Indeed, confidence that a naturalistic theory like Darwin's, or the neo-Darwinian synthesis, can explain the phenomena that scientists are discovering in their laboratories and field work is waning among front line researchers.
Despite the fact that the Darwinian priesthood still has the power to punish heretics in the academy, over a thousand scientists have grown so disenchanted with Darwinian versions of evolution that they've taken the bold step of going public with their doubts.
These dissenters have affixed their names to a document, which can be viewed here, and which makes clear that these men and women have serious reservations about the scientific credibility of Darwinism. They may not all believe that intelligent design is correct either, but they're quite convinced that Darwinian evolution is inadequate as an explanatory paradigm.
David Klinghoffer at Evolution News describes the document these worthies have signed:
It reads, “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.” The signers hold professorships or doctorates from Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Berkeley, MIT, UCLA, the University of Pennsylvania, and many other prominent institutions.Actually, there are very serious problems with any naturalistic explanation of biological origins and development. Ten of the most serious are discussed here.
They are also an increasingly international group. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, and the Brazilian Academy of Sciences are represented. Discovery Institute began taking names of signatories in 2001 in response to frequently heard assertions that there is no dissent, or “virtually” none.
What makes this document even more impressive than the number and status of the signatories is the fact that they almost surely represent only the tip of the scientific iceberg. It can be reasonably assumed that thousands more harbor similar doubts but, out of concern for their professional well-being, are reluctant to publicly express them.
Klinghoffer elaborates:
What’s significant about the Dissent from Darwinism list is not so much the names and the institutions listed there but what they tell you about the many Darwin skeptics in the science world who wouldn’t dare sign.Anyway, one wonders whether totally in-the-tank Darwinian naturalists aren't actually troubled about biological discoveries in the coming years. After all, the more we learn about the way life works the less tenable Darwinism seems. The more awesome and amazing the biological world appears the less confidence the average person has that it's all a result of blind, impersonal chance and forces.
Scientists know the career costs that would come from publicly challenging evolutionary theory. Discovery Institute and its sister research lab, Biologic Institute, have welcomed refugees who were chased out of top spots in the research world....
The signers of the Dissent list have all risked their careers or reputations in signing. Such is the power of groupthink. The scientific mainstream will punish you if they can, and the media is wedded to its narrative that “the scientists” are all in agreement and only “poets,” “lawyers,” and other “daft rubes” doubt Darwinian theory.
In fact, I’m currently seeking to place an awesome manuscript by a scientist at an Ivy League university with the guts to give his reasons for rejecting Darwinism. The problem is that, as yet, nobody has the guts to publish it.
Other scientists, like the Third Way group or the researchers who met at the Royal Society in 2016, reject standard evolutionary theory but would not sign the Dissent list because they (mistakenly) think it conveys an even worse source of ritual contamination — the taint of intelligent design. In fact, the Dissent text doesn’t in any way imply support for ID, as the website’s FAQ page emphasizes.
The simple observation that neo-Darwinism can’t explain the origin of complex life forms does not lead directly to a design inference. That is a separate argument with separate evidence. Every ID proponent is a Darwin doubter, but not every Darwin doubter is an ID proponent.
But I understand why people fear to go public, even if they would seem to have nothing to lose. I recall a visit a colleague and I made to the office of a Nobel laureate in a relevant field who gruffly stated his own rejection of evolutionary theory but refused to say anything in public. He is not a young man. Given his senior status, you would think he’d have nothing to fear. Yet he was afraid.
Someday it may turn out that the ardent defenders of the old paradigm will be like those solitary WWII Japanese soldiers still holding out in the jungle, never having heard that the war was over.
