Darwin's Doubt

 https://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Doubt-Explosive-Origin-Intelligent/dp/0062071483

This is a book that doggedly works to put some meat on the challenges to the modern Darwinian dogma. We are at a point in history much like the time of Martin Luther, where the dogma of the Catholic church was crushing all other Christian thought. The "church", meaning the Catholic Church had all the power, and the keys to Heaven and Hell -- to question was to be a heretic, and eternally damned. 

Today, dogmatic Darwinism is the scientific religion -- a statement that is an oxymoron, as an any real scientist like Richard Feynman knows -- the core difference between science and religion is that actual science is NEVER "settled" ... it's "truth" is always conditional on the next piece of discovered knowledge. Whatever fails that test is religion,  not science. Much of modern "science" is religion, and one only needs to visit one of their "science" museums to attend a scientism worship service. 

 Starting in the "1950s" as more and more information about the actual mechanisms required for "evolution" to randomly create "more adaptive" phyla, rather than just modify through selection within the same phyla (meaning they could breed and reproduce) became more clear, some actual scientists began to doubt the Darwinian dogma. As in the time of Luther, the reaction of the Church of Darwin was to punish and excommunicate the heretics. 

Even as eminent a biologist as Stephen J Gould has declared that neo-Darwinism is effectively dead based on current genomic research. I cover a much easier to follow than this book introduction to why in here.

What "Doubt" covers is a whole lot of detail behind what are currently considered the odds of a SINGLE helpful inheritable mutation. What are those odd? From David Gelernter  (an eminent Yale computer scientist) ...   

The odds against blind Darwinian chance having turned up even one mutation with the potential to push evolution forward are 10⁴⁰x(1/10⁷⁷)—10⁴⁰tries, where your odds of success each time are 1 in 10⁷⁷ — which equals 1 in 10³⁷. In practical terms, those odds are still zero. Zero odds of producing a single promising mutation in the whole history of life. 

To get to life AT ALL by randomness has not been reproduced in the lab, even by "stacking the deck" with what we believe to be the perfect "primordial soup. We can't get a SINGLE viable, let alone successfully reproducing cell. 

We can get all sorts of mutations in the lab by chemical or radiation exposure ... as we would expect, even when you cause millions of mutations, they nearly always kill the next generation, or produce offspring that are grotesque and anything but "improved / more adaptive". 

However, as unlikely as adaptive DNA mutations are, it turns out they are not the only operative factor ... there is "epigenetics" ... which at a high level means that Lamark had a point. Changes to the phenotype in one generation CAN be inherited. 

If you choose to undertake this book you will be introduced to lots of biology, genetics, genomics, geology, statistics, history, information theory, etc ... almost certainly, no matter how studied or intelligent you are, your eyes will glaze over at some point. 

... and of course it won't "prove" anything if you have already accepted the Darwinist faith. While Christianity promises a better life now, and eternal life hereafter, Darwinist faith only promises that life has no underlying meaning or purpose, and that when you die, that is it.  

My purpose in going to all this trouble is that modern "Wokeism" of which the Darwinist faith is a foundation, asserts that all who disagree need to be ridiculed, isolated, and punished in this short life. The results of this "Wokeism" so far are many despondent people choosing to end or effectively end their self understood as meaningless lives via suicide, drugs, distraction, or being motivated by hate and virtue signalling relative to those that question the Darwinist / Woke doctrine. 

The result of this is that we now live in a decadent, increasingly fascist world -- a new "Dark Age of Dogma". 

I recommend reading the suggested/linked intro post, as well as "Purpose And Desire" prior to taking on this book. It is a worthy book, roundly criticised by The Unholy Church of Darwin" as "creationist drivel" -- although other than asserting that one doesn't get complex entities without  some kind of plan/direction, it says nothing about God and in no way defends young earth creation.  

Why did the chicken cross the road? Perhaps it was because he wanted to ... rather than because it was predetermined materialistically since the Big Bang.