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Uncommon Knowledge: The Deniable Darwin
Is Charles Darwin’s theory fundamentally deficient? David Berlinski makes his case, noting that most species enter the evolutionary order fully formed and then depart unchanged. Where there should be evolution, there is stasis. So, was Darwin wrong?
David Berlinski is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, a contributing editor at Inference: International Review of Science, and author of many books. Berlinski discusses his book The Deniable Darwin and lays out how Charles Darwin has failed to explain the origin of species through his theory of evolution.
Recorded on June 3rd, 2019 in Fiesole, Italy
Published in General
I wasn’t going to say anything, but… just because you can’t comprehend the perfections of His plan doesn’t mean anything but that your mind is not greater than His.
Be careful what you wish for. I try to report the facts as I see them.
If what you say is true, unknown numbers of people who came before history died in violence, in child birth, from rotten teeth, of starvation or from nameless diseases before heaven deigned to lift a finger. Indeed, humanity has existed in its more or less modern form for, what, shall we say 200,000 years or so? That means that for about 98% of our time here Heaven stood by with its arms crossed at these traumas, hearing those cries for help and not answering.
You cannot let the almighty off the hook for his callousness; that too was “part of his plan” apparently. You insist that it was, and therefore must reconcile that with your faith.
I do not want this burden.
Also: would you be interested in taking on the substance of the facts I presented and my critique of Berlinski’s positions?
Actually, there is nothing to reconcile. It is a mystery. Faith with Reason means you have to tolerate mystery. That is hard. But, the God I know, is so much beyond our kin, we can’t understand Its ways at all. We get a small piece.
So there is not a burden at all, just acceptance of mystery. Not having faith means that too. The idea we can understand it all is hubris.
For 196,000 years nobody ever heard of Jehovah. Why? You don’t find that to be weird?
It’s a mystery. I get it. People want to believe for a variety of reasons. I just don’t think that allows us to be glib about this under the cloak of “mystery.” Human beings can use their powers of perception and curiosity to uncover any number of truths about the world, but asking this question is verboten?
How many other things are a “mystery” and best left unanswered?
Actually, I’ve been exploring the idea that things might be mysterious, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t explore them, study them and even learn from them. The difficulty is that we need to explore them with an open mind, and that is hard to do, given our biases. For example, maybe there are things about G-d that I don’t know, but how do I know that He doesn’t want me to know Him better? Why shouldn’t I try? But if I have mental blocks that prevent me from learning, He will always remain a mystery.
Indeed. Especially true given that we’re trying to do that using brains which were evolved on the African Savannah primarily for the purpose outwitting both predators and prey animals. Now we try to use this tool which arose for one purpose for an entirely other sort of problem… I just don’t think we’re up to this task.
But there are things that we can understand; tests we can undertake which reveal certain truths about the world. One of the more interesting segments of the interview was the discussion of the physical laws and the fact that they are entirely agnostic about the question of divinity.
The answer I hoped to hear was not uttered: They work just fine without that assumption. So it is with many other things.
This interview shares the thoughts of a scientist, Dr. Berlinski, who is very intelligent, yet he seems to answer almost every question with a dual answer – it could be this, but it could be that. He is definite only about what has been proven to be definite, but at the end of the day, he is uncertain and seems contented with it. So are there things that are certain? The pillars of creation are certain right? You can only get more deer by means of a male and female dear. We’re now living in a world that seeks to change, and in some cases, eliminate that definition, so re-create one pillar. Who created the pillar to begin with?
As science becomes more evolved, like sub-atomic, the more you remove, they just can’t get to the source. Just when all is removed, there is still a pulsating energy – life. The big collider in Switzerland – did they get to the source in their testing – they called it the God particle?? Science has been able to put many things together to create something else, but no one has ever created something from nothing.
There’s too much to talk about in one comment box, but the removal of faith, and only leaving reason is destroying the pillars – as we evolve, we’re the only species that thinks to destroy its own young and sees it as a right. We have an abundance of wealth and opportunity. It seems man sees himself as the center of all – so who needs God – we’re good to go in our secularism. The consequences are becoming more and more obvious that we are not good to go.
I remember when Claire posted about the burning of Notre Dame – she said her dad commented “This is a bad omen”. Why make that comment?
Actually the first man and the first woman had not just heard of Him, they knew Him.
Later on some men chose to deny Him, to forget Him. To this day men choose to find alternatives – anything- to eliminate God so they can be their own gods. And there is no way, if the heavens which declare His glory will not convince a person, if His majesty is not seen in all creation, that my feeble words can persuade anybody: Faith is a work of God alone.
