Evolutionary theory cannot be falsified (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, March 27, 2017, 12:09 (2800 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: This is a quote from Cornelius Hunter who does not believe in the evolutionary process or Darwin theory:
https://designdisquisitions.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/quote-of-the-month-cornelius-hunte...
"Being an evolutionist means there is no bad news.”

Being a theist means there is no bad news. Whatever happens happens because that is the way God wants it to happen. The God theory cannot be falsified.

DAVID: There is another problem with Darwin taken from the book, Darwin's House of Cards by Tom Bethell, 2017: If the arrival of a new species waits upon the appropriate random mutations, "such a time-consuming method rendered implausible that claim that the same species could evolve more than once." It should be in one "center of origin' (Darwin's term)."Yet we plainly do find the same species in different locations---sometimes widely separated." Darwin suggested migration as the answer. I would point out plate tectonics and continent migration. Monkeys on Africa and South America are related. But it is still a problem to consider as did the Wistar Institute, 1967, offered the opinion that the obvious length of time for new species rendered Darwin inoperative. Looking at the speed of human evolution over an eight million year period as they left apes behind and unchanged is the best case in point. It is for reasons like this and Hunter's point that make me believe in a God-guided evolution to manage these objections. It appears to me, with firm conviction, that evolution did happen, but never by Darwin's theory. Darwin had a brilliant intellect, but theorized from ignorance of today's knowledge. If he lived today, I believe he would not have written 'Origins".

I agree with your objections to Darwin’s explanations, and I believe that he would have withdrawn his rejection of saltation and his reliance on random mutations, but his crucial observations concerning the bedrock of his theory, namely common descent, would have remained intact. And I believe that he would have welcomed the theories of punctuated equilibrium and convergent evolution and the discoveries made in the fields of plate tectonics, genetics and epigenetics. He did not regard his book as the last word on the subject! As a supplement to (not a disagreement with) what you have written, here is a passage from his conclusion which I have quoted before, but which bears repetition in the light of the above. Do please also bear in mind that he was not an atheist, and was adamant that his theory did not exclude God.

“...when we regard every production of nature as one which had a history; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, nearly in the same way as when we look at any great mechanical invention as the summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting – I speak from experience – will the study of natural history become!
A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct action of external conditions, and so forth.”

How right he was!