“There are different categories of pseudoscience, but the type
relevant
to Darwinism occurs when a legitimate scientific theory makes
predictions critical to that theory that are subsequently falsified, but the
theory continues to be promoted as science, often with creative story-telling
and the use of technical terms mixed with words and phrases such as “over
time,” “is conceivable,” “probably”
and many others which can be described charitably as words and
phrases one uses when confirming data is unavailable”.
Kirk Durston
Apparently
certain Christians, as well as certain scientists, so determined to ‘prove’
their agenda-driven arguments, will actually resort to lying to ‘make good
their case’, or to ‘save the appearances’.
In
the case of Creationists, for instance, Geology professor Ian Plimer has
exposed such desperate falsifying in his book, Telling lies for God: Reason
vs creationism (Random House Australia, 1994).
I
(Damien Mackey) wrote about this unhappy situation, for example, in my article:
Abandonment of common sense, telling lies for God, not necessary
prerequisites for biblical interpretation
One review of professor
Plimer’s book reads as follows:
Telling Lies For God by Ian Plimer -
9780091828523
A powerful and controversial analysis
of creationism - the belief that the Biblical description of the earth, and all
life on it, can be applied literally - and an attack on the arguments put
forward in its support. Ian Plimer, Professor of Geology at the University of
Melbourne, examines in detail the arguments of the creationists, and draws on
his own scientific background and the expertise of many of his academic peers
to refute them point by point.
He details the implications of
treating the Old Testament as a scientific text - and takes an equally
searching look at the material used to back up the more unusual statements made
by some creationists here and overseas.
This is an issue which arouses great
argument and passion amongst many Australians. We are all entitled to our
beliefs - but in a pluralist society we should also expect them to be subject
to public scrutiny.
Kirk
Durston (2025) will tell of how the same situation can occur with Darwinian
scientists: Darwinism as Pseudoscience | Science and
Culture Today
How Darwinism Became a Pseudoscience
Evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein
has a reputation for some pretty wild ideas outside his area of expertise that
I might not want to defend. But when it comes to some comments he made a few
months ago, within his own field of expertise, he was spot on when he provided
a disturbing reality check on the current state of Darwinism. As a scientist, I
have my own reasons why this is so. He stated,
In my opinion, the
mainstream Darwinists are telling a kind of lie about how much we know and what
remains to be understood … I think modern Darwinism is broken. Yes, I do think
I know more or less how to fix it. I’m annoyed at my colleagues for, I think,
lying to themselves about the state of modern Darwinism. I think I know why
that happened. I think they were concerned that a Creationist worldview was
always a threat … and so they pretended that Darwinism was a more complete
explanation, as it was presented, than it ever was ….
As a biophysicist specializing in the
information encoded in the DNA of protein-coding genes, and how that
information prescribes the 3D structure of proteins, I have my own reasons for
agreeing with Weinstein on this issue. Although he thinks he knows “more or
less how to fix it,” my knowledge of the extreme difficulty (a colossal
understatement) of locating sequences that will code for a functional protein
with a stable 3D structure, tells me that neither he nor anyone else is going
to fix it (although I would be fascinated to hear his proposed solution).
That said, there are some phrases in
his statement that deserve to be pointed out: “telling a kind of lie,”
“broken,” and “lying to themselves.” Note, also, the motive for promoting this
broken theory.
To be clear, I am not suggesting that
Darwinists are conspiring to deliberately corrupt science and mislead people,
although such corruption and misleading is certainly happening. Rather,
scientists who should know better, but continue to promote Darwinism, are
living in denial, motivated by their own a priori commitment
to materialism and scientism driven by an antagonism against any possibility
that there is an intelligent mind behind the software encoded in the genomes of
life.
Three
Predictions of Darwinian Evolution
About 35 years earlier, I sat in the
office of a professor of evolutionary biology at a major Canadian university. I
had noticed three predictions of Darwinian evolution that appeared to be
consistently falsified by experimental evidence, so I asked him about it. To my
shock, he admitted that all three were major problems for which we had not yet
found satisfactory answers. Keep in mind that this was 35 years before Bret
Weinstein’s interview.
