khan
Posts: 1554
Joined: May 2007
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| Quote (charlie wagner @ Aug. 23 2008,13:54) | | Quote | | Usually, people asserting "Darwin was wrong!" can't be bothered to substantiate just how. I've challenged some of those folks in the past, and either they decide that some other things are more pressing at the moment, argue that everybody knows that their claim is right, or rattle off a batch of ignorant tosh. |
Darwin was wrong about the power of natural selection.
He failed to provide a shred of empirical evidence, either observational or experimental, that establishes a plausible nexus, actual or hypothetical, between the trivial effects of random mutation and natural selection and the emergence of the highly organized structures, processes and systems found in living organisms.
He did address some highly organized structures, such as the eye, but he knew nothing about the nature of the cell. He can be excused for that failure.
I believe that it is self-evident that the eye did not evolve by the process
of mutation and natural selection. Not only is the rate of so-called
"beneficial" mutations ridiculously low, but the eye is an integrated
structure that fits in with the nerves,
bones and muscles of the body. Even if you can concede the possibility of
the eye itself evolving, you would have to account for the concurrent
evolution of the bones of the head, the eye socket, etc, the muscles that
control the eye, the nerves that carry the images, the blood vessels that
supply the eye, the biochemical reactions that make vision possible and the
cerebral cortex necessary to process the images. Evolutionary biologists
forget, sometimes, that all of an organism is integrated together, the parts
and processes are not separate. For one to "evolve", all must evolve and in
a manner that allows the parts to function together. This would require such
a fantastically large number of intermediate forms with various combinations
of "beneficial" mutations that it puts the whole concept of evolution well
beyond the reach of chance. Darwinian evolution by natural selection is
merely a special case of the general procedure of problem solving by trial
and error. This method would never be successful in achieving the level of
organization that we see. It is too inefficient. And there would not be
enough room in the universe for all of the rejects.
But the really telling fact is that in the century and a half following his claim, his successors have done no better. The "leap of faith" that he depended on has become longer and longer as deeper layers of organization are uncovered so that it would now take a miracle to explain these structures, processes and systems with the mechanism he proposed. |
Some are born tard, some achieve tardness, and some have tardness thrust upon 'em
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"It's as if all those words, in their hurry to escape from the loony, have fallen over each other, forming scrambled heaps of meaninglessness." -damitall
That's so fucking stupid it merits a wing in the museum of stupid. -midwifetoad
Frequency is just the plural of wavelength...
-JoeG
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