A Laugh a Minute

What Darwin Really Proved

One of the more engaging attributes of David Berlinski's book, The Devil's Delusion is its mockery of Darwinism.  As he points out, Darwinists strive valiantly to promote the theory of evolutionism, which is an enigma within a riddle.  It is a paradox.  For example, where are the physicists striving by might and main to argue for the veracity of  the theory of gravity?  Where are all the host of post-Newtonians thumping the table, insisting that the Master was right?  Where are the talking heads calling down Jeremiads upon those who demur from Newton?  Why, then, is Darwinism so widely disbelieved?

This has led to a strange situation:

Within the English-speaking world, Darwin's theory of evolution remains the only scientific theory to be widely championed by the scientific community and widely disbelieved by everyone else. No matter the effort made by biologists, the thing continues to elicit the same reaction it has always elicited: You've got to be kidding, right? There is wide appreciation of the fact that if biologists are wrong about Darwin, they are wrong about life, and if they are wrong about life, they are wrong about everything. [David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (New York: Basic Books, 2009), p.186.  Emphasis, ours.]

Explain that, if you would.  Is it that the common people are just dumb?
 Why is it that, throughout the West, the vast majority of funerals are held holding forth an expectation that the recently deceased is living an "after-life"?  How do evolutionists explain this?  Clearly it must be due to a vast right-wing conspiracy which consigns men to ignorance and fairy tales.   And the only way to fight such a nefarious conspiracy is not with "facts" but with invective and ad hominem mockery.

Berlinski provides us with a classic of the genre.  Evolutionist Emile Zuckerkandl tops the spittle-laced invective, which, given the competition, is no mean feat.

In considering the possibility that the facts of biology might suggest an intelligent designer, which they surely do, Emile Zuckerkandl has found it difficult to contain his indignation.  Writing in the journal Gene, he overflowed into epithets: "The intellectual virus named 'intelligent design.' . . . This virus certainly is a problem in the country. . . . the 'creationists' . . . have decided some years ago . . . to dress up in academic gear and to present themselves as scholars . . . laugh off this disguise.  Their . . . erroneous beliefs are weighty reasons to keep them in check. . . . they try to foster on society . , , some enterprising superghost.  Naive member of the public . . . a comical invitation . . . the wrong foot--the only foot on which promoters of intelligent design can get around . . . peddled to the public.  The minority of 'intelligent designers' who have any true interest in biology . . . The 'intelligent designers' theme song . . . guided by a little angel . . . medieval in concept . . . an intellectually dangerous condition . . . the divine jumping disease. . . . humanity dug herself into 'faiths' like a blind leech into flesh and won't let go. . . . Feeding like leeches on irrational beliefs . . . offensive little swarms of insects . . . must be taken care of by spraying biological knowledge. . . . "  [Ibid., p. 184f.]

We should pause here, dear reader, to allow you time to stop rolling around on the floor laughing.  If you have now recovered at least some poise, we will allow Berlinski the coup d'grace:

Darwinian biologists are very often persuaded that there is a conspiracy afoot to make them look foolish.  

In this they are correct. [Ibid., p. 185.]

Zuckerkandl afflicts his colleagues with the syndrome of the embarrassing advocate.   When a significant majority of the population continue to insist that (when it comes to evolutionism) that particular emperor is most definitely naked, what is left but to spray spittle.  It is an accomplishment at which Zuckerkandl excels.

What evolutionists want us to believe is that everything came out of nothing.  Secondly, they want us to believe that it all has occurred by brute chance.  But, to stack the deck a bit, stochasticity (or randomness) was helped along by "something"--a natural law, perhaps--called "natural selection".  Upon these foundations, the vast, ever crumbling, self-contradictory edifice was built.

The lengths to which "scientists" will go to prove evolutionism are considerable.  Computer simulations of Darwinian evolution have been run for years attempting to "prove" natural selection--the "go to guy" upon which all evolutionism depends.  For years, Thomas Ray has been experimenting in his "created" virtual world--a world in which a "shifting population of computer organisms meet, mate, mutate, and reproduce."

Sandra Blakeslee, writing for the New York Times, reported the results under the headline "Computer 'Life Form' Mutates in an Evolution Experiment: Natural Selection Is Found at Work in the Digital World."

Natural selection found at work?  I suppose so, for as Blakeslee observes with solemn incomprehension, "The creatures mutated but showed only modest increases in complexity."  Which is to say, they showed nothing of interest at all.  This is natural selection at work, but it is hardly work that has worked to an intended effect.

What these computer experiments do reveal is a principle far more penetrating than any that Darwin ever offered:

There is a sucker born every minute.  [Ibid., p.190.]

Too true.