How Darwin Destroyed Reason

Everything You Know...

...Has a half-life.

Who Will Debunk The Debunkers?

When looking very deeply into dogma, be prepared for what you might find.

"This loose behavior, Rekdal wrote, made the transposed decimal point into something like an “academic urban legend,” its nested sourcing more or less equivalent to the familiar “friend of a friend” of schoolyard mythology.

Emerging from the rabbit hole, Sutton began to puzzle over what he’d found. This wasn’t just any sort of myth, he decided, but something he would term a “supermyth”: A story concocted by respected scholars and then credulously disseminated in order to promote skeptical thinking and “to help us overcome our tendency towards credulous bias.”

[...]

It seems plausible to me, at least, that the tellers of these tales are getting blinkered by their own feelings of superiority — that the mere act of busting myths makes them more susceptible to spreading them. It lowers their defenses, in the same way that the act of remembering sometimes seems to make us more likely to forget. Could it be that the more credulous we become, the more convinced we are of our own debunker bona fides? Does skepticism self-destruct?

And as for Darwin?

"Sutton’s allegations are explosive. He claims to have found irrefutable proof that neither Darwin nor Alfred Russel Wallace deserves the credit for the theory of natural selection, but rather that they stole the idea — consciously or not — from a wealthy Scotsman and forest-management expert named Patrick Matthew. “I think both Darwin and Wallace were at the very least sloppy,” he told me. Elsewhere he’s been somewhat less diplomatic: “In my opinion Charles Darwin committed the greatest known science fraud in history by plagiarizing Matthew’s” hypothesis, he told the Telegraph. “Let’s face the painful facts,” Sutton also wrote. “Darwin was a liar. Plain and simple.”

Darwin has elsewhere been charged with outright theft of some 60 pages of Wallace's text, specifically the 60-odd pages which contain the actual "theory" of evolution. Maybe Wallace stole it from Matthew first.

But most noted ideological skeptics won't ever be skeptical of their hero; Darwin makes Atheism seem legit. If you don't... can't question it, that is.

A Charles Darwin Quote

This quote from Darwin has been floating around the web, and in partial truncation, it is falsely used to claim that Darwin was a Theist, by his own words. However, that is not the case when the full text is viewed:

"Another source of conviction in the existance of God connected with the reason and not the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capability of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look at a first cause having an intelliegent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a theist.

This conclusion[6] was strong in my mind about the time, as far I can remember, when I wrote the Origin of species; and it is since that time that it has very gradually with many fluctuations become weaker. But then arises the doubt -- can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as the possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such a grand conclusions? May not these be the result of the connection between cause and effect which strikes us as a necessary one, but probably depends merely on inherited experience? Nor must we overlook the probability of the constant inculcation in a belief in God on the minds of children producing so strong and perhaps an inherited effect on their brains not yet fully developed, that it would be as difficult for them to throw off their belief in God, as for a monkey to throw off its instinctive fear and hatred of a snake.[7]

I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble to us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic."

He adequately demonstrates his confusion by his confused writing, jumping from pro to con and back again multiple places.

To summarize:
1. It is "impossible" to consider man as "the result of blind chance or necessity".

2. Thus a "first cause having an intelligent mind" seems compelling.

3. Then, after a weakening, "arises the doubt -- can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as the possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such a grand conclusions? May not these be the result of the connection between cause and effect which strikes us as a necessary one, but probably depends merely on inherited experience?"

In these two sentences, Darwin fluctuates from the issue of the necessity of Cause and Effect Determinism vs. rationality, to an excuse: "inherited experience". This is irrational, because if Cause and Effect Determinism exist, then rationality cannot be an "inherited experience", because all experience is predetermined by prior causes, not by internal cogitation.

He further digresses from Cause and Effect Determinism by appealing to "constant inculcation in a belief...", which has no bearing on the issue of Determinism vs. rationality. Finally, he dodges all issues:

4. "...the beginning of all things must remain a mystery..." And he asserts Agnosticism. But that mystery applies only if empirical data is the sole source of knowledge, and here Darwin executes his largest internal contradiction: He has asserted much story telling about why he believes evolution is Truth on the one hand; yet he cannot accept logical deduction of his own making against either evolution or Atheism on the other hand.

His standard for "evidence" varies considerably, depending upon what he wants to believe is True. In other words, his Agnosticism is emotional, because he rejects his own rational arguments contrary to evolution, out of hand, and without evidence.

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.