If you’re a creationist, that must be convincing to you. Other faith traditions gainsay this. How would you respond to them?
Certainly, you wouldn’t cite evidence.
I’ve already answered your last statement.
Insofar as responding to other “faith traditions”, such as yours, I would respond with the truth of the Scriptures.
And yes, because I am persuaded that “In the beginning God” – then the story of the fall and its consequences are convincing to me.
But @majestyk, what is the goal you have in our conversation? Is it to persuade me to your faith or that you might be persuaded to mine?
I reject categorically the notion that my thoughts on this matter hinge on some type of faith. I also try not to overstate my case and rely upon an overview of the knowledge afforded us by the physical sciences and human history as it has come to be understood in order to circumscribe what I believe represents reality.
This is the opposite of faith.
The goal – as I would have it – would be for you to respond to my criticisms of the statements and claims made by Berlinski in the conversation in light of the factual information I’ve provided. What I have seen thus far are nothing more than unfounded assertions which derive from your personal profession of religiosity.
You understand of course that anybody of any faith can make a similar statement, and this simply results in two irreconcilable statements of faith butting up against one another permanently. Unless you are willing to introduce some outside means of demonstrating that the claims you are making are true we are left with Hitchens’ Razor: That which can be asserted without evidence can be rejected without evidence.
I reject the Biblical creation narrative you have asserted on those grounds; you claim it is convincing to you, yet on what basis you are “convinced” I am unclear, so I want to let this pass as I would when challenging the counterfactual narrative supplied by Mormons, Scientologists or believers in the Noachide Deluge. You are convinced because the Bible said so? Why are you not similarly convinced of the truths provided in the Bhagavad Ghita or the Mahabharata?
You see the trouble. Neither my or your opinion of these things is probative of their truth. There are other, independent means of determining whether or not they represent something real.
Get yourself some tumeric tea or drinks
They’re not entirely agnostic – only to agnostics.
Shawn,
I had hoped not to participate further. However, your comments are not very well placed. First, Dr. Berlinski never invoked anything like a religious argument in this conversation nor in any of his books. At the end of this interview, Peter tried to get him to make some religious comment and Berlinski demurred.
The argument against Darwin or more precisely Strict Darwinism isn’t about religion but about science. As I tried to point out in a previous comment, the uselessness of the theory as expressed in “The Origin of the Species” in explaining the actual fossil record of speciation was well known when Darwin introduced his theory in 1859. Darwin’s own response to his critics was not that his theory was wrong but that their fossils were wrong. Since that time every attempt at finding fossils that would confirm Darwin’s version has failed. In the 1970s two of the worlds leading paleobiologists, Gould & Eldridge, specifically went out (with plenty of grant money & technology) to make one last effort to prove Darwin’s speciation right. They couldn’t and said so.
If Darwin had tried to get away with the arrogant snow job pulled on his contemporary peer reviewers with modern peer reviewers, his scientific career would have ended right then in complete failure.
Regards,
Jim
I don’t see how you can possibly support this statement. I offer you: “Global Warming.”
If Darwin’s theories were popular at the time, or if they could bring in government grants for his colleagues, they would have written glowing reviews of work that they knew was flawed. That’s they way we do it today.
Dr. B,
Perhaps I am behind the times. This being a criticism of the times not of me.
Regards,
Jim
This discussion of “Darwinism” I find hinges upon what I can only describe as a weird means of attempting to trap the proponents of a naturalistic worldview within the words of a man who originated an idea to describe a process which is nonetheless pretty well understood and documented.
Such proponents are attempting to win a battle that nobody is fighting. What is your point? That Darwin’s precise thoughts on how speciation occurred were not correct? Of course they weren’t. Nobody at that time knew about DNA and even Mendel’s ideas were brand new at that moment. What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Nothing.
Evolution has proceeded apace throughout biological history nonetheless. Figuring out its mechanism is the principal job of biologists.
No, I don’t find that weird at all.
What I do know, is that Human Beings have a God shaped hole in their hearts. People are drawn towards something. Those people may not have understood Jehovah, but they understood that there was more to life than them, that there is a greater something. I have found many atheists have their own since of the numinous, just not in religious terms. In fact, that sense is often not that far off from the pre-Jehovah types, in a near worship of creation itself. If you take away God, you get back to basics, so to speak.
