’s argument?
Here’s the article:
Douglas A. Axe, “Estimating the Prevalence of Protein Sequences Adopting Functional Enzyme Folds,” Journal of Molecular Biology, 341: 1295-1315 (2004); Douglas A. Axe, “Extreme Functional Sensitivity to Conservative Amino Acid Changes on Enzyme Exteriors,” Journal of Molecular Biology, 301: 585-595 (2000).
??He? why not She?
Your analogy with cars is trash…cars dont replicate, while organisms do…
John Brown, Computer Science is at the heart of biology. In fact, biology is increasingly being understood as the study of information. And thanks to Watson and Crick, we now know that the study of the origin of life amounts to the study of the origin of the genetic code, which is not just “like” computer software. Cells contain “actual” code that us used to govern the operation of a high-speed, self-replicating, nano-sized automated protein factory.