Roy Davies, Iconoclast: Evidence That Darwin Was A Fraud

Roy Davies spent 12 years researching one historical event: the theft of Alfred Russell Wallace's theory of evolution by Charles Darwin, who made it his own. This is an example of historical inference which is supported by considerable documentation, yet is NOT accepted by Darwinistas. Darwin is the only "scientist" who has been dedicated an annual day for celebration; the Darwin worshipers will not likely be affected much by the "mountains of evidence" that their own icon was a fraud who covered his tracks by destroying vital letters. But the existence of his letters to others uncovers his tracks, as Davies demonstrates.

I have not read Davies' book, but there is a lot of detail in this interview with Alex Tsakiris, excerpted here:

"And of course, Wallace’s whole instinct was how on earth does life change in each generation? How do the generations change inside a particular species? And it was he who actually found all this and put it together. And then because he had corresponded with Darwin, first of all he sent Darwin the letter, Darwin replied saying to him, ‘Well, we thought much alike.’ In fact, it was only when Lyell went to see him that they had not thought much alike, and yet Darwin had convinced Wallace that they thought much alike. Wallace had his own suspicions that they hadn’t but then he sends another letter back to Darwin. Then Darwin replies and the last letter of the five of them was the one where Wallace actually says to him, ‘Look, I have come up with the theory of evolution. Would you have a look at it? And if you think it’s good enough would you show it to Charles Lyell?’ And that’s where the story kind of gets bogged down in the whole question of what was in that letter because it doesn’t exist anymore.

Charles Darwin made sure that the letters don’t exist anymore, not only to Wallace but to all the significant characters who might have offered some kind of criticism to what he was doing, particularly people like Asa Gray. None of Gray’s letter to Darwin stayed alive, or are exist at this moment, but Darwin’s letters to Gray are and in those letters he gives the game away. So basically we know for a fact that there is something seriously wrong with this story. I mean, people who love Darwin and are Darwinists keep on saying, ‘But you can’t prove it, you can’t prove it.’ And that’s partly because Darwin destroyed the evidence which might have been able to bring him down. But that isn’t the only evidence we have got. We have got a lot of evidence, mostly that Wallace’s ideas were first of all rubbished by Darwin and then taken and made into his own.

Alex Tsakiris: Right, and we should mention as long as you’re talking about it what letters meant during this time period. Because now we send off an email and we throw it in our trash and we don’t think anything of it. Letters, letters of this kind, to be lost – to be thrown away, is virtually unheard of for a scientist like Darwin, right?

Roy Davies: Indeed. And Darwin keeps all the letters, like from his son going to the university or the Ashmolean Museum or whatever. He keeps those letters, but the significant ones are not there. The letters themselves, you see, and this is the most important part – everything hinges in this story and this is the difficult bit of getting across to people. Everything in the story hinges essentially on two things. One is the mail service between Singapore an home. When it happened, how it happened, which ships took the mail, which ships were meant to take the mail, and which ships actually carried the mail. The second part of it is the whole idea of letters themselves and their significance in the middle of the 19th century. The whole idea of letters coming from an area of the world where the British were in China in trouble with the Chinese uprising against their attempt to sort of keep hold of bits of China, which they shouldn’t have done. The second part was the whole Indian mutiny which had begun in 1857, which had been boiling since 1856. And those two things made the mail from Singapore to home the most important channel of information for anybody to do with governing the British, in India or in China.

Alex Tsakiris: Okay, so let’s put an exclamation point on that. Mail service is the internet, the railroad, the highway system, all wrapped together for the British empire. It’s the way the whole thing runs back then.

Roy Davies: Absolutely.

Alex Tsakiris: And most importantly what you reveal in this book and through your research is that there is really no way that Darwin could have gotten the letter on the day when he said he did. It really doesn’t make any sense. And as a matter of fact, even your critics agree that it would be a highly-unusual set of circumstances for it to arrive on that day. And the reason for that is because, as you just said, the mail at this point in history is a regularly-scheduled event. And when it comes from the other side of the world we can trace down when that happened. Why do you think it is so unlikely that Charles Darwin received that letter on the date that he said he did?

Roy Davies: Okay, there is no likelihood at all. One of my critics is John van Whye, who is now in Singapore who is a Darwin enthusiast. Now, the point that John van Whye is making is that John , because he needs it to happen in the middle of the month, gets the first boat to pick up the mail and take it to Singapore, totally without precedent.