I don’t understand what question you are saying is forbidden, nor, in any way, am I trying to be “glib”. I am not. I am saying there are questions we cannot answer, not that we should not seek answers. We alone, of all creation that we know of, understand there is something greater than ourselves, even in just a material sense. We know we Are. That very knowledge is a great mystery in and of itself. There is no benefit that we can find for that knowledge. Self-awareness is not needed in evolution. It is not needed to perform any human behavioral tasks. A human could be completely simulated, with no self-awareness, and we could not tell that it had no self-awareness. But we, know that we have self-awareness. That is the first mystery.
Shawn,
Newton’s theory corresponded to the data at the time of its introduction and for a very long time thereafter. The variations later found that ended in Einstein’s theory were very small. Darwin’s theory never did correspond to the data from the getgo. This then isn’t a scientific theory but an ideology. As long as we are clear about this then fine. Perhaps the old adage “it takes one to know one” could apply here.
The essential connection between historical materialism and natural selection
Regards,
Jim
It’s a good thing that we’re not really arguing about the same thing then. You seem to be under the impression that the modern theory of evolution is somehow anchored to Darwin’s exact thinking, and therefore is overturned with Darwin’s having been wrong on certain points.
The theory of evolution (colloquially referred to as “Darwinism”) has come about and been buffeted and modified repeatedly by the long history of intruding facts which have required modifications to it.
The reality of the situation is Darwin sparked a see-change in how people view biology, the history of the planet and even the nature of humanity – Discussion of biological variation and the natural forces which drive it were now on the table in a manner they hadn’t previously been and took biology out of the realm of the Theological and placed it squarely in the realm of the physical sciences.
The bleating of “Darwinism!” “Darwinism!” and how Darwinism is overturned is simultaneously maddening and confusing. What about the concept of evolution? Why don’t we talk about that?
I don’t especially care what bad guys like Karl Marx had to say about Darwin. Ideas aren’t responsible for the people who believe them.
Shawn,
I suspect that if this were any other “kind” of scientific theory you wouldn’t be so flexible. You might ask yourself why it is so necessary to hang onto Darwin so tightly? Aristotle gave us Earth Air Fire & Water. We don’t teach this in modern Chemistry class, do we? Yet virtually all modern Biology texts teach Darwin and not as just somebody who was an early pre-scientific thinker but as a great scientist. This is false and needs to end.
Regards,
Jim
This all has a very conspiratorial bent to it.
Are you asserting that Darwin wasn’t important or incredibly impactful on the thinking of the entire scientific establishment? He clearly was.
He was certainly a great naturalist. I don’t get the foaming and frothing over his name. Clearly he was rather important to still garner this much controversy.
Quite right. I was just being provocative (A word I prefer over what my wife generally describes as “obnoxious.”)
Shawn,
You have been putting words in the mouth of almost everyone you’ve been talking to on this thread. But OK let’s go with your statement as is. Charles Darwin’s Great Grandfather was Erasmus Darwin. He has been described as sort of an English Ben Franklin-like figure of the 18th century. The core of Charles’ theory is exactly like a theory that Erasmus proposed 100 years earlier. Descartes had such a theory 100 years before that. The British Museum had been collecting fossils for 200 years before Darwin. Perhaps you just think he was ahead of his time. The bus on this had already left long before Charles ever got on the Beagle.
This is like Obama getting the Nobel Prize for nothing. Come to think of it, the Nobel committee should ask for it back.
Regards,
Jim
Dr.
I aspire to be obnoxious but really only attain the level of irritating.
Regards,
Jim
The foment here is about what you perceive to be a misattribution of credit? Asking a question is not putting words in your mouth, but I can indeed read what you’ve written and make reasonable inference.
If you need to extend and clarify your remarks, you don’t seem to mind burning pixels.
That said, I don’t find that to be credible in the slightest. I can think of several figures of huge importance in terms of their contributions to the understanding of the natural world (William Smith, the father of modern Geology being among the chiefs) who probably don’t get the credit they should. Nonetheless, none of them managed to bring forth the work which Darwin did which basically changed everything.
Snorfle. They can’t. Obama is their diversity inclusion and taking it back would be whitewashing.
Shawn,
You have already admitted that Darwin was wrong on the “origin of the species” from the very beginning and it hasn’t got any better to this day, then you demand he receive credit anyway for being a highly influential intellect, what else is there to do but to make you see that he doesn’t deserve that much credit either.
Your inferences have been way off. Improve your aim.
Regards,
Jim
Shawn,
OK, good point. BTW, is there like something called blackwashing? I will deny that I ever said this.
Regards,
Jim