Renowned writer and Yale University professor David Gelernter has turned away from Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, arguing that it has too many holes and has aged out as a probable scientific theory.
The professor also argued that intelligent design is a serious theory that cannot be shooed away by anti-religious sentiment. Furthermore, he lamented the lack of "free speech" concerning theories outside of Darwinism, which has become a "religion" to many academics spanning the various scientific fields.
"Darwin's theory predicts that new life forms evolve gradually from old ones in a constantly branching, spreading tree of life," the professor wrote in a paper. "Those brave new Cambrian creatures must therefore have had Precambrian predecessors, similar but not quite as fancy and sophisticated. They could not have all blown out suddenly, like a bunch of geysers." He explains, "Each must have had a closely related predecessor, which must have had its own predecessors."
Among many other reasons, Gelernter also points to the near impossibility of creating a functional stable protein. "Immense is so big, and tiny is so small, that neo-Darwinian evolution is — so far — a dead loss. Try to mutate your way from 150 links of gibberish to a working, useful protein and you are guaranteed to fail. Try it with ten mutations, a thousand, a million — you fail. The odds bury you. It can't be done."
Though he doesn't personally subscribe to the theory of intelligent design, Gelernter said it is an "absolutely serious argument," noting that it is the "first, and obviously most intuitive [theory] that comes to mind".
During a conversation organized by the Hoover Institute in June, Gelernter explained that pro-Darwinian academics will "destroy" you if you challenge the theory.
"I have to distinguish between the way I've been treated personally, which has been a very courteous and collegial way by my colleagues at Yale, they're nice guys and I like them, they're my friends," he said. "On the other hand, when I look at their intellectual behaviour, what they publish, and, much more important, what they tell their students, Darwinism has indeed passed beyond a scientific argument.” Glernter explains, "As far as they are concerned, take your life in you hands to challenge it intellectually. They will destroy you if you challenge it."
"What I've seen, in their behaviour intellectually and at colleges across the West, is nothing approaching free speech on this topic," he continued. "It’s a bitter rejection, not just — a sort of bitter, fundamental, angry, outraged, violent rejection, which comes nowhere near scientific or intellectual discussion. I've seen that happen again and again. 'I'm a Darwinist, don't you say a word against it, or, I don’t wanna hear it, period.'"
"I am attacking their religion," he stated. "It is a big issue for them."