Alex Tsakiris: Well we can jump in there and I can shut that down – I mean, if there is a better example of apologetics I don’t know where it is. If there is a better example of Dr. John van Whye starting with the conclusion that he wants and then working backwards to try and make it fit the circumstances that we know, it’s just absurd. If you could spend a minute, tell us why he is jumping through all these hoops because as I understand it the reason he is jumping through all these hoops is that the regularly-scheduled mail, the mail that gets reported in the newspaper around the world would not put the letter there at the time that Darwin claims that it is there, right?

Roy Davies: Let me come the other way around. The mail coming back from the far east, from Singapore, there were two deliveries a month from Singapore to Britain. There had only been in ’56, one a month. But the British, because of the connection with India and China, were in desperate need of having a more regular service to find out exactly what was happening. They didn’t know what the Army was doing, they didn’t know what was happening in the Indian Revolution and the mutiny. Nobody had any idea until the mail came in. So that made the biggest thing on the headlines in the Times of London every two weeks was the mail has arrived. It was the most amazing piece of news and it always led the papers on that day. Now then, the mail that came from Malay Archipelago, where Wallace was at the time he discovered the theory, always came from the Archipelago to Britain and arrived on the second day or the third day of every month. The second delivery always ended up in the middle of the month. So that middle of the month mail never included mail from the Archipelago. Now, John van Whye insists that the mail from the Archipelago arrived on June the 18th and I am saying that because of what I know of the schedule of boats in the far east at that time, that letter posted on the 9th of March 1958 arrived on June the 2nd in London, on June the 3rd in Darwin’s home. And it was for that reason that for the next two weeks Darwin had the chance to introduce into his natural selection manuscript the 66 pages of new information that he had taken from Wallace’s own theory.

That is why he was able to say to Lyell in his letters, ‘Look, this is appalling. I have worked on this for years and here I get letters from Wallace saying exactly the same things. His ideas could stand as headlines to my chapters.’ Or words to that effect."

If Davies is right, Darwin committed an intellectual crime, and leveraged his own name into history at the expense of the actual discoverer.

There is much more information contained in the interview.

UPDATE:
I failed to credit the link to JBsptfn; Thanks!

Reply to Martin

Martin,
The difference between your two examples is that the first involved evidence of agency (and still could not deduce the correct answer), while the second was purely material, both in source and deterministic causality, and could deduce a probably correct answer. Agency operates outside the deterministic realm, and is not predictable using determinist rules. It could be said that evolution is not predictable, and thus resembles agency more than determinism. (Actually, taken under Materialism, evolution is even more random than quantum events, since there is a multiplication of randomness involved, including random mutations, carried forward randomly, matched to random environments at random times. More on that below.)

Now, when referring to evolution, the question of agency surfaces in the observation of the creation of highly complex and highly useful functionality from mere random mutations, which are necessary for the creation of functionality outside of the original genome. An example is the creation of blood systems from algae/sponges. The answer to that is not deep time, because the issue is this: how does one deduce entire blood systems arising from sponges? Time is not an answer.

The evolutionary answer is this: ”Well, it happened, right? So evolution can cause anything, everything and nothing.”

That is blind belief.

Now iirc, your position is that DNA/ERV shows common descent. In fact, there is no direct proof of common descent, so inferences must be very strong, plus they must be completely formally dedicated and devoted to Materialism, unless purely Material mechanics for the creation of useful complexity out of a non-useful non-complex initial condition can be deduced in detail and completeness.

By detail, I mean that it is not enough to say, for example, that simultaneous mutations occurred and were carried forward even while not yet useful for blood vessels and entire circulatory systems including blood pumps self-fed with blood, fan-out of arteries to all cells, return of blood via veins, oxygenation of blood via lung systems, detoxification of blood via liver/kidney type systems, blood cells created in separate systems with blood cells capable of providing both the nutrients created by other organs (necessary for the task) and the elimination of toxins, the use of coagulation processes (highly complex in themselves) to prevent death by bleeding.

It must be shown that either all of these capacities and physical artifacts developed separately due either to accidental mutations which were carried forward from sponges/algae to the complex systems which are known to have such things starting in the Cambrian, or that all the mutations occurred simultaneously in a single organism, giving it full functionality in an all new way. The probability of either of these occurrences is vanishingly small. And it is accompanied by other necessary occurrences with more vanishingly small probabilities which multiply the improbability (not even including abiogenesis – the evolution of life from minerals).

Here are few more:

Simultaneous mutations would have occurred which allowed the formation of skeletons.

Simultaneous mutations would have occurred developing multiple sensors useful for detecting the environment.

