Statistical violations

The claims of Richard Dawkins book, The Blind Watchmaker, are stitched together and held together with threads of fantasy. So it is with Darwinism.

There is a group of pseudo scientists who believe their collective imagination licenses them to ignore the realities of statistical probabilities. They believe it so strongly that they think their imagination has overcome...defeated...the realities of statistical probabilities. As seen in the Richard Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker (Publisher: W.W Norton and Company Ltd., 1996,1987, 1986.), they have fallen prey to the seductive nature of unscientific imagination resulting in elaborate science fiction.

Let’s take a brief (depending on your perspective) tour of the imagination and assumptions Dawkins put in The Blind Watchmaker. This will not be an imaginary tour. It will be a very real tour about imagination and assumptions. Based on the accolades presented by the publisher, The Blind Watchmaker is apparently a premier book regarding Darwinian evolution. If The Blind Watchmaker falls so does Darwinian evolution.

The number in parentheses after each quotation below is the page number on which the quotation occurs. There is also a list of words used in The Blind Watchmaker preceded by the page numbers on which they are found.

Dawkins puts pure scientists on guard in the preface. Note the use of the words “satisfying”, “a good case” and "believe" in the following quotes.

… I want to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian worldview happens to be true, but that is the only known theory that could, in principle solve the mystery of our existence. This makes it a doubly satisfying theory. A good case can be made that Darwinism is true, not just on this planet but all over the universe wherever life may be found. (xvi, xvii)

I may not always be right, but I care passionately about what is true and I never say anything I do not believe to be right. (xvii)

“It took a very large leap of the imagination for Darwin and Wallace to see that, contrary to all intuition, there is another way and, once you have understood it, a far more plausible way, for complex ‘design’ to arise out of primeval simplicity. A leap of the imagination so large that, to this day, many people seem still unwilling to make it. It is the main purpose of this book to help the reader to make this leap [into imagination].” (xix).

Imagination is the method Dawkins uses in forming the basis for his book, as described in chapter 1. This basis seems to be summarized in the following quote.

A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with the future purpose in his mind’s eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future it has no vision, no foresight no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker. (9)

Let me emphasize that Darwinian evolution, from its beginning until now, is a theory contrived by human imagination. Natural selection is purposely injected in the theory to accomplish survival. We are here. We exist. We survived. Darwinian evolution is an effort to explain why that is true. Natural selection was injected into the theory to bring us to our current status. We are here. We exist. We survived. Natural selection has the purpose of survival imposed on it by human imagination. Within the freedom of imagination and assumptions it performs quite well indeed. Of course, anything can be done in imagination. One can even imagine that intelligence sprang from nothing without cause. That particular imagination must be accepted if one accepts Darwinian evolution.

Atheists love the theory. Dawkins certainly does. Notice that the adjective fulfilled in the following quote. The fulfillment is achieved by freely using imagination and assumptions over and over and over in The Blind Watchmaker and making that the basis for saying “we now know” in the previous quote.

Here follows a fundamental assumption used by Dawkins, with no proof whatsoever that it is true. Well, the only place proof exists anyway is in the mind of the perceiver. So I concede it is ‘proven’ to Dawkins' satisfaction apparently, which seemingly makes him comfortable in saying, ”Natural selection…we now know is the explanation for the existence…of all life”…(in the page 9 quote above). "Know" based on unproven fantasy.

There is nothing supernatural, no ‘life force’ to rival the fundamental forces of physics. (17) [A faith statement]

In order to avoid writing a book about a book I will focus on my main point: imagination and assumptions that together form the fantasized backbone of Darwinism. Here follows a list of page numbers and words that appear on those pages, followed by occasional comments in parentheses.

183 must somehow, we may suspect, is unlikely, would spring into existence, probably, it seems likely, should, should have, likely

237 We still don't know how natural selection began on earth...it must have...probably

I have omitted many page numbers that could have been added in this list, and many blanks could be filled with similar words. Perhaps I will add some of them at a later date. But for now, having provided a litany of words that imply hypotheses, I will move to the last two pages of The Blind Watchmaker.

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. The essence of life is just a single improbability on a colossal scale. Whatever is the explanation for life, therefore, it cannot be chance. The explanation for the existence of life must embody the very antithesis of chance. The antithesis of chance is nonrandom survival, properly understood. Nonrandom survival, improperly understood, is not the antithesis of chance, it is chance itself. (452)

Survival, whether it is random or nonrandom, requires the intelligence in CLNF control systems. Intelligence, that stuff that preceded DNA.

