Darwinism is in trouble from science

[Mikemikev]

“When you look for links between major groups of animals, they simply aren’t there; at least, not in enough numbers to put their status beyond doubt. Either they don’t exist at all, or they are so rare that endless argument goes on about whether a particular fossil is, or isn’t, or might be, transitional between this group and that.” (Hitching, Francis, The Neck of the Giraffe: where Darwin Went Wrong, New Haven, Conn.: Ticknor and Fields, 1982, pp 56-57;.p. 19).

evolutionist francis hitching.

 

[Mikemikev]

So many ID v evolution threads, & this question never even garners a response.

Creationism/id is falsifiable, stop claiming it isn't:

http://www.discovery.org/f/494

So contemporary arguments for intelligent design in both biology and the physical
sciences are not only testable; they’re falsifiable. We have given only two examples here.
There are other design arguments in origin-of-life studies and paleontology that are also
falsifiable. Therefore, honest commentators should stop claiming that ID is unfalsifiable.
The claim itself is falsifiable, and it has been falsified. It’s time to move on to other and
more pertinent aspects of the debate over intelligent design.

 

[Revoltingest]

Creationism/id is falsifiable, stop claiming it isn't:
http://www.discovery.org/f/494

I read this, yet saw no experiment in which a theory of ID is testable, ie, falsifiable.
The paper only claims it's falsifiable.
In your own words, what experiment would accomplish this?

 

[George-ananda]

@mikeymike

You're telling us what you don't believe. I'm curious, what do you think accounts for the complexity and diversity of life on earth?

 

[shawn001]

"Neo-Darwinism, which insists on [the slow accrual of mutations by gene-level natural selection], is in a complete funk." Dr. Lynn Margulis

Margulis was a leading expert... yet she exposed the hoax of Darwinism.

You have this seriously wrong and you do Lynn a major injustice to a remarkable woman.

Lynn Margulis, Evolution Theorist, Dies at 73

"Dr. Margulis had the title of distinguished university professor of geosciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, since 1988. She drew upon earlier, ridiculed ideas when she first promulgated her theory, in the late 1960s, that cells with nuclei, which are known as eukaryotes and include all the cells in the human body except mature red blood cells, evolved as a result of symbiotic relationships among bacteria.

The hypothesis was a direct challenge to the prevailing neo-Darwinist belief that the primary evolutionary mechanism was random mutation.

Rather, Dr. Margulis argued that a more important mechanism was symbiosis; that is, evolution is a function of organisms that are mutually beneficial growing together to become one and reproducing. "


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/25/s...ng-theorist-on-evolution-dies-at-73.html?_r=0


She was married to the great Dr. Carl Sagan. Who put together the Cosmic calender.

The Universe in One Year was inspired by the late astronomer, Carl Sagan (1934-1996). Sagan was the first person to explain the history of the universe in one year-as a "Cosmic Calendar"-in his television series, Cosmos.
Let us look at the calendar in a bit more detail:

"Within the scheme of the Cosmic Calendar, an average human life of 70-80 years is equivalent to approximately 0.16 cosmic seconds!"

Cosmic Calendar





20 Things You Didn't Know About... Viruses
The one with its own satellite, the ones that made you, and the Mama of them all

"In fact, scratch the whole concept of “us versus them.” Half of all human DNA originally came from viruses, which infected and embedded themselves in our ancestors’ egg and sperm cells."

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Viruses | DiscoverMagazine.com

 

[Straw Dog]

*Post Removed*

Every time an intermediate form is discovered, it creates the need for more intermediate forms between the forms already uncovered. Life is complex and developed diversity over a long period of time relative to the human condition. I think that Darwinism is either incomplete or false. This doesn't really negate modern evolutionary theories, though. Besides natural selection, other mechanisms could involve sexual selection, etc. Most humans don't like to accept that there's complexity beyond comprehension and would rather just endorse an anthropomorphic dogma.

 

[Parsimony]

No new enzymes, you say?

 

[Ouroboros]

Yet another "Evolution is Ebil!1!!1" thread.

If we only could harvest stupidity into a power source, never having problems with energy again.

 

[shawn001]

The paper is from the discovery institute. They lie, they have been caught many times before with lying and with their agenda It was also written in 2005.

The year they got their butts handed to them in Dover.

"The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory."

"After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980s; and (3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community. …It is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research. Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena. "


"JUDGE JOHN E. JONES, III: In an era where we're trying to cure cancer, where we're trying to prevent pandemics, where were trying to keep science and math education on the cutting edge in the United States, to introduce and teach bad science to ninth-grade students makes very little sense to me. You know, garbage in garbage out. And it doesn't benefit any of us who benefit daily from scientific discoveries."

NOVA | Intelligent Design on Trial

 

[Enai de a lukal]

Creationism/id is falsifiable, stop claiming it isn't:

It generally isn't. When it has made falsifiable claims, they simply turn out to be false, like Behe's "irreducible complexity", which has been refuted.