Simultaneous mutations would have occurred developing complex neural systems for controlling both the sensors and the motions of the system.

Simultaneous mutations would have occurred developing a nourishment intake/output system which provides separate sources for H+ internal emission and Cl- internal emission, which taken together form hydrochloric acid for digestion, yet in an environment which doesn’t digest itself.

Simultaneous mutations would have occurred which created muscle systems (controlled by the neural system) which were attached to the skeleton, which is actually a grouping of dozens of connected levers, joints and fulcrums which are activated by the muscle/neural/blood system, and sustained by the digestive system.

Simultaneous mutations would have occurred which created a self-replenishing system for all organic cells.

Simultaneous mutations would have occurred which created a means of limiting growth after detecting maturity.

Simultaneous mutations would have occurred which created sexual reproduction (a highly complex system in itself).

Simultaneous mutations would have occurred which created a large membrane (skin) covering the system, and having flexibility, the ability to respire and replicate, and having self-healing capabilities.

I’ll stop here, because the necessary simultaneous systems to get from sponge to fish require a blind belief in the vanishingly small probability of randomness accomplishing such complexities, and that the complexities are being carried forward before they are connected together with living utility. The mechanism (mutation/selection) is assumed, not proven; it is not even specified with any detail, because it seems to be enough to say the words, “it evolved”, and that suffices. And the declared mechanism has the uncanny, metaphysical capacity to do anything, everything and nothing, all simultaneously: it is omnipotent within its domain, yet petulant in its performance before an audience.

When it comes to ERV’s and their placement in the genome, there is an unprovable assumption that there is no other way for that to occur.

More importantly is the necessity for the prior existence of a “universal genetic code” which came from before the “first species”, which of necessity had the code, if common descent is the case. The source of this code is never discussed, since its complexity, utility and necessity - even in the beginning - is vanishingly improbable, so is ignored so that Materialism is to be maintained.

And of course the origination subject of abiogenesis (evolution from goo to first life) is ignored by defining it out of the evolutionary process, ideologically.

The circularity of Materialism is deeply embedded in evolution:

“It looks like design, but it isn’t.” “Complexity can arise naturally” (evidence? => Evolution).

So evolution is true because complexity can arise as evidenced by: evolution.
Commonly stated thus:

“Well it evolved, didn’t it? It had to.”

And this:

“Since you have no Materialist alternative, then evolution can be presumed valid.”

I.e., because Materialism is true, then there is no other possibility than evolution, which proves that Materialism is True. Classical circularity and non-coherence.

Finally, none of the “falsifications” contained in your source negate the common design concept, which is far simpler than the evolutionary concept, and is why Crick et. al. invented Panspermia (despite its infinite regress failure).

Crick:
” Crick and Orgel wrote in their book 'Life Itself,'

"An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going. But this should not be taken to imply that there are good reasons to believe that it could not have started on the earth by a perfectly reasonable sequence of fairly ordinary chemical reactions. The plain fact is that the time available was too long, the many microenvironments on the earth's surface too diverse, the various chemical possibilities too numerous and our own knowledge and imagination too feeble to allow us to be able to unravel exactly how it might or might not have happened such a long time ago, especially as we have no experimental evidence from that era to check our ideas against."

In other words, it looks like a miracle, but it can't be, just because.

I will quote Dawkins extensively, because he is the 5 Star general who has arisen in order to weaponize Evolution and Philosophical Materialism. But take a look at the evidence which he gives and upon which he and his followers depend:

Dawkins:

”"The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice."

A strange admission from a Materialist. Yet he sells lots of words on the subject, doesn’t he?

”"The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity."

Only if one is a devoted Philosophical Materialist.

”"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference."
— Richard Dawkins (River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life)

This is the correct view of human relationships and human value, under Materialism.

”It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that). “Put Your Money on Evolution” The New York Times (April 9, 1989) section VII p.35”

It is safe to say the Dawkins pumps hate for a living.

”The illusion of purpose is so powerful that biologists themselves use the assumption of good design as a working tool. River out of Eden (1995) p.98”

And well they should.

”Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose. The Blind Watchmaker (1996) p.1”

And design works fine as an explanation, if one is not ideologically locked into Materialism.

”Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. The Blind Watchmaker (1996) p.6”

For Dawkins, intellectual fulfillment stops easily, and at an intellectually immature state, which he acquired as a teen.

”In the Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years (evolutionists are now dating the beginning of the Cambrian at about 530 million years), are the oldest in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. The Blind Watchmaker (1996) p.229”

So much for intellectual fulfillment.