The main difference between then and
now is that advances in science have made the problems even more obvious.
Eugene Koonin, an internationally
recognized evolutionary biologist, published a paper in 2007 admitting that
even RNA replication, a proposed stepping stone to life, was so impossibly
improbable, that it was unlikely to occur anywhere in the universe. …. His
solution was to propose an infinite multiverse, which would offer an infinite
number of opportunities to solve this problem. It is especially interesting to
read the reviewers’ comments. They expressed the fear that intelligent design
might be seen as a better explanation for the origin of life. Consequently, the
concluding sentence of Eugene Koonin’s paper absurdly states that his
hypothesis of an infinite multiverse “leaves no room whatsoever for any form of
intelligent design.” One might think that a mind, which we know exists given
that we all have one, might be a better “Ockham’s Razor” option than proposing
an infinite number of untestable universes … but rational deliberation is
often sidestepped in pseudoscience.
If one wonders what the driving force
behind Darwinism is, and what the motive might be for Darwinists to be “telling
a kind of lie,” as Weinstein puts it, one might want to think about both
Koonin’s denial of any kind of intelligent design behind life, and what
Weinstein said about the so-called “threat” of the theory of intelligent design
as an explanation for the origin and diversity of life. This “threat” and
denial have resulted in Darwinists lying to themselves and the public. The
result is that Darwinism has degenerated into pseudoscience.
Variation
vs Darwinism
The average person tends to understand
the word “evolution” as the theory that the full diversity of plant and animal
life has descended from a very simple cell that somehow arose in the past and
began to self-replicate. People are often confused to learn that evolution is
often defined as variation in a population of plants or animals over time, via
a combination of genetic drift, mutations … and natural selection. (Note:
In this article, “mutation” includes insertions, deletions, duplications,
inversions, and translocations.) Since we observe variation throughout nature,
a Darwinist can look you in the eye and confidently state that “evolution is a
fact!” But defining evolution as simply genetic variation over
time is misleading. To avoid using the term “evolution” in a misleading way, I
will refer to variation within a population over time as, simply, variation. As
for the neo-Darwinian theory of common descent, we will describe that belief
as Darwinism.
How
Can We Tell the Difference?
Unfortunately, there is a disturbing
lack of rigor in evolutionary biology when it comes to distinguishing between
variation and Darwinism. I often observe Darwinists insisting that the two are
the same thing, but as science advances this belief has become obviously false.
Rigor must be an essential component of good science and using the word
“evolution” to refer to two very different concepts is no exception. There is,
in fact, a central, objective quantification of genetic change that allows
science to clearly distinguish between variation and Darwinism. Absolutely
central to life and its survival, reproduction, and variation, is the
functional information encoded in the DNA of organisms.
Functional
Information
The concept of functional
information as required by biological life was first proposed by Jack
Szostak in a short article in the science journal Nature in
2003. ….
Four years later, he coauthored a more
extensive technical article in PNAS with Robert Hazen et
al. further defining functional information. …. That same year I
published an article in TBMM laying out how we can estimate
the amount of functional information from actual data for protein families. …. I
used a more complete equation than Hazen et al. used, but for
the general cases they discussed, the equation I used reduces to the identical
one they proposed. To confirm this, I contacted both Robert Hazen and Jack
Szostak directly, showing them the derivation of their equation from the more
extensive one I used for protein families, and they each confirmed that I was
correct and that we are all using the same general equation for measuring
functional information. ….
The
Difference Between Variation and Darwinism
When we quantify the observed change
in functional information in genetic variation within a population over time,
we observe that there is none. If there is any change, it is usually a loss of
information if the deleterious mutations are not compensated for at the same
rate as beneficial mutations. A statistically significant increase in
functional information has never been documented.
Darwinism requires novel protein
families and gene regulation systems, all of which require enormous increases
in the functional information encoded in the DNA of the new type of plant or
animal. Some Darwinists will point to the gain of a new function as positive
evidence for Darwinism; however, when the functional information required for
these gains is calculated, it turns out that a gain of function can occur
without any increase in functional information. Therefore, gain of
function fails to correlate with whether or not there has been a
corresponding gain of functional information.