 

[shawn001]

Yet another "Evolution is Ebil!1!!1" thread.

If we only could harvest stupidity into a power source, never having problems with energy again.

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

 

[FunctionalAtheist]

How do the Darwinists respond to this? We have evolutionists (all of the above) admitting Darwinism is nonsense.

Well obviously somebody doesn't know what they're talking about!!

That would be you Mikemikev. What I find amazing is that you somehow seem to think that a few contrary opinions somehow detracts for the overall argument. If you had any clue at all you'd understand that every detractor adds to the disucussion and refines the principle through discourse. But most amusing (and I am giggling for sure) is if a point ever comes (which it has not) that the paradigm begins to shift, you seem to think that creationism would somehow benefit from this shift.

Hysterical laughter!!! That's how I respond.

 

[shawn001]

Well

"NEIL SHUBIN: Darwin didn't even know about molecular biology and DNA, yet that's where some of the most profound evidence is being uncovered today. Think about that. That somebody in the 1800s made predictions that are being confirmed in molecular biology labs today. That's a very profound statement of a very successful theory.



KENNETH R. MILLER: Not a single observation, not a single experimental result, has ever emerged in 150 years that contradicts the general outlines of the theory of evolution. Any theory that can stand up to 150 years of contentious testing is a pretty darn good theory, and that's what evolution is."

NOVA | Intelligent Design on Trial

 

[Skwim]

What's Doctor Noble's agenda?
What's his doctorate?

Denis Noble CBE FRS FRCP (born 16 November 1936) is a British biologist who held the Burdon Sanderson Chair of Cardiovascular Physiology at Oxford University from 1984 to 2004 and was appointed Professor Emeritus and co-Director of Computational Physiology.
Source: Wikipedia
​

In short, cardiovascular and computational physiology

"Neo-Darwinism, which insists on [the slow accrual of mutations by gene-level natural selection], is in a complete funk." Dr. Lynn Margulis

Margulis was a leading expert... yet she exposed the hoax of Darwinism.

Not at all sure what you have in mind using the word "Darwinism"---an outdated term pretty much restricted to creationist jargon in their debate with evolution. In any case, your remark here is interesting because on page five of Five Kingdoms an Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of life on Earth Lynn Margulis says,"

"All life, because it evolved from common ancestors, must at all times make and use certain long-chain molecules to maintain cell metabolism."

​

"All life . . . evolved from common ancestors"

"All life . . . evolved from common ancestors"

"All life . . . evolved from common ancestors"
​

Prof Eugene Koonin PHD writes:
"The summary of the state of affairs on the 150th anniversary of the Origin is somewhat shocking: in the post-genomic era, all major tenets of the Modern Synthesis are, if not outright overturned. So, not to mince words, the Modern Synthesis is gone. "

explain this.

I'd rather see you explain exactly what Koonin means here, because I honestly don't believe you have an inkling of what he's talking about.

That you believe your quote mineing indicates you comprehend what is being said is amusing. Truth is, it pretty much shows you don't understand much at all, particularly about evolution and its various facets.

Margulis in her own words described Neo-Darwinism:

:
"a minor twentieth-century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon Biology"

as a religion.

"[Margulis} . . . holds a negative view of certain interpretations of Neo-Darwinism, excessively focused on inter-organismic competition, as she believed that history will ultimately judge them as comprising "a minor twentieth-century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon Biology." She also believed that proponents of the standard theory "wallow in their zoological, capitalistic, competitive, cost-benefit interpretation of Darwin – having mistaken him... Neo-Darwinism, which insists on [the slow accrual of mutations by gene-level natural selection], is in a complete funk."

She opposed such competition-oriented views of evolution, stressing the importance of symbiotic or cooperative relationships between species."
Source:Wikipedia
​

And, just a FYI here, "religion" and its variations, like many other words, are often used metaphorically*, as is the case here, not literally, as you would like to believe.

*"met·a·phor
[met-uh-fawr, -fer]
noun
1.
a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance,"

​

That it's necessary to inform you of this simple grammatical convention is this quite telling, although not surprising.

 

[Dirty Penguin]

neodarwinism is fraud and has been debunked. dr. denis noble has exposed it. creationism is more reliable.

Oh goodie. I've been asking this question for some time now and it hasn't been answered in a way that makes logical sense maybe you can give it a go. Why do human males have nipples if they're not needed since nipples are for nursing young?

 

[Skwim]

Oh goodie. I've been asking this question for some time now and it hasn't been answered in a way that makes logical sense maybe you can give it a go. Why do human males have nipples if they're not needed since nipples are for nursing young?

Well, Dr. John H. Watson (of Sherlock Holmes fame) said it was to prevent nipple envy in males. And who are we to question anyone, on anything, who has a doctorate degree ---especially when they back up our prejudices.