”It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe. The Blind Watchmaker (1996) p.316”

Designed? Actually, it appears designed to work well on Aristotelian logic and deduction, once it is learned and put to use.

”Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed for the remarkable fact of our own existence, indeed the existence of all life wherever it may turn up in the universe. It is the only known explanation for the rich diversity of animals, pants, fungi and bacteria. Forward to The Theory of Evolution by John Maynard Smith (2000) p.xv”

No, actually it is not. It is the only Materialist explanation.

”Natural selection is the only workable explanation for the beautiful and compelling illusion of 'design' that pervades every living body and every organ. Knowledge of evolution may not be strictly useful in everyday commerce. You can live some sort of life and die without ever hearing the name of Darwin. But if, before you die, you want to understand why you lived in the first place, Darwinism is the one subject that you must study. Forward to The Theory of Evolution by John Maynard Smith (2000) p.xvi”

Yes, Darwinism should be studied, and studied critically. There is little critical analysis in Dawkins’ approach to it, though.

”As an academic scientist I am a passionate Darwinian, believing that natural selection is, if not the only driving force in evolution, certainly the only known force capable of producing the illusion of purpose which so strikes all who contemplate nature. A Devil's Chaplain (2003) p.10”

His acknowledgement of “belief” and “passion” is nice to hear, as is his acknowledgement of purpose even if he is deluded by his concept of illusion.

”The world is divided into things that look designed (like birds and airliners) and things that don't (rocks and mountains). Things that look designed are divided into those that really are designed (submarines and tin openers) and those that aren't (sharks and hedgehogs). The diagnostic of things that look (or are) designed is that their parts are assembled in ways that are statistically improbable in a functional direction. They do something well: for instance, fly.

Darwinian natural selection can produce an uncanny illusion of design. An engineer would be hard put to decide whether a bird or a plane was the more aerodynamically elegant.

So powerful is the illusion of design, it took humanity until the mid-19th century to realise that it is an illusion. NewScientist September 17 2005 p.33”

Actually, it is only that recently that the delusion of Philosophical Materialism infested the academics to the point of their intellectual block beyond mass/energy. Their ensuing presumption of Atheist elitism locked in that intellectual block, and locked out thought beyond the physical, to the point that their own thoughts would be necessary physical and thus determinate and without value.

”I should have been talking about the combined probability of life's originating on a planet and leading, eventually, to the evolution of intelligent beings capable of anthropic reflection. It could be that the chemical origin of a self-replicating molecule (the necessary trigger for the origin of natural selection) was a relatively probable event but later steps in the evolution of intelligent life were highly improbable. Intelligent Thought (2006) p. 95-6”

So the subsequent evolutionary events were even less probable than jumping from minerals to life?

”Now if you take your science as narrowly evidential, you'll say something like, "Since you've never seen life on another planet other than this one, how can you possibly say anything about the way life might be universally, on other planets.?" On the face of it that sounds like a reasonable complaint, but on the other hand there surely must be some things that theory tells us must be so. And it can't be right to rule out of bounds everything that we can't see with our own eyes. The Selfish Gene: Thirty Years On March 16 2006”

He’s right at least once in that comment: it truly cannot be right to rule out of bounds everything that we can’t see with our own eyes. But he doesn’t realize the implications of this directive for his own worldview.

It is not necessary to endorse “creationism” in order to see the flaws in evolution as “the only game in town” (Dawkins); in order to understand its circularity, its non-predictive lack of utility, and the necessity of being “deluded” by the appearance of design.

Not to mention, of course, the lack of actual explanatory power of evolution for the simultaneous creation of parallel complexities, all of which are necessary for advanced life.

And not to mention the total silence on the origin of DNA, the rational code for all life which pre-existed first life.

And not to mention that life is far different from non-life, and cannot be deduced from non-life, certainly not under evolution or Darwinism.

And finally: to comprehend that both Materialism and Evolution are circular and self-enabling internal non-coherences, so they cannot be “the only game in town” if rationality is presupposed.

It is not necessary to endorse miracles in order to see that the argument against them has no Material basis for its claims, which again, are circular:

Materialism is True, therefore miracles are false, because Materialism is True.

The evidence against miracles is not in empirical proof or material methodology, it is purely in the ideology of Materialism.

For these basic reasons – and there are others – Evolution is seen to be a blind belief, an ideology and non-empirical at best. At worst, it has shown itself to be a basis for cruelty and human eliminationism.

I have more reasons to resist evolution, but that's for a future post when I'm done with my reading.