* RSR Presents Dobzhansky 40 Years Later: Real Science Radio hosts Bob Enyart and Fred Williams discuss a paper in the latest journal edition of the Creation Research Society Quarterly. Forty years ago the scientist credited with developing the reigning paradigm of neo-Darwinism, Theodosius Dobzhansky, published his iconic article with the famed title, Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution. The decades since have seen his three predictions fail: regarding genetics; the role evolution would play in biological science; and, of all things, a prediction about one particular Arab sheik whom Dobzhansky identified by name!
For today's show we recommend:
The Real Science Radio Collection: 2006 - 2011
* To Get Bob's Paper, Just Click On Over to the CRSQ: The Creation Research Society just published Bob Enyart's paper, Dobzhansky -- Forty Years Later Nothing Makes Sense (or in pdf), on the 40th anniversary of the most popular evolution article ever written. And if serious science writing doesn't scare you away, then Fred and Bob highly recommend that you become a member of the CRS or just subscribe to the Quarterly! You'll get triple-bang for your buck! It would be a few minutes and dollars wisely invested, and in doing so, you will encourage their ongoing creation research efforts, enjoy creation-based peer-reviewed journal papers (like Bob's), and you'll help Real Sciece Radio accomplish one of our goals, which is to be a blessing to creationists everywhere!
* Bob's CRSQ Publications:
- On the Caution about the 360-Day Year
- RSR's GEE: Geo Earth Explorer Proposal (also appeared on Nat'l Geographic's website)
- Dobzhansky -- Forty Years Later Nothing Makes Sense
[recommended by a member, Nat'l Acad of Sciences]
* Accomplished Evolutionist Agrees: As CMI reports, in 2005 Harvard Medical School's Department of Systems Biology chairman Dr. Marc Kirschner told the Boston Globe:
In fact, over the last 100 years, almost all of biology has proceeded independent of evolution, except evolutionary biology itself. Molecular biology, biochemistry, physiology, have not taken evolution into account at all.
* Evolutionary Journal Agrees: As reported by Don Batten, the Darwinian peer-reviewed journal BioEssays lamented:
While the great majority of biologists would probably agree with Theodosius Dobzhansky's dictum that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution", most can conduct their work quite happily without particular reference to evolutionary ideas. "Evolution" would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superfluous one.
* A U.S. National Academy of Sciences Member Agrees: The late Dr. Philip Skell has remarked that biology papers typically include an obligatory evolutionary gloss that adds nothing to and has nothing to do with the actual published research. See another of this scientist's observations made when the Discovery Institute's Casey Luskin interviewed Skell, and as reported in Enyart's Dobzhansky paper:
[C]onsidering... discoveries, such as those that earn Nobel Prizes, evolution is surprisingly irrelevant according to dozens of the world’s leading scientists, as assessed by a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences.
Philip Skell reports that he "asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin’s theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No" (Skell, 2005, p. 10). Decades worth of Nobel Prizes awarded for discoveries in the life sciences falsify Dobzhansky’s third and key expectation, that nothing in biology would make sense apart from evolution. Those awards track worldwide progress in biology and therefore should be able to catalog amazing evolution-based discoveries. However, the late Pennsylvania State University professor Dr. Skell summed up the actual history of the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine. "I decided to explore this further by examining the 100 Nobel Prizes in biology-related areas over the last century. And I could not find among them any that had been awarded the Nobel Prize for their breakthrough discoveries that I could recognize depended upon Darwinian concepts to design the experimental work on which their discoveries were based. … So here again, the Darwinian theory did not provide the guidance that was necessary for those great breakthrough discoveries" (ID the Future, 2007).
* Handy Dobzhansky Links:
- RSR Presents Dobzhansky, 40 Years Later (this show)
- RSR: Dobzhansky 40 Years Later Pt. 2
- RSR: Dobzhansky 40 Years Later Pt. 3
- RSR: Dobzhansky Deconstructed Pt. 4
* Urban Myth Dobzhansky Testimony: Rumor has it that in 1981 Theodosius testified to Congress, six years after he died in 1975. RSR tracked down the actual source of his quote about the biological beginning of human life. (You can also find this at AmericanRTL.org/beginning.) But a quarter century earlier, and a decade before Mississippi became the first of 19 states decriminalizing abortion prior to the Roe v. Wade opinion, Dobzhansky wrote something as overtly obvious as it would eventually become politically incorrect:
"A human being begins his existence when a spermatozoon fertilizes an egg cell (Figure 1.4)."
1955 [not 1965 as elsewhere reported], Evolution, genetics, and man, p. 10
Various sources, including a book by John Ankerberg, present various errors when sourcing this quote. However, it may very well may have been read into the congressional record back in April 1981!
Today’s Resources: Have you browsed through the Science Department in our KGOV Store? You may just love the superb resources there! Also, you can order any of our BEL and 3rd-party resources by calling us at 1-800-8Enyart.
* RSR's Popular "List" Shows 2013 Schedule:
January: List of Not So Old Things
March: List of Evidence Against the Big Bang
May: List of Peer-reviewed Dino Soft Tissue Papers
July: List of Answers to Hydroplate Objections
Aug: List of Scholars Doubting Darwin and the Big Bang
Sept: List of the Fine Tuning of Creation
Oct: List of Carbon 14 Where it Shouldn't Be
Nov: List of Genomes that Just Don't Fit
Another? If you have a suggestion for another RSR LIST show, please forward it to Bob@RealScienceRadio.com.
* Mentions: As a radio talk show host, Bob doesn't have much in the way of academic publishing, but just in passing, academia.edu lists Bob Enyart mentioned in:
- God is Open: Examining the Open Theism of the Biblical Authors by Christopher Fisher
- Californian vs. Federal Marijuana Laws, and Healthcare by Oleg Nekrassovski
- Contraceptive Comstockery: Reasoning from Immorality to Illness in the Twenty-First Century by Priscilla smith
- Product strategies for packaged software: an exploratory analysis of the spreadsheet market by Erik Brynjolfsson
- Open Theism Debate - Seminary Professor and Bob Enyart by Patrick Reilly
- The Hellenization of Christianity: A Defense of Open Theism by Christopher Fisher
And of course there are the three CRSQ publications from above:
- On the Caution about the 360-Day Year
- RSR's GEE: Geo Earth Explorer Proposal (also appeared on Nat'l Geographic's website)
- Dobzhansky -- Forty Years Later Nothing Makes Sense