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The Death of Neo-Darwinism: Dawkins vs Noble
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 27, 2025
if you wake up with the sudden unquenchable thirst to understand the limitations of atheist evolutionist beliefs and theories this cute 100 page paper is all you will ever need. i have not touched biology since the two lessons i took in year 12 before dropping the a level and yet this was so so good so interesting!!!!!! yes tell me about dualism and symbiosis and reductionist ideas!!!! love our homies the phonemes fr (still not quite sure what that means though)
June 23, 2026
picking this back up fresh after completing a level biology made me realise i too had somewhat been "proselytised" into a rather reductionist way of thinking about principles of natural selection and evolution. however, i do credit and appreciate learning about epigenetic modifications to the genome as per the curriculum which i assume obviously hasn't always been there. then of course i get that for simplicity's sake not everything can be included and revised so rapidly.
the author's wager is that biologist Denis Noble has already dismantled Neo-Darwinism, and that the persistence of the argument "even though Neo-Darwinism has long been declared deceased" is itself the absurdity worth examining thoroughly. beyond an interrogation of Darwinian evolution, this is a dissection of the gene-centric Modern Synthesis, and of the presumptuous metaphysics Richard Dawkins lathers such ideas in. the elegance of this work is that it reconstructs Neo-Darwinism as Noble's four loaded pillars of 1. the Weismann barrier (heritable change is only through germ cells and not those acquired in ones lifetime e.g the somatic cells), 2. the central dogma (unilateral causation of genotype to phenotype so the idea that genetic information flows directionally from DNA to RNA to proteins and never back), 3. the random-error pillar (that evolution continues by minor accidental mutations passively filtered by natural selection), and 4. the passive-filter pillar (that the organism is only an inactive vessel for preserving its genes). epigenetic inheritance, symbiogenesis, horizontal gene transfer, the documented reorganisation of whole protein domains in the Lander study are just a FEW examples of phenomena in contemporary biology which the pillars fail to uphold. in light of modern biology, causation has now been shown to run bilaterally, organisms can be seen to edit their own genomes under environmental change and thus "the selfish gene" of Dawkins loses its integrity.
it is best put that "genes do not and cannot make choices; organisms can and do."
in today's world the implications of the adamant Neo-Darwinist theory are not only biological. Dawkins' reductionism is not just a natural and consequential aspect of his science but also the very shaky anchor perhaps of his atheism. the church of new Atheism cannot seem to reconcile consciousness, agency, free will and meaning as simple abstractions amidst replicating molecules.
this is prevalent in Noble's own, rather humorous diagnosis of Dawkins' position as religious in that "it is dogmatic, unable to concede error, furnished even with a doctrine of original sin in the claim that we are born selfish." have we really escaped that Cartesian dualism so much as we have renamed it, exchanging "a lifeless body and a living soul" for a lifeless body and a living genome?!
what maintains the book as far more than mere polemic, is its restraint on the question that matters most to its likely reader. it is scrupulous in insisting that Neo-Darwinism is not evolution, and that "Neo-Darwinism need not be incompatible with theism". the target is thus the brittle metaphysical reductionism as we know it and not the explanatory power of natural selection.
the author's wager is that biologist Denis Noble has already dismantled Neo-Darwinism, and that the persistence of the argument "even though Neo-Darwinism has long been declared deceased" is itself the absurdity worth examining thoroughly. beyond an interrogation of Darwinian evolution, this is a dissection of the gene-centric Modern Synthesis, and of the presumptuous metaphysics Richard Dawkins lathers such ideas in. the elegance of this work is that it reconstructs Neo-Darwinism as Noble's four loaded pillars of 1. the Weismann barrier (heritable change is only through germ cells and not those acquired in ones lifetime e.g the somatic cells), 2. the central dogma (unilateral causation of genotype to phenotype so the idea that genetic information flows directionally from DNA to RNA to proteins and never back), 3. the random-error pillar (that evolution continues by minor accidental mutations passively filtered by natural selection), and 4. the passive-filter pillar (that the organism is only an inactive vessel for preserving its genes). epigenetic inheritance, symbiogenesis, horizontal gene transfer, the documented reorganisation of whole protein domains in the Lander study are just a FEW examples of phenomena in contemporary biology which the pillars fail to uphold. in light of modern biology, causation has now been shown to run bilaterally, organisms can be seen to edit their own genomes under environmental change and thus "the selfish gene" of Dawkins loses its integrity.
it is best put that "genes do not and cannot make choices; organisms can and do."
in today's world the implications of the adamant Neo-Darwinist theory are not only biological. Dawkins' reductionism is not just a natural and consequential aspect of his science but also the very shaky anchor perhaps of his atheism. the church of new Atheism cannot seem to reconcile consciousness, agency, free will and meaning as simple abstractions amidst replicating molecules.
this is prevalent in Noble's own, rather humorous diagnosis of Dawkins' position as religious in that "it is dogmatic, unable to concede error, furnished even with a doctrine of original sin in the claim that we are born selfish." have we really escaped that Cartesian dualism so much as we have renamed it, exchanging "a lifeless body and a living soul" for a lifeless body and a living genome?!
what maintains the book as far more than mere polemic, is its restraint on the question that matters most to its likely reader. it is scrupulous in insisting that Neo-Darwinism is not evolution, and that "Neo-Darwinism need not be incompatible with theism". the target is thus the brittle metaphysical reductionism as we know it and not the explanatory power of natural selection.
May 21, 2025
This book offers a pretty good technical explanation for the top-down biological approach to evolution as understood by Denis Noble, in opposition to Neo-Darwinists such as Richard Dawkins. The authors thoroughly offer a deconstruction of Dawkins’ arguments from both a definition-wise and systemic approach, creating significant doubt within me towards the mainstream understanding of evolution (which is especially alarming considering how widespread it is taught in schools in the US!). In particular, my biggest takeaway from the book was the misleading notion of the “central dogma” that is taken for granted in biology classrooms throughout academic centers in the United States. Greater attention needs to come on this matter, especially since there are massive philosophical implications that rise from challenging this “dogma”. The social impacts that could potentially stem from a philosophical shift are numerous, so I do hope something is done.
I enjoyed the technical language and explanations that the authors gave in this book, as they demonstrated biological expertise that was able to substantiate their claims, although I will note that they very clearly expressed their dislike of Dawkins with seemingly passive aggressive remarks. An interesting choice for sure!
I enjoyed the technical language and explanations that the authors gave in this book, as they demonstrated biological expertise that was able to substantiate their claims, although I will note that they very clearly expressed their dislike of Dawkins with seemingly passive aggressive remarks. An interesting choice for sure!
April 24, 2025
as a layman this book is hard to understand. and a novice in the field you have to do some research to get the point and mentioned theories and hypothesis
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews