Darwinism and neo-Darwinism: Toxic Enemy of Scientific Progress

Hi All:

It's been a while since I dropped by to drop in my two cents worth on anything. Been busy - still busy. Should not be doing this post actually.

Just got back from the Sixth International Conference on Creationism in Pittsburgh. A rollicking raucous good time was had by all, except for perhaps a few clandestine Darwinians who may have slipped in for purposes of spying or reporting or maybe for getting ideas for new cutting edge science in order to hijack ideas and publish in recognized science journals without giving any credit to creationists. Hmmm, think that has not happened before?

Anyway, it was all cool and I suppose you can order proceedings of the technical sessions on DVD (maybe CD?) by going to
http://www.icc08.org

Now for today's post:

Materialist philosopher Daniel Dennett in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea argues that Darwinism acts like a "universal acid," dissolving virtually all structures of morality and culture. And Dennett seems very comfortable indeed with the dissolution of Biblical world views and the accompanying sea-level shift in morality and culture. He is "one of them", not "one of us."

Maybe it really does not take much arguing to establish the "universal acid" nature of Darwinism because its toxicity to Western culture and faith is all-too-well demonstrated

But today's post is for benefit of (or observation about) the slippery folks we have lurking around who squeal with delight at Darwinism's profound success in dissolving fundamental elements of Judaeo-Christian culture. Those slimy slugs will virtually always fall prostrate and kiss the big toe of a "science" which they propose to supplant faith. I will offer a truncated list of areas in which Darwin's "dangerous idea" has been toxic - or at least severely retardant - to the advancement of true science. Enjoy.

(1) Darwinism retarded acceptance of germ theory as proposed by (creationist) Louis Pasteur. See:
http://darwin-is-dead.blogspot.com/2007/04/so-who-really-hijacked-louis-pasteur.html
So how many people suffered unnecessarily because Pasteur's contemporaries, with minds poisoned by Darwin's idea that life could come from non-life, opposed Pasteur's demonstrations that life could come only from pre-existing life. Conclusion: Darwinism was a retardant to acceptance of germ theory.

That brings us to ...

(2) Joseph Lister, father of modern antiseptic surgery, did accept Pasteur's germ theory and initiated antiseptic surgery to kill the bugs before they kill the patient. Lister was opposed for a decade or two in Britain because of the underlying resistance to Pasteur's germ theory. As a result, Lister's stunning success (survival) rates in surgeries were demonstrated first in Germany instead of in Britain. How many people died unnecessarily during surgeries in Britain during the time Lister was so successfully using the antiseptic surgical procedures on the continent?
Conclusion: Darwinism tragically retarded the life-saving benefit of antiseptic surgeries.

(3) The idea of "vestigial organs" is well recognized as a derivative of the notion of evolutionary history that would necessarily leave behind a bunch of scattered useless remnants as evolution continues its inexorable march to higher and higher life forms. Problem: it's not true. Many of the folks who had appendices or tonsils yanked unnecessarily in the last century are/were victims of a false Darwinian ideology. And true science likely suffered more than the innocent yankees at the hands of the yankers. The list of 180 organs alleged to be "vestigial" in 1890 has been virtually reduced to nil by today. See:
http://darwin-is-dead.blogspot.com/2008/03/junk-dna-and-kindra-grinsell-poster.html
Conclusion: Due to Darwinian portrayal of remnant 'junk', lots of body parts were unnecessarily yanked out while increase of scientific knowledge was delayed. (It's useless to study 'useless' organs - right?)

(4) The idea of "junk DNA" has been a severe retardant to the advance of modern biology. Why? 'Cause it ain't so. And where does the idea come from? Quite simply again that evolution has left useless remnants behind, a Darwinian prediction. Again see the link above for discussion.
But here is part:
Professor Chris Ponting, from the UK Medical Research Council's Functional Genetics Unit, told BBC News Online: 'Amazingly, there were calls from some sections to only map the bits of genome that coded for protein - mapping the rest was thought to be a waste of time.'It is very lucky that entire genomes were mapped, as this work is showing.' He added: 'I think other bits of 'junk' DNA will turn out not to be junk. I think this is the tip of the iceberg, and that there will be many more similar findings.'"

And here is a quote by Dr. John Mattick:
"The failure to recognize the full implications of [non-protein-coding DNA] may well go down as one of the biggest mistakes in the history of molecular biology." (Mattick, J., cited in:Gibbs, W.W., "The unseen genome: gems among the junk", Scientific American 289(5):26-33, November 2003; cited in Creation 29(2):p. 40, March-May 2007)

Conclusion: Darwinism has clearly hindered advances in molecular biology, and could have even prevented mapping of the full human genome had not wiser heads prevailed.

(5) Darwin's idea of embryological development, later refined and polished and coined into a phrase by Ernst Haeckl as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" (the "biogenetic law"), has been shown to be (generously) misleading. British embryologist Gavin de Beer concluded that recapitulation is "a mental strait-jacket" that "has thwarted and delayed" embryological research. Find the above quote and read more about the continuing persistent promulgation of this downright wrong idea in high school and university textbooks even into the present (21st) century in:
Wells, Jonathan, Icons of Evolution, Regnery Publishing, Inc. 2000. p. 89 (citing De Beer, Gavin. Embryo and Ancestors, Third Edition [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958], pp. 10, 164, 172).

Conclusion: Haeckl's "recapitulation" theory, taken directly from Darwin's ideas on the subject, has thwarted and delayed embryological research.

(6) The neo-Darwinian notion of ascendancy of life forms via mutation and natural selection led to a lot of wasted lives and money in dead-end plant "breeding" experiments. As Dr. John Sanford, a Cornell University plant breeder, says:
"Because beneficial mutations are so central to the Primary Axiom (that mutation combined with selection have created all biological information), ... during the last century (20th), there was a great deal of effort invested in trying to use mutation to generate useful variation. This was especially true in my own area, plant breeding. When it was discovered that certain forms of radiation and certain chemicals were powerful mutagenic agents, millions and millions of plants were mutagenized and screened for possible improvements. Assuming the Primary Axiom, it would seem obvious that this would result in rapid "evolution" of our crops. For several decades this was the main thrust of crop improvement research. Vast numbers of mutants were produced and screened, collectively representing many billions of mutation events. A huge number of small, sterile, sick, deformed aberrant plants were produced. However, from all this effort, almost no meaningful crop improvement resulted. The effort was, for the most part, an enormous failure, and was almost entirely abandoned. Why did this huge mutation-selection experiment fail, even with a host of Ph.D. scientists trying to help it along? It was because, even with all those billions of mutations, there were no significant new beneficial mutations arising." (Sanford, John. Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome, FMS Publications, Waterloo, New York, 2008. pp. 25-26.).

Conclusion: Decades of researcher lives were wasted, money lost, and who knows how many people did not have enough to eat because of the wrong-headed neo-Darwinian prediction of improvement by mutations.


Wow. For a truncated list, that is pretty healthy. And if you want scientific progress to be healthy, it surely looks like Darwin-think needs to be quarantined indefinitely to prevent the infection of our future generations.

Does all that make you a bit angry? It does me.

Respectfully, but with my back up a bit,

D.U.