December 28, 2010

Can a Non-Expert Challenge a “Scientific” Consensus?


GilDodgen
27 December 2010
UncommonDescent

Many of us in the ID community are repeatedly challenged with the assertion that those without “credentials” in evolutionary biology are, essentially by definition, disqualified from questioning Darwinian orthodoxy.

It is true that if a mathematician claims to have a proof of a new theorem in computational number theory, the challenger should be able to come up with a mathematically rigorous refutation, and this would require much expertise in the domain of CNT.

However, as David Berlinski has pointed out, Darwinian “science” does not represent rigorous science in our usual understanding of the term — it is a “room filled with smoke.” It makes claims about the infinitely creative powers of random variation and natural selection, with no rigorous proof, only wild speculation and infinitely imaginative storytelling.

It makes claims about the fossil record repeatedly substantiating Darwinian step-by-tiny-step gradualism, when the obvious overall testimony of the record is the exact opposite: consistent and persistent discontinuity.

It completely ignores the obvious fact that the probabilistic resources required to enable the Darwinian mechanism to do anything of significance concerning the information-processing machinery of the cell could not possibly have been available in the history of the universe.

These obvious deficiencies in Darwinian theory can be easily recognized and understood by those without “credentials.” In fact, it would appear to me that one would require a Masters, and preferably a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology not to be able to recognize and understand them.