 

[Valjean]

"The hold of the evolutionary paradigm is so powerful that an idea which is more like a principle of medieval astrology than a serious twentieth century scientific theory has become a reality for evolutionary biologists." (Michael Denton, 1985, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 306).

The fact that life has changed over the ages (evolution) is pretty much incontrovertible. Species appeared, species disappeared, complexity increased.
Pretty much all biologists are 'evolutionary biologists'. Dissenters are rarer than hen's teeth.
The ToE is hardly a "theory in crisis." It's the cornerstone of a dozen different disciplines, and at every step it gains greater support.

"Darwinism has never had much appeal for science outside of the English-speaking world, and has never appealed much to the American public (although popular with the U.S. scientific establishment in the past). However, its ascendancy in science, in both Britain and America, has been waning for several decades as its grip has weakened in successive areas: geology; paleontology; embryology; comparative anatomy. Now even geneticists are beginning to have doubts. It is only in mainstream molecular biology and zoology that Darwinism retains serious enthusiastic supporters. As growing numbers of scientists begin to drift away from neo-Darwinist ideas, the revision of Darwinism at the public level is long overdue, and is a process that I believe has already started." Richard Milton, Shattering the Myths of Darwinism (Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press, 1992, 1997), p. 277.

The ToE is accepted pretty much everywhere but the English speaking world, or, more specifically, America. It's 'ascendancy' is growing, not waning. The only controversy is about details of the specific mechanisms involved, not the fact of evolution.

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution" (Gould, Stephen Jay, "Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?," Paleobiology, Vol. 6, No. 1, January 1980, p.127).

Are you seriously recruiting one of the strongest supporters of the ToE as a denier? Do you think biologists posit only one mechanism behind evolution?

Darwin, troubled by the perfection of the eye, pointed out such gradations (C. Darwin 1964,186-190), yet the existence of viable stages on the way does not explain how it was possible that many very unlikely genes came along in the right order to direct all the details, while at the same time an immensely larger number of continually occurring deleterious mutations were continually being eliminated." (Wesson, Robert G., 1991, Beyond Natural Selection, MIT Press: Cambridge MA, 1994, reprint, p.62).

I don't see your point. Of course Darwin couldn't explain the mechanism's involved, he lived in the 1800s, for heaven's sake. (Curiously, IDers have no theories even today).

"Another philosophical question regards the very definition of the word 'selection'. One of the original formulations of selection was 'the survival of the fittest'. If you open a standard textbook of genetics 'fitness' will probably be defined as 'the ability to survive' or something similar. But if the 'fittest' are defined as 'the best survivors' then the idea of natural selection becomes 'the survival of those best at surviving'. So what else is new? If there is no more to Darwinism than a truism then the whole theory rests on very shaky ground." (Leith B., "The Descent of Darwin: A Handbook of Doubts about Darwinism," Collins: London, 1982, p.21)

Reproductive success would be a better formulation of the driving force.

In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutation plus natural selection - quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection a tautology." (Koestler A., "Janus: A Summing Up," Picador: London, 1983, pp.184-185).

Balderdash! No-one today looks to Darwin for answers any more than people look to Mendel for answers in modern genetics.

How do the Darwinists respond to this? We have evolutionists (all of the above) admitting Darwinism is nonsense.

Hogwash! You could count the serious evolution deniers on the fingers of one hand -- and still hoist a beer.
And what the heck is a "Darwinist," anyway? It's like calling astronomers "Copernicans."

 

[Falvlun]

we have never seen flies turn into a dog. nobody has seen an ape turn into a man. this evolution is a hoax. I will not believe it. never. I have studied sciences and genetics for years.

If you actually understood evolution, you would know that we shouldn't expect to see flies turn into dogs. That's not what the ToE predicts.

only microevolution exists.

Ah. Another believer in the Magic Fence. You know, the one that keeps microevolution on one side, and macroevolution on the other. I wonder, what biological mechanism tells an organism "nuh uh. No way, Jose! You can't do that mutation, because if you do, then now we'll have macroevolution!"

 

[Mycroft]

Listen. What Darwin discovered isn't gospel. It isn't the final product or the final solution. It was the start of the product which we continue today. Many of Newton's work has come under review and undergone change over the years too. On The Origin of Species is not a bible. And, really, we should be grateful for that fact as it means we can stand up and say 'yes, this part was wrong.'

But being wrong is just as important as being right. Everything proven wrong on the journey we still undertake on the road to figuring out evolution is another step to finding out the right bits. And we will get it wrong at times, sure. There will be many more times like this ahead. But that does not mean you can swell your chest like a bantam and say 'You see! We told you evolution was false!' Because it's not. It's simply still in its stages of discovery.

 

[dyanaprajna2011]

It's all be said before. None of it is still true, though. Check actual scientific sources instead of biased and outdated gibberish.