As a frequent "lurker" I want to thank you ... and your many friends
(Brassfield, Clark, Wein, Lundberg, MikeBGene, Jones, et al) for almost
more intellectual stimulation than this old retired engineer can handle.
Upon graduation from U.of Mich. in 1949 I was a convinced (and
outspoken) "believer" that evolution was a proper and sufficient
scientific explanation for the origin and diversity of life on planet
earth.
Some 20 years later I encountered a public challenge by Dr. John J.
Grebe (then Dir. of Research, Dow Chem. Co.) to the evolutionary gurus
of the day who were championing the elevation of evolution from
hypothesis to theory in public school textbooks. Namely, he offered
$1,000 to "anyone" able to present any first example of scientific
evidence, or mathematical model, of a quality sufficient to justify this
upward reclassification. Finding this offer was still open, I set out
to collect this "easy" money (worth upwards of $10,000 today). After
only a few weeks of reference search, I began to sense that perhaps Dr.
Grebe was perhaps not quite as reckless as I had initially presumed,
but kept digging and corresponding. It was a number of years later
that I finally had to reluctantly concede that all the "evidence"
available consisted of unverifiable interpretations, extrapolations,
extensions, assumptions, etc. I could find NO physical (or
mathematical) evidence establishing that random mutations and natural
selection could/would generate the appearance of new genetic
information in a pre-existing gene pool as required to produce changes
associated with macro-evolution.
Worse yet, all the physical experiments (bell jars, etc.) and
mathematical analysis (Wistar, etc.) appeared to confirm the loss of any
new potentially beneficial DNA coding was so in excess of its chance
formation, that its postulated accumulation was so unlikely as to be
impossible. I still clung to the hope that given enough time, the
necessary accumulation of useful code could/would somehow manifest
itself. Even this straw had to be abandoned upon recognition that the
longer the preponderance of 90+% decay of potentially useful DNA in a
gene pool proceeded, the greater was the certainty it would overwhelm
the less than 10% possibility of it accumulating as required. Time
wasn't an answer. Indeed, it was in actuality a further serious hurdle.
In all my lurking, I'm still looking for some (any) example of
scientific evidence of sufficient merit to qualify biological evolution
as a valid 'scientific' theory --- but to no avail. Perhaps having
outlined my quandary as above, others in this Reflector might share
whatever helpful wisdom they feel might help me clarify/solidify my
thinking.
Thanks to all, Dave Bradbury
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