Not by Chance!: Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution

I am not one who argues from a religious point of view. Please, just the facts and the tests will convince me of something. So, I have no emotional interest in whether the Theory of Evolution is true or false. I personally have no problem with either God, one or many, aliens, or even evolution. I just want the facts and tests presented to me.Ever since I was in graduate school in Physics, I have learned to ask questions and not believe without facts and tests. No one in the biology departments were able to answer my questions concerning genetics and evolution concisely and accurately. Perhaps it was the times; but after reading this book, I know now they did not know the answers themselves, but, only expected me to believe them. Acutally, I have the same problem with people who expect me to believe their religion, Christian or other.I found first in this book a clear presentation of genetics and mutations. Wonderful ! First set of questions answered. Second, I found the books arguments well documented and mostly tractable. This book is not in the "easy reading" category, nor, is it in the "Particle Physics" level. You must exercise your brain.I always expected from evolutionists and explanation for speciation. If evolution were a real theory I thought, they should be able to show me the steps of mutations to change one species to another. We could test this and go on. This book clarified for me why my second set of quesions to biologists, ie, tests, were never answered. There are none and again, I was suppose to just believe them.This book clarifies not just genetics in the most coherent fashion than any I have read before, but, goes on to show how using the suppositions of evolution and the evolutionist's data, you reach contradictions. Ergo, it cannot be true. The evolutionists must come from another logic universe, or are just professing their religion.If there are some problems with the logic or mathematics the author quotes, I am convinced, they would be minor and not contradict the conclusions of this book.Anyone who searches for the truth of evolution, must read this book.Richard LombardiM.S. Physics

This is a good book that presents solid arguments against the modern Neo-Darwinian Theory of evolution (NDT). Spetner uses his particular areas of expertise: physics, statistics, probability, and biology to add his part to the SCIENTIFIC dialogue surrounding the fascinating topic of evoltuion. Spetner is by no means an accomplished writer and many of his points and metaphors are a little akwardly put. This is a meaty book, worth reading twice. The NDT is an outdated theory that needs serious revision. Some of the one star reviewrs need to read the book a second time. (that is if they really want to understand the issues)Erica Peters: God help us if this woman is a PhD teaching at a university somewhere. Peters claims that Spetner has no right writing a book about evolutionary biology since he is not a leading expert in the field. In my opinion that is a good thing. Most evolutionary biologists are just that: evolutionary biologists. DNA is not complex. I studied genetics for over four years in college (apparently the minimun requirement allowing me to discuss it intelligently, according to Peters) Every single graduate student that I know, every single professor of genetics and biology that I know DOES NOT spend their time studying the structure or basic function of DNA. Why not? Because we know how it works and it is beautifully simple. Instead, they are studying particular genes, mutations, AA sequences, proteins ect... You don't need to dedicate your life to genetics to understand how DNA works. Spetner has been studying the field since 1964 and more than sufficiently explains the basics in his book.In his review, Dale Franks comments, "I find it fascinating that the main criticisms of evolution come from physicists, engineers, and chemists, rather from the people who actually study it, such as biologists, and paleontologists."- There are plenty of biologists who have criticized the NDT in writing. Some are even mentioned on this page. Why can't scientific experts in their respective fields add to the ultimate search for truth that is the evolution debate? Dick Fosbury wasn't an athlete, he was an academic, but he changed the way we high jump forever. Anyone in search of the truth is qualified to comment, especially when his or her comments are as valid as well thought out as Spetner's. The Blue Angels aerobatic team is comprised of arguably the best pilots in the world (experts in their field), and yet when they are all in formation diving towards the earth and imminent disaster, each one looking out the window at the other's wing tip, sometimes it takes an outsider watching from the control tower to tell them all to pull up!Mr. Franks goes on..."Even more interesting is the fact that this and similar critiques of evolution are almost entirely an American phenomenon. In nearly every other country in the world, evolution is uncontroversial."- How is this interesting? What does this have to do with anything?? I think Mr. Frank

After reading the guy who wrote the review using an analogy of cars and intersections, I wondered if this guy read the same book I did. The point of the book was not that random events cannot happen, but rather that 2 billions years of random events cannot explain the endowment of DNA with the information content it has, but any known means, unless you are willing to believe in some kind of spontaneous arrangement of molecules that require more faith than the supernatural. At any rate, Dr Spetner does a fine job of demonstrating that neo-darwinism simply has no credible explanation for the information content in DNA. And when it's all said and done, if you cannot show how the information got there, you have no explanation. Moreover, if one can show the virtual impossibility of DNA aquiring information in the way neo-darwinism asserts, then neo-darwinism is simply a false hypothesis. Dr Spetner does this aptly. Information aquisition is the name of game here, and Dr Speter is an expert in information theory, unlike most neo-darwinists. Dr Spetner also demonstrates why all the examples of mutations are not evidence for neo-darwinist evolution. I particularly enjoyed his treatment of Richard Dawkins (having seen the same flaws in Dawkins' apologetics myself. It's no wonder that Dawkins refuses to debate Dr Spetner.) Dr Spetner also speculates about the source of variations. Get this book and consider the contents carefully. This book will appeal to the technical mind, unlike so much of the "creationist" drivvel in print these days.

This books puts Neo-Darwinian Theory under the microscope of a rigorous quantitative critique. As the author points out, where facts and figures are important non-quantitative arguments can mislead. "Clever debaters have long shown that they can make even the weakest case look strong."Spetner quotes Fisher's conclusion based on the latter's quantitative work in population genetics: "A mutation, even if favourable, will have only a very small chance of establishing itself in the species if it occurs once only." In other words many favourable mutations which occur in individuals never get passed on to their populations. This is contrary to the assumption of Darwin, Dawkins and Dobzhansky. This problem is of course much more acute for small isolated populations.Using numerical data provided by evolutionary paleontologists from their study of horse evolution, Spetner computed one small evolutionary step to require about 50 million births. Ledyard Stebbins estimated that it takes 500 such steps to generate a new species. Assume each of these steps consists of establishing a single transcription error (the most trivial mutation available) in the population. Suppose only one in every million species needs to be successfully generated for NDT to work. Spetner calculated that it would require at least a million adaptive transciption errors. This does not take into account the fact that macro-evolution demands mutations which are not just adaptive, but which also contain novel information. This is a demand that evolutionists prefer not to discuss, as apparently not even a single such mutation is known to exist.It is extremely unlikely that a population's genome contains so much potential for adaptive errors, let alone information-enhancing ones. But Spetner goes on to demonstrate quantitatively that if there were, then they would provide such an enormous number of potential evolutionary paths as to rule out the possibility of convergent and parallel evolution, which are a major feature of NDT. So either way, NDT loses.Richard Dawkins' famous computer simulations come under scrutiny. They are doubtless clever, and fun to play with, but have little to do with the real world of biology. The `weasel' program is deterministic, not stochastic. Moreover, good mutations invariably get established in the population, and are frozen, the mutation rate is far too high, and the `genome' has far too few symbols. The same calculation mentioned earlier that shows speciation cannot happen under NDT also shows that the `weasel' algorithm will succeed in a relatively few trials. But "If he had run a more realistic simulation he would have been at his computer for a long time."The `biomorphs' program is equally irrelevant to the biology of the real world. Selection is artificial, based on the selector's whim with no predefined criteria; at any stage any mutation could be chosen as adaptive; there are no lethal mutations and hence no limi