>I am not a scientist, just a laymen to whom the inadequacies of Darwinism
>seem so apparent that even lawyers can't help noticing them. I won't try to
>say more about the following web site, except to say I'm happy there are
>scientists not blinded by Darwinism, a hypothesis which has been an albatros
>hindering further understanding of evolution for more than a century.
>(Davison claims Darwinism doesn't even deserve the status of a theory.)
>
>Bertvan
>http://members.aol.com/bertvam
>
>http://www.uvm.edu/~jdavison/
>
>Just a couple of quotes
>
>. Macroevolution is largely finished.
>Sexual reproduction is incapable of supporting trans-specific
>(macroevolutionary) change. Accordingly, all significant change
>was produced presexually involving the first meiotic division.
>The essential feature of these changes was due not to micromutations
>in the genes themselves, but rather to the way in which those genes
>express their effects which is dependent upon their arrangement within
>the structure of the chromosome (position effect).
>
>No one denies the validity of Galileo's equation which relates
>the distance that a body falls to time, or Newton's laws of motion,
>or Einstein's equation relating energy and mass. Why then must one
>reject, as the Darwinians do, the suggestion that comparable laws
>exist or have existed controlling the living world? Everyone
>accepts gravitation and the equations associated with it, yet
>no one yet understands the cause of gravity. Accordingly, neither
>in religion nor in science does acceptance demand understanding.
>
>Nevertheless, the Darwinians continue to insist that evolution is
>the result only of chance events. Stephen J. Gould has recently
>compared evolution to a drunk reeling back and forth between the
>bar room wall and the gutter (Gould 1996 page 149). He has also
>described intelligence as an evolutionary accident. I will only
>comment that it was some accident!
>
>http://www.uvm.edu/~jdavison/ontogeny.html
there is a Gould interview on line where he talks about the
"drunkard" imagery. The explanation is quite different from what
Davidson says above:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/gould_11-26.html
"DAVID GERGEN: You used an analogy, which I found quite helpful to
me, in thinking about the randomness of it all. You talked about the
drunk coming out of a bar and staggering. Could you--
STEPHEN JAY GOULD: Yeah. It's an old statistical paradigm called the
drunkard's walk, which is a wonderful way of illustrating how you can
get directional and predictable motion within a totally random
system. All right. Here's the story. A drunk staggers out of a bar.
Here's the bar, and he's leaning right against the wall of the bar.
Now, he's staggering completely at random, back and forth. There's a
gutter 30 feet away. He staggers five feet every time he staggers,
completely at random, goes towards the bar as often as he goes away,
except if he hits the bar wall, he can't go through it, so he just
stands there until he staggers away. Now, where does he end up every
time? Of course, he ends up in the gutter. He falls down in the
gutter, the thing's over. We understand that very easily."
I think I may have heard of this guy. He showed up on some forum that
I was on a few years ago. I don't even remember where, or I would dig
up the refutations.
He isn't too kind to your buddy Lamarck:
"Darwinism has prevailed entirely for negative reasons since
alternative hypotheses have proven to be inadequate. Chief among
these is Lamarckism or the genetic transmission of characters acquired
during the life of the individual. Such transmissions have never been
demonstrated at least in higher forms. Accordingly, in the absence of
experimental verification, Lamarckism cannot be given serious
consideration."
And he doesn't seem eager to explain why, if all the alternatives
have failed, Darwinism prevails *only* for negative reasons. After
all, if it fails, it is merely one among the failures.
It occurred to me recently that you hate both randomness and
determinism. What, exactly is it that you *do* like?
Susan
-- ----------I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is bound to shew why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from some lower form, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through the laws of ordinary reproduction.
---Charles Darwin
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