To summarize, functional information
is the key distinguishing factor between variation and Darwinism — the latter
requires significant levels of new, protein-coding information, while variation
within a population over time does not.
Categories
of Pseudoscience
There are different categories of
pseudoscience, but the type relevant to Darwinism occurs when a legitimate
scientific theory makes predictions critical to that theory that are
subsequently falsified, but the theory continues to be promoted as science, often
with creative story-telling and the use of technical terms mixed with words and
phrases such as “over time,” “is conceivable,” “probably” and many others which
can be described charitably as words and phrases one uses when confirming data
is unavailable. Those scientists who promote this sort of pseudoscience are
“telling a kind of lie” to themselves and to the public. Once you start to
see this, you cannot unsee it. Much of the origin of life literature is rife
with it.
Critical
Predictions
For the scientific method, a theory
should be testable by making predictions which can be potentially falsified.
A critical prediction is one that, if that prediction is
falsified, the entire theory collapses.
One can find data that can be
interpreted as “evidence” for virtually any belief or theory. Evidence in favor
of a theory, however, is trumped by falsification of a critical
prediction.
As in any theory, one can find
evidence supporting Darwinism, which textbooks dealing with Darwinism cover
extensively, while at the same time completely ignoring or glossing over the
critical predictions and their falsification. In this way, scientists “are
telling a kind of lie about how much we know and what remains to be
understood.” Emphasizing the evidence that supports a belief, while
glossing over or ignoring the evidence that falsifies it, is another
characteristic of pseudoscience.
For example, some aspects of the
fossil record, phylogenetic trees, and genetic similarities can be interpreted
in a way that supports Darwinism. However, the same observations are also
predicted by the theory that there is an intelligent mind behind the software
of life. In science, falsification of critical predictions entails that the
evidence was misapplied. Due to creative storytelling, the line between science
and science fiction has been blurred in Darwinism to the point of being almost
indistinguishable. What we need for a critical prediction is something that is
both essential and unique to the theory such that if it is falsified, we are
forced to declare that Darwinism is, in fact, broken, as Weinstein might put
it. Falsification exposes the creative storytelling of Darwinism for what it is
— “telling a kind of lie.”
….
Summary
For Darwinism to be true, nature must
provide an arena where novel, functional, stable, 3D proteins are relatively
easy to find, and the rate of production of novel functional information
encoded in the genomes of life is greater than the rate of destruction.
The reality is that neither is true.
The laws of physics determine that stable 3D protein structures are
unimaginably rare and the natural process of mutation leads to a net
deterioration of whatever functional information is already out there. This is
why every selective breeding experiment hits a limit if we try to see how far
we can go. Nature ensures that the two critical predictions of Darwinism will
continue to be thoroughly and consistently falsified.
Darwinism began as a fascinating
theory, but the falsification of its critical predictions means that those who
continue to promote it are promoting a pseudoscience. They are, as Weinstein
put it “lying to themselves” and “telling a kind of lie” to the public.
Ending
on a Positive Note
As Weinstein stated, “modern Darwinism
is broken.” I am often asked what I have to offer as an alternative. My
response is that we should go where the science points. In this case, the
science shows that protein-coding genes require an impressive level of
functional information, which is already encoded in the genomes of life. The
only thing science has ever observed that can produce functional information
are minds; we do it every time we message someone, write an essay, or write
computer code. The fingerprints of an intelligent mind are all over the genomes
of life in the form of the functional information encoded in the DNA. Science
has no other observable, repeatable option; to ignore this is bad science. The
ability to produce statistically significant levels of functional information
is unique to intelligent minds. The key word here is “unique”; no other such
process has ever been observed by science. Even genetic algorithms require an
intelligent mind to design the fitness function and are, thus, examples of
intelligent design in action. I have written a short introductory article, “Why This Scientist
Believes that Intelligent Design Was Required for Biological Life,”
presenting a positive, scientific method to test the hypothesis that the
functional information found in life requires an intelligent mind. The job of
science is to reverse engineer20 the cell with its
information-processing and gene-regulatory systems to understand how it all
works. ….
22nd October, 2026
Feast-day of pope-saint John Paul II ‘the Great’
