Twitter threat starting at https://twitter.com/BretWeinstein/statu ... 7127578725
Bret Weinstein writes (with regard to a video of Tucker Carter where he basically just says evolution is wrong because no fossils have been found and so on....)
And thenIt’s easy to dunk on @TuckerCarlson here. He is just simply wrong about Darwinism. But Tucker is a very smart, educated guy who ended up confused about evolution because our truth-seeking institutions have taken up lying full time—including the biologists, I’m ashamed to say.
We all believe nonsense, across multiple topics. The Darwinian paradigm IS broken, having nothing to do with any error of Darwin’s. But the real story is the Cartesian crisis we are clearly in across the board, and the dawning of this needless dark age. The alarm is going off, but instead of leaping out of bed, we’re going to take the battery out of the smoke detector and go back to sleep. Shame on us.
And thenDo you think that a shrew-like animal can become a bat through the gradual alteration of protein sequences @primalpoly? I sure don’t.
And thenPeople are confusing my skepticism about the role of proteins in morphological change with a basic challenge to Darwinism itself.
I believe in Darwinism, and I believe that protein evolution happens more or less as has been described. What I doubt is how much it explains.
Makes it very clear that Weinstein has never really had a deep understanding of how the whole DNA system works and how evolution works. Makes one really wonder how easy it seems to be to get a title of professor these days...There’s no book, but a biologist shouldn’t need one. Biology is ultimately about nature, not books. Yes, I have an evolutionary hypothesis about what is going on, but it isn’t required to see the glaring paradox. And my hypothesis could be dead wrong and the paradox would still need to be addressed.
There will, of course, be many protein-level differences between a bat and a shrew. Some will be significant (like pigment changes, or enzymatic shifts responsive to diet). But the shift from legs into wings is not likely to be a chemical difference. Changes in wing loading and aspect ratio are also unlikely to be chemical. And so on…
Those who portray Darwinism as a mature model hide behind an illegitimate reversal of the burden of proof. They get leeway to do this when fighting creationists, and then can’t resist invoking it with anyone who raises awkward questions. Darwin, to his enduring credit, did exactly the opposite.
Fending off critique is the inverse of our job as evolutionary biologists. We are supposed to *find* the flaws in Darwinism as it stands, not obscure them. Observing, hypothesizing and falsifying is our job, not evangelizing.
I hope you will take this constructively. It is offered with lots of affection, and only a little annoyance. The academy has failed us both. We are free. Let’s act like it.
