Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Scientismist Place

Over at Mehta's place, Serah Blain is allowed to take the reins and she extolls Darwin Day and Darwin's natural selection:

"Charles Darwin’s discovery of natural selection as the mechanism by which biological evolution occurs continues to have monumental impact on countless areas of modern life. But as important as this discovery was, equally important was the strength of character displayed in the very act of asking forbidden questions that could unravel prevailing views of what was true."

Anyone actually following evolutionary turbulence and theorizing knows that natural selection has been dumped as having causal powers for driving (the presumption of) evolution. The Altenberg 16 nailed the coffin almost shut tight, leaving only scant gaps which appear to be in deference to the god of evolution, not to observation or empirical justification. In fact, variation and natural selection was replaced nearly 80 years ago by the idea that variation didn't work as causal either; so they added mutation to the mix to see if that would do the trick.

But no, mutation was not enough to justify (the presumption of) evolution, either. So at Altenberg, the 16 evolutionary gurus discussed what it would take to justify the concept of evolution. And afterward they published a book containing the new technologies and theories that might, maybe, some day, justify the concept of evolution.

But the problem is that none of the technologies or theories available even today comes close to providing any current knowledge as to how, exactly, the fossil record came to show that which it shows. Further, after 200 years of fossil digs there is still no common ancestor for the multiple phyla that came into existence during the Cambrian Explosion.

Yes, that's right. There really is a missing link. And it is the one link necessary to prove the consistency of the common descent theory, which accompanies evolution.

But back to Darwin. Darwin did science by a little induction and a lot of fabulation (story telling). He made famous the technique of showing two data points and making up stories about how one data point turned into the other data point by inventing causes to make the story seem complete. Stephen Jay Gould called this technique, "Just So Story telling". It circumvents the empirical process of experimentation used to verify hypotheses; it does that by calling the Theory of Evolution, True. And then making it legally declared True and unassailable. That is what people like Mehta and Blain are calling "science", and skeptics of such intellectual shenanigans are common called, "science deniers".

When called upon to produce empirical evidence to support their causal claims, they have nothing (except variation within a species).

When asked to deduce the existence of non-compressible, non-algorithmic, meaningful information within DNA, they have nothing.

When asked how it came to pass that the first cell was described in advance in all its complexity even before the cell existed, they have nothing.

When asked how it came to pass that the first cell came into existence in all its complexity without DNA existing first, they have nothing.

When asked to provide a disciplined, grounded deduction showing how agency, consciousness, intellect, qualia, etc. came into being based on the well known characteristics of their purely mineral source, they have nothing.

Blain (and by extension, Mehta) is not in contact with the actual issues of evolution. Here is a classic case of a Scientismist, a fan-girl who is enamored of the thought of science as being the knowledge generator for all possible questions of existence. And she attributes that to Darwin and Darwinism, blindly. She parrots untruths without trying to analyze whether there actually is any truth contained in them.

Says Blain:

"The courage to adopt scientific thinking and set aside bias is needed in the hard sciences."

I can't restrain myself from saying that this statement, in the context of Darwinism, is totally obtuse. Darwinism was never a hard science, it was an ideology (failed hypothesis) that was based in induction cum fantasy. Darwinism never, ever adopted "scientific thinking" in the standard empirical sense of objective knowledge generating science. Darwinism has always been subjective, not objective in its form and conclusions.

"Darwin Day is an opportunity for people throughout the world to participate in world-changing bravery and humility, too. Charles Darwin’s discovery of natural selection underpins everything we know about biology; my hope is that this holiday will come to underpin the character of our culture as well."

Biology in no manner whatsoever depends on Darwin or Darwinism or evolution or evolutionists for its advances. Evolutionists try to steal the respectability of actual scientific, experimental, objective biological advances and to hope that that respectability would somehow reflect on their ideology too. It's a logical fallacy, and it's downright pitiful, yet contemptible.

Mostly, it's contemptible. To sell an ideology on such irrational premises is, in fact, contemptible.