Over at his blog, William Dembski, my least-favorite pathetic excuse for a mathematician, [has cited an article][dembski] written by one John Davison about the theory of evolution. According to Dembski, this article explains “why the naked emperor still lingers”; that is, why the theory of evolution is still around even though it’s so obviously wrong. (Update: I originally typed “Paul Davison” instead of “John Davison”, I don’t know why. Any “Paul Davison”s out there, sorry for associating your name with this dreck. Additionally, the article is posted on Dembski’s blog, but it wasn’t posted by Dembski himself; it was posted by one of the site moderators “Scott”.)
\nIt’s easy to see why Dembski likes this article. I’ve always found Dembski’s writing to be obnoxiously pretentious; this guy writes in that same snotty faux-intellectual style. Here’s a taste from the beginning of Davison’s article.
\n>Darwinism has persisted because it failed to recognize the nature of first
\n>causes. It is only natural to assume that results had causes and it is the duty
\n>of the scientist to find and reveal those causes. At this science has been
\n>incredibly successful. Many examples are presented in medical science with the
\n>discovery of the causes, treatments and cures for hundreds of diseases. All of
\n>Chemistry has been revealed from the consideration of how atomic forces have
\n>caused molecules to have the structure and properties that they have. This is
\n>analytical science and it is great science.
\n>
\n>I like titles presented as questions because that is what science is really
\n>supposed to be all about – answering questions. One cannot answer a question
\n>until it has been posed.
\n>
\n>I have used this technique in the past with “Is evolution finished” and most
\n>recently, also in the current issue of Rivista di Biologia, “Do we have an
\n>evolutionary theory?”
\n>
\n>You will note that I choose my words carefully. I do not question that it has
\n>persisted because that is self-evident, but rather how has that been possible?
\n>
\n>I have the answer and here it is in abbreviated form.
\nSee what I mean? This section also already starts to hint at what’s wrong; but what really set me off, and let me to write about it here, on a math blog, is what comes next:
\n>Darwinism has persisted because it failed to recognize the nature of first
\n>causes. It is only natural to assume that results had causes and it the duty of
\n>the scientist to find and reveal those causes. At this science has been
\n>incredibly successful. Many examples are presented in medical science with the
\n>discovery of the causes, treatments and cures for hundreds of diseases. All of
\n>Chemistry has been revealed from the consideration of how atomic forces have
\n>caused molecules to have the structure and properties that they have. This is
\n>analytical science and it is great science.
\n>
\n>But does this approach have limits beyond which it cannot DIRECTLY proceed?
\n>This is another very critical question and I will answer it with a resounding
\n>yes.
\n>
\n>Those limits are met when we attempt to identify the causes of the tools with
\n>which we proceed. I will use mathematics as an example. Mathematics has
\n>rightfully been described as “The Queen of the Sciences.” Without math there
\n>could be no science, at least a science as we know it.
\nYeah, he’s going to invoke mathematics as his argument. And of course, it’s going to be *bad*. **Really** bad. Stupid bad.
\n>So here comes the moment of truth as it were. What is the cause of mathematics?
\n>More accurately we should ask – what WAS the cause of mathematics because it
\n>has always been there just waiting to be discovered. That discovery began with
\n>the Pythagoreans and continues to this day.
\n>
\n>Mathematics has no discernable cause does it? Now what does this all have to do
\n>with evolution? It has everything to do with evolution because both ontogeny
\n>and phylogeny, like mathematics have no discernable cause.
\nYes, the root of his argument is that mathematics has *no cause*. And evolution, like mathematics, also has no discernable cause.
\nWhat the hell does this *mean*? Well, to be frank, absolutely bloody nothing. This is what is crudely known as “talking out your ass”.
\n>And so we come to the answer to the question posed in my title.
\n>
\n>Darwinism has persisted because it assumes a detectable, discernable cause, a
\n>cause which never existed. It even claims to tell us all about this
\n>non-existent cause. The cause is random changes in genes (mutations) coupled
\n>with nature acting to select which of these should survive. These two
\n>processes, genetic variation and selection, have been the sole means by which
\n>organisms have evolved.
\nYeah, y’see, evolution has *no cause*, just like mathematics. But the theory of evolution has hung around not because it actually explains anything; not because it has evidence to support it; not because it matches the facts; it’s because it creates an *illusion* of a cause.
\n>Now what is the actual tangible evidence to support this model? That is another
\n>very good question by the way. That is what science is all about, asking
\n>questions and then trying to answer them. In this case the answers that emerge
\n>are very clear.
\nThat’s a very good question indeed. Shame he doesn’t bother to answer it.
\n>Natural selection first of all is very real. Its effect is to prevent change
\n>rather than to promote it. This was first recognized by Mivart and then
\n>subsequently and independently by Reginald C. Punnett and then Leo Berg.
\nYeah, y’see there were these two guys, and like we were talking? and they said that natural solution prevents change, and they were, like, really convincing.
\nThat’s his “tangible evidence” for the argument that evolution as a theory has persisted because it creates an illusion of cause where there is none.
\n>So you see there are really two reasons that Darwinism has persisted.
\n>
\n>The first I have already presented. It assumes a cause which never existed. The
\n>second reason it has persisted is because it has also assumed that no one ever
\n>existed who questioned the cause which never existed.
\nAnd yet again, random bullshit comes out of nowhere. Evolution has persisted because it denies the existence of people who question it.
\n>Like mathematics, both ontogeny and phylogeny never had exogenous causes. Both
\n>are manifestations of the expression of preformed pre-existent blocks of highly
\n>specific information which has been released over the millennia as part of a
\n>self-limiting process known as organic evolution, a phenomenon, my opinion, no
\n>longer in progress.
\nAnd again, we come back to that horrible comparison to math. Math, according to Davison is “causeless”; it consists of a set of facts that exist independently of any cause. Likewise, he claims that evolution is “causeless”; it’s nothing but the expression of a set of genetic information that has been coded into life from the very beginning. Evidence? He’s so smart, he doesn’t need any stinking evidence! Evidence is for stuff that has a cause!
\n>Everything we are now learning supports this interpretation which I have
\n>presented in summary form in my recent paper – “A Prescribed Evolutionary
\n>Hypothesis.”
\nEverything we’re learning supports this. Of course, he doesn’t mention *any* of it; not one fact, not one scrap of evidence; not anything about all of the genomes we’ve mapped out; not the name of one biologist who’s done work supporting this, not one paper that talks about this evidence. Nothing.
\n*This* is what Dembski thinks of as a *good* article arguing in favor of ID.
\n[dembski]: http:\/\/www.uncommondescent.com\/index.php\/archives\/1353<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over at his blog, William Dembski, my least-favorite pathetic excuse for a mathematician, [has cited an article][dembski] written by one John Davison about the theory of evolution. According to Dembski, this article explains “why the naked emperor still lingers”; that is, why the theory of evolution is still around even though it’s so obviously wrong. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-debunking-creationism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-1B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}