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Hoover Institute video on Mathematical Challenges to Darwin's Theory

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
How did you watch an hour long video and post about it only 20 minutes after I posted it?
There is a huge clue on YouTube. They have the comments turned off. Science based videos never do that. Only pseudoscience videos tend to do that because they know that real scientists will refute their nonsense.

Here is an easy question:

Where are their peer reviewed papers that support these challenges?
 

Shaul

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
I read the transcript on the Hoover Institute website. I don't watch videos.
I saw a summary on the web site but not a transcript of the entire video. Where did you find a transcript of the entire video?
 

The Hammer

[REDACTED]
Premium Member
I saw a summary on the web site but not a transcript of the entire video. Where did you find a transcript of the entire video?

Summary transcript tomato tomato

They make a few broad assumptions that are wrong.

I don't feel like debating it though, just felt like pointing it out.
 

Shaul

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Summary transcript tomato tomato

They make a few broad assumptions that are wrong.

I don't feel like debating it though, just felt like pointing it out.
Wait, did you lie about reading the transcript?
 

lewisnotmiller

Grand Hat
Staff member
Premium Member
The part about the Cambrian explosion is interesting.

I'm somewhat unsure why they're attempting to debunk Darwin's theories, given that science has moved on.
I'm also struggling to spot any scientific evidence for their assertions, which is perhaps why they're denoting this as mathematical.

However...they talk about rapid DNA mutation, but the Cambrian fossil record is not strong, and DNA can't be extracted from fossils of that age, so...they seem to be using 'common sense' arguments.

That's all well and good, and I know they aren't biologists, but I think overturning broadly agreed scientific theories will take more than common sense.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
I'm somewhat unsure why they're attempting to debunk Darwin's theories, given that science has moved on.
I'm also struggling to spot any scientific evidence for their assertions, which is perhaps why they're denoting this as mathematical.

However...they talk about rapid DNA mutation, but the Cambrian fossil record is not strong, and DNA can't be extracted from fossils of that age, so...they seem to be using 'common sense' arguments.

That's all well and good, and I know they aren't biologists, but I think overturning broadly agreed scientific theories will take more than common sense.
Plus the phrase "Cambrian explosion" is misleading. From a geological perspective it appears to be very fast, but it was still tens of millions of years long. From a biological perspective it is not all that fast.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
Based on new evidence and knowledge that functioning proteins are extremely rare, should Darwin’s theory of evolution be dismissed, dissected, developed or replaced with a theory of intelligent design?

They're pedaling pseudo-scientific clap-trap: so-called "intelligent" design. That's all I need to know to see that it's utter and complete hogwash. Pretty soon if they keep going all science classes will be replaced by Bible studies. It also illustrates that Hoover is a home to pure and unadulterated horse ****. I suppose they hate medical science as well.
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
OK, I too have now looked at the summary on the Hoover website. The video is extraordinary. It is a completely one-sided, extended interview with three intelligent cdesign proponentsists [sic:D] , with nobody from the world of science present. What is a once prestigious conservative think tank doing by giving such people airtime, without challenge from the science community?

The Hoover Institution seems to have been affected by Trumpism and to be now puttng forward "alternative facts". It's quite shocking.

I note the video was made 3 years ago, at which time Philip E Johnson, the lawyer who founded the pseudoscience of ID, was still (just about) alive: the video came out in the summer of 2019 and Johnson died that November. ID seems likely to follow its maker into the grave, thank goodness. But for the Hoover Institution to dirty its hands with this tosh is very surprising.
 
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Brian2

Veteran Member
Based on new evidence and knowledge that functioning proteins are extremely rare, should Darwin’s theory of evolution be dismissed, dissected, developed or replaced with a theory of intelligent design?

They're pedaling pseudo-scientific clap-trap: so-called "intelligent" design. That's all I need to know to see that it's utter and complete hogwash. Pretty soon if they keep going all science classes will be replaced by Bible studies. It also illustrates that Hoover is a home to pure and unadulterated horse ****. I suppose they hate medical science as well.

Is ID pseudoscience because it brings God into the equation?
Maybe regular science is pseudoscience because it presumes no God.
The whole thing of determining what happened in the past rests on one or the other of those presumptions. So why is the ID presumption pseudo and not the other?
The mathematics used in the video seems to point to the conclusion that the regular science presumption of no designer is wrong (from a probability standpoint). This does not mean that evolution is wrong, just the idea that it happened without a designer. So the mathematics is showing that a God is needed, not that evolution is wrong imo.
Occam's razor in this case would just go with a designer to overcome the mathematical problems OR just allow ID to be a non pseudoscience just as regular science with it's presumption of no God is not called a pseudoscience. God is not another problem that science has to fathom, God is still just something that is left to the theologians but allowed back into science just as the presumption of no God is allowed into science.
That way the theists in science and the atheists should be happy. (But that won't be the case of course)
 
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