Scientists are now claiming that, “…the tree of life, which shows how species are related, is ‘wrong’ and ‘misleading.’” Basically, the problem is that evolution is far to complex to be explained by a few roots and branches.(1)
Dr Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, said: “For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life. We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality.”
The discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 – whose pioneers believed it would provide proof of Darwin’s tree – opened up new vistas for evolutionary biology.
But current research is finding a far more complex scenario than Darwin could have imagined – particularly in relation to bacteria and single-celled organisms.
…
Dr Rose said: “The tree of life is being politely buried – we all know that. What’s less accepted is our whole fundamental view of biology needs to change.”
He says biology is vastly more complex than we thought and facing up to this complexity will be as scary as the conceptual upheavals physicists had to take on board in the early 20th century.
It’s gratifying to see Darwinists starting to admit major flaws in their conceptualizations. It was only a matter of time before this grand unified theory began to crumble under the weight of the complexity of life’s design.
As noted in the Executive Summary of Darwin’s Predictions:
Many predictions of evolution have been falsified, including foundational expectations. Evolutionists have added explanations to their theory to account for these problematic findings. The drawback is that this greatly complicates the theory. Scientific theories are supposed to be parsimonious, explaining future findings with simple explanations rather than explaining past findings with complicated explanations.
Therefore evolutionists are faced with a accuracy-versus-parsimony tradeoff. The scientific findings make their original theory inaccurate. That is, the theory does not fit the empirical evidence well. The only way to increase the evolution’s accuracy is to complicate the theory tremendously and sacrifice parsimony. Evolutionists have consistently preferred low parsimony over low accuracy, but either way the theory is problematic.
The theory of evolution has consistently failed and as a consequence it has grown far more complex than anything Darwin ever envisioned. Therefore evolution is not a good scientific theory and in this sense it is comparable to geocentrism. Both theories grew ever more complicated in response to the evidences of the natural world, adding epicycle upon epicycle.
(1) Charles Darwin’s tree of life is ‘wrong and misleading.’
Hat tip: Uncommon Descent
Tags: complexity of life, darwinism, grand theories, Intelligent Design, phylogentic trees
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:33 am
Wow, this is a far cry from the long-winded dissertations (anti-”parsimonious”) by many of the commenters on this site!
Or as us musicians refer to bad music, “ENDLESS WANDERING!”