Professor Davison's Lament

at ISCID, that graveyard of IDers, Professor Davison complains that no-one is responding to his "Evolutionary Manifesto".

It is increasingly obvious that I am doing little more than carrying on a monologue with my Manifesto. Surely if there are serious problems with it, there would be some critical comments made wouldn't you think?

Am to believe that everyone accepts my convictions that -

1. allelic mutations had and still have absolutely nothing to do with creative evolution beyond possibly playing a role in extinction?

2. the primary role for sexual reproduction had and still has that of stabilizing species and bringing creative evolution to a complete halt?

3. natural selection prevents rather than promotes creative evolution and artificial selection cannot produce new species?

4. creative evolution is finished?

5. no evolutionary event of any significance ever took place gradually?

6. internal "prescribed" information has played a large if not exclusive role in phylogeny just as it so obviously does in ontogeny?

7. evolution is irreversible and was orthogenetic and goal-directed rather than random?

8. there are laws that have controlled evolution?

9. the only role for the enviroment was to release an inner potential?

10. the individual, rather than the population, was and still is the origin and the instrument of all genetic changes including those producing creative evolution?

11. Mendelian genetics had nothing to do with phylogeny beyond that of the production of varieties and subspecies neither of which are incipient species?

12. evolution will not resume?

Those are all implicit in the evidence presented in the Manifesto.

Or are there other possible reasons for the silence with which these challenges have been met? I suggest that one reason for this silence may be summarized in a single word - FEAR - fear that everything one has held dear all of ones professional life may be a myth without a shred of reality, nothing but an illusion based on the stubborn inistence that ontogeny and phylogeny both have been caused by factors outside the organism. In my opinion, THAT IS NOT TRUE.

Of course there is another possible explanation for the silence with which my challenges have been met both here and everywhere else I have presented them.

"Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn."
George Bernard Shaw

or more recently

"I get no respect."
Rodney Dangerfield

I sure haven't received any from David Springer here or anyplace else have I?

A real scientist, which I regard myself to be, does not give a fig about respect as he is interested in one thing only, which is ultimate undeniable truth. As far as I am concerned, "I have found it," the literal translation of Archimedes famous EUREKA.

If others think I am wrong they should be willing and anxious to prove it. Pretending I don't exist or heaping abuse on me is cowardly, revealing and totally unprofessional. For those reasons -

I love it so!

"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."
John A. Davison

Firstly, John, it is the height of hypocrisy to complain about a lack of response. The moderation policy at ISCID allows idiots such as Walter ReMine, Peter Borger, Bruce Fast, Sal Cordova, David Hagen (and yourself) free reign to spout arrant nonsense whilst preventing any real criticism from rational people. You have never been able to respond civilly to honestly expressed scepticism about your hypothesis, thus most rational people that have made some effort to communicate with you no longer bother.

That said, I would not want you to think that a lack of response was implicit agreement with your statements quoted above.

So 1,2,3 and 4 are completely wrong. 5 depends on how you define event and gradually. A mutation, such as a copying error, is instantaneous. So I could in a sense agree with this statement. 6 and 7 are assertions for which there is no scientific evidence. 8 is meaningless. 9, 10 and 11 are wrong. 12 is based on a false premise (that evolutionary processes have stopped).