As many anti-darwinists as there are anti-darwinisms

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redshirt

Shaun Johnston:
In modern times we've made two revolutionary discoveries. One is, how changes in physical matter can be accounted for in terms of physical laws that can predict precisely what will happen next. Having given rise to science (how this can be studied) and industry (how it can be applied) this revolution is well under way.

The second revolution is, how emergence of species of living creatures can be accounted for in terms of them evolving from one another. This revolution, despite its promise of how much it could tell us about ourselves, remains stillborn through the mistaken application to it of principles coming out of the first revolution--reductive physicalism.

For this second revolution to advance it should be taken from under the wing of science and studied on its own terms. Tip: one recent product of evolution is creatures with minds. Minds are better studied through methods of the humanities than through those of science. Tell me, does this interest you?

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Anti-darwinism covers a multitude of opinions. To Darwinists we appear as a united militant throng of anti-darwinists, but we're actually so thinly scattered we have difficulty finding each other. I have yet to find anyone with an opinion similar to mine (except perhaps Samuel Butler). Let me re-assure you, we are not a throng (except for creationists who do tend to huddle around altars).

Anti-darwinists are not usually anti-Darwin, Charles Darwin himself being a very likeable gentleman. I'm actually part of the scientific opposition to Darwin, and what he stands for. I feel entitled--I am British, the same age as Darwin was when his thinking finally matured (73). And I have a long beard like his. I feel entitled to judge.

More accurately, I am part of the opposition to Darwin's theory of natural selection. Darwin was an early apostle of Positivism, and gave physicalism its ultimate justification--if we could be created entirely through physical processes acting on brute matter, such as natural selection, then what could not be possible in a universe running on physicalist principles. Largely because of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, science is today still predominantly Positivist.

You may wonder what it's like to be shunned for being anti-darwinist. It's halfway between being set alone in middle of a desert, and in a blender with the on button jammed on. Not that I'm complaining. I accept that anti-darwinism seems to be part of my personality. From being an ardent admirer of Darwin I've become just as vehement an apostle of anti-darwinism.