The Darwin delusion
Since Darwinism, a theory positing that species evolve by blind chance, rules out the 'guiding hand of God in the creation of man', it is an intellectual stumbling block for a belief in God and religion. In chapter 30 of the BOOK it is clearly shown that Darwinism is dead-wrong, that the emperor has no clothes.
When at the turn of the nineteenth century Mendel's laws of genetics were (re)discovered, Darwin's original theory was in deep trouble, since Mendel's laws were totally at variance with the notion of evolution by random errors (in the genes).
Darwin's hypothesis could only be rescued by (don't be put off) mathematizing it, that is setting up a mathematical model, just like economists do in their field.
Just like all the econometric models are invalid (because none of them predicted the crisis of 2008), the Darwin model, known as neo-Darwinism, developed by the Oxford school before the second World War, is false for a similar reason.
As a former professor of mathematical biology the author, Defares, is fully qualified to explain why Darwinism (not to be confused with evolution) should be relegated to the waste-basket of history.
Here only one reason is presented. It's easily understood if we take economics as an analogy.
We have all of us experienced the crash of the economy in 2008: a sudden fall in the gently rising curve of economic growth.
Now, our clever professors of economics have devised mathematical models (in computers) to 'predict' or 'prescribe' the changes of the economy in time. Since none of these models has predicted the crash all these econometric models should be relegated to the waste-basket where they belong. Back to the drawing board!
Well, something similar is the case with Darwinism, or, more correctly, neo-Darwinism, which is a mathematical model. In full agreement with Darwin's own intuitive notion this model prescribes ('predicts') the evolution of (new) species as a slow, ever increasing process in time, without any stagnation or sudden swings. This is nicely expressed in Darwin 's dictum "Natura non facit saltum", or, 'Nature makes no jumps'.
An analogy is a computer program (model) predicting that the economy will grow forever at, say, about one percent a year. No stagnation or downswings (crises) are allowed.
In the real world the fossil record did not appear to contradict this steady rise of Darwin's curve at a snail's pace, where the creation of any new species would require millions of years.
In the eighties of the last century this picture changed completely, when professor Gould from Harvard and professor Eldredge from Columbia University discovered, what is since known as the 'Cambrian explosion'.
These paleontologists established that more than five hundred million years ago all higher life forms came into being within a brief time-span of some 50,000 years, instead of the millions of years required by Darwin 's computer model!
These findings caused a sensation at the time, illustrated by the headline in The New York Times: Spectacular Fossils Record Early Riot of Creation
The paleontologist Dr. Jan Armstrong said in this article: 'The findings show that you could have the formation of an entirely new type of animal within thousands of years.'
Darwinism demands ('predicts') a time-span of millions of years for the formation of a new animal. This fact alone relegates neo-Darwinism ('Darwinism') to the waste-basket of history.
There is more… Sudden jumps are followed by millions of years of 'no change' in the animal species. The real curve as found in the fossil record resembles a staircase rather than a ramp as Darwinism requires!
We end with the following quote from professor Eldredge's book Reinventing Darwin:
"We provided the empirical proof that, contrary to the time-honored picture of gradual evolutionary change, most species virtually cease to change once they end up in the fossil record. This is a phenomenon that we called 'stagnation'. We pointed out that Darwinism clings to the myth of gradual change and transformation, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary."
Darwinism is, like Marxism, a myth, a pseudo-science, kept alive as a bulwark against the curse of God and religion by rabid atheists like Richard Dawkins, a bit as Marxism is still maintained by Fidel Castro as a bulwark against the ills of capitalism. Nomen est omen. The name tells the whole story: 'ism'. Darwinism. We don't have Einsteinism, for the simple reason that it is real science, not scientism.
Conclusion: Darwinism, the theory of 'blind chance', is invalid an thus should constitute no intellectual obstacle for the belief in God and creation. Whether such a belief is justified is another matter, the center theme of the BOOK.
For an in-depth critique of Darwinism please turn to chapter 30 of the BOOK.
