Darwin's Doubt

[YankeeFan]

Heard an interview with the author of this new book yesterday.

The author makes a case for Intelligent Design. Does Intelligent Design fill in the gaps in Darwin's theory?

Two takes:

Darwin's Doubt, the brand new New York Times bestseller by Cambridge-trained Ph.D., Stephen Meyer, is creating a major scientific controversy. Darwinists don't like it.

Meyer writes about the complex history of new life forms in an easy to understand narrative style. He takes the reader on a journey from Darwin to today while trying to discover the best explanation for how the first groups of animals arose. He shows, quite persuasively, that Darwinian mechanisms don't have the power to do the job.

Using the same investigative forensic approach Darwin used over 150 years ago, Meyer investigates the central doubt Darwin had about his own theory. Namely, that the fossil record did not contain the rainbow of intermediate forms that his theory of gradual evolutionary change required. However, Darwin predicted that future discoveries would confirm his theory.

Meyer points out that they haven't. We've thoroughly searched the fossil record since Darwin and confirmed what Darwin originally saw himself: the discontinuous, abrupt appearance of the first forms of complex animal life. In fact, paleontologists now think that roughly 20 of the 28 animal phyla (representing distinct animal "body plans") found in the fossil record appear abruptly without ancestors in a dramatic geological event called the Cambrian Explosion.

And additional discoveries since Darwin have made it even worse for his theory. Darwin didn't know about DNA or the digital information it contains that makes life possible. He couldn't have appreciated, therefore, that building new forms of animal life would require millions of new characters of precisely sequenced code—that the Cambrian explosion was a massive explosion of new information.

For modern neo-Darwinism to survive, there must be an unguided natural mechanism that can create the genetic information and then add to it massively, accurately and within the time allowed by the fossil record. Is there such a mechanism?

http://townhall.com/columnists/frankturek/2013/07/09/untitled-n1634815

Meyer goes on to build a grander, more bizarre argument that draws from the intelligent-design well. The genetic machinery of life, he writes, is incapable of grand leaps forward, meaning that any dramatic biological innovation must be the work of the intelligent designer. Yet scientific literature contains many well-documented counterexamples to Meyer's argument, and the mechanisms by which life's machinery can change quickly are well known. Whole genes can be duplicated, for example, and the copy can evolve new functions.

Most absurd of all is the book's stance on knowledge: if something cannot be fully explained by today's science—and there is plenty about the Cambrian, and the universe, that cannot—then we should assume it is fundamentally beyond explanation, and therefore the work of a supreme deity.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/07/doubting-stephen-meyers-darwins-doubt.html

 

[Dick Whitman]

Does Intelligent Design fill in the gaps in Darwin's theory?

No.

 

[Football_Bat]

I'm more interested in hearing if one really believes the Intelligent Bullshirt he's posting.

Just quit it, dude.

 

[black dude with pompano]

I love how "Darwinist" is used as a pejorative. In 2013.

 

[YankeeFan]

I love how "Darwinist" is used as a pejorative. In 2013.

While not doubting or evolution, nor certainly arguing for Biblical creation, I think it's fair to discuss Darwin's specific theories/findings.

They have some holes, right?

But, conventional wisdom seems to hold that he answered all the questions 175 years ago. Did he?

While the author may take a leap as to how to fill in the gaps, I think it's an interesting question. We still don't have all the answers.

 

[Dick Whitman]

But, conventional wisdom seems to hold that he answered all the questions 175 years ago.

No. It doesn't.

 

[YankeeFan]

But, conventional wisdom seems to hold that he answered all the questions 175 years ago.

No. It doesn't.

Sure it does.

Granted, most folks don't spend a lot of time pondering evolution. But, part of the reason for that is because they don't know how many gaps there are. A lot of piece of the puzzle are missing. And, the author would argue that even Darwin would be surprised by the number of pieces still missing.

 

[Dick Whitman]

But, conventional wisdom seems to hold that he answered all the questions 175 years ago.

No. It doesn't.

Sure it does.

It really doesn't.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/darwin-never-knew.html

 

[YankeeFan]

It really doesn't.

OK. What's the conventional wisdom regarding Darwin's Theory of Evolution?

 

[Dick Whitman]

It really doesn't.

OK. What's the conventional wisdom regarding Darwin's Theory of Evolution?

The conventional wisdom regarding Darwin's Theory of Evolution is that he got the broad sweep pretty much correct, but that there was plenty he could not yet explain. That's how science works. Hypothesis is formed. Hypothesis is tested. Hypothesis becomes a theory. Theory is built upon.

Why aren't you holding Frances Crick and James Watson to this same exacting standard? They only made their discovery 60 years ago, and it was admittedly incomplete. Is Crick and Watson's work, therefore, null and void? When is the National Review article on that? Galileo made his how many centuries ago, regarding the heliocentric nature of the solar system. Is the "conventional wisdom" that Galileo knew about Pluto's unusual orbit? And, if not, does that undermine Galileo's entire theory? When is the Fox News special? Has anyone alerted Rick Warren?

If the "conventional wisdom" is that Darwin nailed every detail nearly 200 years ago, then that means that the scientific community, and the public at large, believes that Charles Darwin accomplished something that no other scientist did ever.

 

[NoOneLikesUs]

Pseudoscience junk. It's probably a best-seller only in the sense that large Christisn/conservative organizations bought up a messload to pump up its credibility.

 

[Riptide]

You boys have been smoking that dope again, aintcha?