To ‘tame’ chance means to break down the very improbable into less improbable small components arranged in series. No matter how improbable it is that an X could have arisen from a Y in a single step, it is always possible to conceive of [imagine] a series of infinitesimally graded intermediates between them. However improbable a large-scale change may be, smaller changes are less improbable. And provided we postulate [imagine] a sufficiently large series of sufficiently finely graded intermediates, we shall be able to derive anything from anything else [imagine] , without invoking astronomical probabilities. We are allowed to do this only if there has been sufficient time [imagine] to fit all the intermediates in [imagine] . And also only if there is a mechanism [imagine] for guiding [intelligence with a goal] each step in some particular direction [intelligence] otherwise the sequence of steps will career off in an endless random walk.

It is the contention [imagination] of the Darwinian worldview that both these provisos are met, and that slow, gradual, cumulative natural selection is the ultimate explanation [imagination] for our existence. (453)

Notice the words “conceive of” and “postulate”, the stuff of imagination. And the words “guiding” and “direction”, the stuff of intelligence. Darwinism, the product of imagination, cannot even be imagined without including the stuff of intelligence.

If proponents of Darwinism would guard the integrity of science like they guard their lives, they would drop Darwinism instantly, as if it was a very hot potato. How many do you think will walk ten paces to pick up a $10M dollar reward (or for any other reason) if they know their chance of surviving the walk is only 1 in a million. The improbability of surviving that walk is totally negligible compared to the improbability that the multitude of imaginations and assumptions of Darwinism are true. What other scientific discipline goes to such exhaustive lengths of imagination and assumption to avoid the conclusions called for by probabilities. Avoiding the conclusions called for by probabilities is the cover-to-cover purpose of The Blind Watchmaker.

A creature appears in a back yard. It has not been seen there before. The owner sees it. Immediately he notices it looks like a dog. Then a squirrel moves in the yard. The creature sees it and begins a chase. Then a cat appears. The creature chases it with a vengeance. Then along the back fence a couple of kids pass by. The creature begins barking and wagging its tail. Then it starts whining because the kids are moving on and it cannot get to them. The owner walks out to a friendly greeting from the creature. He reaches out to pet the creature. His hand is sniffed, then licked. He concludes with no doubt what the creature is.

If the owner is a physicist he immediately concludes the creature is a dog. If the owner is an engineer he immediately concludes the creature is a dog. If the owner is a chemist he immediately concludes the creature is a dog. If the owner is a politician he immediately concludes the creature is a dog. If the owner is a housewife she immediately concludes the creature is a dog. If the owner is a medical doctor he immediately concludes the creature is a dog. People of every sort known to humanity, except one, would exercise SIMPLE and conclude the creature is a dog. A Darwinist would immediately conclude the creature is not a dog. Would he really? Probably not, in such cases as this the Darwinist thinks normally. He would likely conclude the creature is a dog, he would exercise SIMPLE. But in science, when something having all the attributes of design is the subject, like DNA, they refuse to rely on SIMPLE, refuse to call it a design. It doesn't suit their preference. They resort to Spintelligence.

Without imagination and assumptions The Blind Watchmaker has no binding. It falls apart. So it is with Darwinism. On the other hand, it is easy to provide objective proof that CLNF systems are the product of deliberate premeditated design. This makes intelligent design distinctly more scientific than Darwinism. The creature, whatever it is, in the backyard is loaded with CLNF control systems. A Darwinist says CLNF control systems are not designs. He has no scientific basis for that claim. He simply prefers the idea that CLNF systems are “design like”. A Darwinist cannot accept the possibility of a Designer. But Darwinism cannot provide an objective alternative. Darwinism is in fact based on an imaginary faith hypothesis, namely, that there was/is no Designer. When the issue is CLNF control systems a Darwinist abandons normal thinking. When the issue is CLNF control systems, despite all the obvious, objective evidence, a Darwinist concludes natural selection can do that which requires intelligence even though it has no intelligence.

Fantasy is seductive. It seems to be a trait universal among humans. For a proponent of Darwinism, when things of God are mentioned the fantasy becomes "Darwinism". It is their faith. The Blind Watchmaker = Darwinism = The Blind Watchmaker = Fantasy + imagination + assumption = False. Oh yes, there are multitudes of good, solid scientific data that biologists have. The problem is, Darwinism perverts it. Atheism is not smart. It is emotional, driven by personal preference. It is Spintelligence. To arrive at and defend what they prefer, atheists defy/abandon their own intelligence, and choose imagination plus assumption, Spintelligence. SIMPLE recognizes it and calls it Spintelligence. What disciplines known to humanity ignore, violate and reject the probabilities of statistics? Darwinian biologists. What others?

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Statistical violations

Conclusion