Re: West Virginia creationism

On 07/05/2024 04:53, Ron Dean wrote:

 What do you think of this:
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scientific_Dissent_from_Darwinism
 

Taking literally the wording of the text dissents from Darwin on the ultra-Darwinist side. (I think of it as the Discovery Institute's list of ultra-Darwinists. It might even to be too ultra-Darwinist for Dawkins.
The signees are skeptical that mutation and natural selection can account for complexity of life. Real evolutionary biologists are not skeptical on this point; they know that other processes are involved. (One could argue whether an equivalent complexity could have been achieved is the other processes were magically suppressed; with that interpretation I expect that the great majority of evolutionary biologists could have signed.)
Darwin could have signed it, except that Darwin didn't have a worked out model of variation. Darwin expressed a pluralist view on the mechanisms of evolution, though as far as I know with little evidentiary support.
Or to put it in a few words, the Dissent from Darwinism statement is empty of content.
--
alias Ernest Major