James Barham vs Darwin (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, July 21, 2012, 18:10 (4509 days ago) @ dhw


> I must confess that I find this attack on Darwin extremely confusing. -you will need to read all seven Barham articles to follow him.-> 
> Where Darwin comes under fire is not the process of evolution (which, David, you have repeatedly said you accept) but the mechanisms by which it takes place. Random mutations and gradualism are the main problems, and the more we learn about the workings of the "intelligent" cell (which I would compare to Darwin's "workmen"), the more it would seem that these lie at the heart of the process. We now know a great deal more about the then "untrodden fields" like the causes and laws of variation, while epigenetics suggests that the direct action of external conditions may be far more significant than previously thought. This does not mean throwing Darwin out. Common descent and natural selection still stand as the cornerstones of his theory. -But that is exactly the point. Natural selection has a small passive role, and the common descent is much more a bush than a tree, with no evidence of macro-speciation by Darwin's gradualist method. The cornerstones are crumbling, which is not Darwin's fault. His was a fabulous guess as to the underlying process, but he appears to be wrong, as science marches on.