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Earlier this month, a long kept list of Ph.D. scientists who “dissent from Darwinism” reached a milestone — it crossed the threshold of 1,000 signers.
“There are 1,043 scientists on the ‘A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism’ list. It passed the 1,000 mark this month,” said Sarah Chaffee, a program officer for the Discovery Institute, which maintains the list.
“A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism” is a simple, 32-word statement that reads: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”
https://www.thecollegefix.com/more-than-1000-scientists-sign-dissent-from-darwinism-statement/
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More than 1,000 Scientists have Signed ‘Dissent from Darwinism’ Statement
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The last time I saw him he was walking down Lover's Lane holding his own hand.
-- Fred Allen
(Score: 5, Insightful) by meustrus on Thursday February 14 2019, @06:45PM (17 children)
As any software engineer with a passing familiarity with biology will attest, there's nothing at all "intelligent" about "the complexity of life". Biology is full of awful hacks, stupidly interrelated systems, and literally life-stopping errors just waiting for to be activated by accident.
Life on Earth is too poorly-designed to have been the result of anything but random mutation and natural selection.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 5, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Thursday February 14 2019, @07:19PM (6 children)
You mean the Appendix, who's only purpose is to explode periodically, is not an intelligent design?
(Score: 3, Informative) by NewNic on Thursday February 14 2019, @07:39PM (3 children)
Some research suggests that the appendix serves as a reservoir of microbes, ready to re-colonize the gut if your gut microbes are wiped out or depleted.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170109162333.htm [sciencedaily.com]
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 14 2019, @09:29PM
Pfffft I'm not going to believe THEIR lies.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday February 15 2019, @12:20AM
It does stuff..in rabbits [nih.gov] we just got leftovers.
Remember, our ear bones were once jaws [berkeley.edu]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 15 2019, @12:28AM
Damn, you must be real fun at parties!
(I kid, that's an interesting link)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday February 14 2019, @10:47PM (1 child)
Not the appendix so much since, as the reply says, it could be a way of recovering from total gut-flora devastation. Years ago, I actually took down notes in a text file somewhere of some of the weirdest, dumbest "designs" in the animal kingdom. It's too long for the lameness filter, so pastebin'd here: https://pastebin.com/mpj06XAG [pastebin.com]
There are some real doozies in here. Like, "okay, my new religion is maltheism because FUCKING EXPLAIN THIS OTHERWISE!" bad.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:29AM
That's a wonderfully hilarious compendium. Thanks!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Funny) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 14 2019, @07:25PM
What did you expect from a designer who believes he knows everything? ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Touché) by urza9814 on Thursday February 14 2019, @08:04PM (1 child)
Most software engineers will also attest that there's nothing intelligent about the complexity of the software they're currently working on for exactly the same reasons... :)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 14 2019, @09:35PM
To simplify the complexity, copy paste all the code and previous versions into one almighty function called main(). Add one huge block of comments to help distunguish between Old and New versions of the code. Accept that it works in mysterious ways. There - much simpler!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 14 2019, @10:32PM (1 child)
Are you sure you are a software engineer? I'd say that all of the inefficiencies, hacks, and problems are evidence that things were intentionally engineered. ;)
(Score: 3, Funny) by meustrus on Friday February 15 2019, @11:08PM
You might have a point - most software produced through an Agile process ends up looking like it was "evolved" rather than "designed".
However, the process described in Genesis is clearly Waterfall:
There's a few missing steps there, but you get the idea.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday February 15 2019, @02:49AM (2 children)
Throw in genetic drift, gene swapping and I'm sure more, also drives evolution. Darwin was wrong in the same sense that Newton was wrong. Basically a simplification that works most of the time to explain things.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 15 2019, @01:56PM (1 child)
That's one of the powerful things about Darwin's ideas that are missed. It requires a mechanism by which traits can be passed from one generation to the next, but doesn't have an opinion as to what that mechanism is. So all the normal and abnormal ways of passing traits are equally compatible with the theory.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday February 16 2019, @04:28AM
I believe at the time, genetics were unknown so yes, he wouldn't have commented on that. The big thing was survival of the fittest, which leaves out genetic drift, where new species come about even without being fitter.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 15 2019, @03:32AM
Ah, I take it you've never worked on any large government contracts then ?
The thing they never mention when they bring up the concept of 'intelligent design' is the 'IQ' of said intelligence, as the great (and sorely missed) FZ put it 'dumb all over, a little ugly on the side..'
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 15 2019, @05:04AM
An excellent example of that is the recurrent laryngeal nerve that controls your larynx. It goes straight down from your brain, wraps around the aorta, and then goes back up to the larynx. If you slowly morph people into a fish shape, it goes in a straight line, but as we evolved it never made the jump to the other side of the artery. In the giraffe it travels about four or five meters further than it needs to.