James Barham vs Darwin (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, July 22, 2012, 19:20 (4485 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: 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. [...] This does not mean throwing Darwin out. Common descent and natural selection still stand as the cornerstones of his theory. 
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> DAVID: 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.
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> DAVID: Try this explanation to understand Barham:
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> http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2002/dec/11/highereducation.uk-In one of my previous replies to you I suggested you need to review all seven of Barham's essays as well as the site above. You need to take the whole meal to understand what to digest. Barham makes the point that the whole evolutionary setup, the genome descoveries of recent dates, all point to teleology, not one of Darwin's strong points. I know Darwin was agnostic coming from a theistic childhood.