On "Dissecting Darwinism" by Dr Joseph Kuhn

Fig.1. Ida, one of the most complete primate fossils ever found, allegedly a 47-million-year-old human ancestor. Photograph: Atlantic Productions Ltd.

I would like to talk about a recent critique of Darwinism by professional physician Dr Joseph Kuhn from Baylor University Medical Centre, Dallas, Texas, USA [Kuhn 2012]. Expectedly, the article was severely criticized by evolutionists, which task was fulfilled in this case by Dr Jerry Coyne, the author of "Why Evolution is True". 

The article is a survey of the weaknesses of Darwinism. It is intended for layman non-biologists like myself and systematically presents key up-to-date empirical findings which are not amenable to neo-Darwinian model (Random Variation and Natural Selection leading to Differential Reproductive Success) due to the latter facing insurmountable difficulties.

It mentions a number of interesting observations. In particular, I have long been thinking about the homology argument in favour of the hypothesis about common descent of humans and apes. It is known that parts of human and chimp DNA are 96% homologous. However, 96% commonality refers only to protein coding DNA, i.e. to roughly 2% of the entire genomes. If homology is related to the entire length of the genome, the respective figure is much more modest, 70-75%. Note that this figure needs to be further discounted as there are only 4 letters in the DNA alphabet: A, C, T and G, which gives on average a 25% homology for any two randomly taken genomes of the same length.

Earlier many evolutionists believed that non protein coding DNA contained evolutionary junk from numerous previous generations, which was presented in popular literature as empirical evidence of evolution's trial and error. This is in fact not the case. Recent scientific research [Wells 2011] shows that parts of non-coding DNA have regulatory functions and are therefore not junk at all. That evolutionists today are trying to keep their face by denying the fact that they believed non protein coding DNA to be junk, makes an awful impression.

Analyses of biological data in a whole number of research papers today lend serious grounds to doubts about the explanatory capacity of Darwinian gradualism in specific identified areas. We encourage all scientists who are interested in fair scientific inquiry rather than in preserving the status quo only atheists are happy with, to examine the available empirical data carefully and objectively and make the following conclusion.

Based on compelling and ever growing empirical evidence, we state that the hypothesis about the legitimacy of extrapolating observed microevolutionary effects on to the macro level of change between high biological taxa is not empirically warranted. We simply observe that the amount of genetic change necessary for forming different classes or phyla from common ancestry is prohibitively large within the currently accepted universal time bounds. I can see three ways out of this conundrum [Personal Communications]:

1. Shut Them Up, Dissent Verbotten: Pay no serious attention to dissenters from Darwinism and their scientific arguments, ridicule their position and sometimes even personalities, engage in 'censorship and disclaimers' tactics and carry on as if nothing happened. I hope we all agree that this leads nowhere.

2. Scientific Debate: Analyse the critique and try to show it is fallacious. This is the position of a majority of evolutionists, and it is respectable by all means. However, it has no future. They have not been able to convincingly demonstrate that the critique is wrong. As a matter of fact, the probability and common sense are their enemies here. As a result, they are out by multiple orders of magnitude with respect to the complexity barriers between different forms of life, on the one hand, and the universal time bounds, on the other. Sometimes evolutionists are motivated by a priori materialistic commitments at the cost of objectivity in scientific research, which is a considerable weakness. Another key weakness is unwillingness to accept the unique role of choice contingency as an obvious and the only empirically warranted causal factor as far as the origin of cybernetic control in biosystems is concerned.

3. Move towards a new synthesis: come up with an entirely new generic model which would include the Darwinian model as a special case of microevolution. Now that Darwinism "has pretty much reached the end of its rope" as [Depew & Weber 2011] put it, this is the only scientifically legitimate and promising way out. This position is shared by proponents of such theories as Intelligent Design and nomogenesis. Despite the fact that this general view is by far in a minority today, it is only this perspective that has the future of science. The old generation of Darwinist hardliners are trying to hold science back. They are still in academic power but the situation is changing. They will not be able to stand the avalanche of scientific thought by plugging holes in their cracking old dam. Scientists nowadays increasingly more often critically revisit the ideas that laid out the foundations of Darwinism. This is why we now re-examine the legacy of such thinkers as Charles Darwin's "heretic" friend Alfred Russel Wallace [Wallace 1914], who spoke about intelligent guidance of biological evolution.



References

1. David J. Depew and Bruce H. Weber (2011), The Fate of Darwinism: Evolution After the Modern Synthesis, Biological Theory, 2011, Volume 6, Number 1, Pages 89-102.  
2. Joseph Kuhn, Dissecting Darwinism, Proceedings of Baylor University Medical Center, 2012; 25(1):41–47.
3. Alfred Russel Wallace, The World of Life, Chapman and Hall, London, 1914.   
4. Jonathan Wells, The Myth of Junk DNA, Discovery Institute Press, 2011.
5. Personal communications.