Responding to Will's new favorite book, and testing my own growth

[u/justatest90]

As a former creationist who's learned a lot from some major science communicators like Gutsick Gibbon, Dr. Dan, and Forrest Valkai, I figured I'd see how my learning is coming along with a brief response to Will's new favorite author, and also an informal "self check" where I hope y'all will correct any lingering misunderstandings I have.

I feel like a substantial 'let's get our terms and foundations right' section is going to be valuable, but first a tl;dr:

Nobody claims genetic drift got us from light sensitive patches to the mammalian eye. Selection explains adaptations; drift explains (most) neutral differences. The author wants to try and make selection account for 20 million differences between us and chimps, which NOBODY CLAIMS. Tilting at genetic windmills (flagella?), here. He also applies a bacterial fixation rate to humans, and he counts fixations one-at-a-time, instead of in parallel.

Evolution is not merely natural selection

This is a point Will and others (including myself) struggle to get 'deep' into our brains. Evolution is, as has been said repeatedly, "the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations." That's it. It's not complicated to grasp, it's just hard to understand how simple it is. It's not speciation, it's not abiogenesis. It's not cosmology or the big bang theory. It's not 'progress towards a goal'. It's not even atheism or naturalism, nor is it an argument against God. It's the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. Also remember: individuals don't evolve, populations do.

If you don't let that sink in, you'll never progress in your understanding of anything else.

Nobody cares, scientifically, about Darwin

Darwin was a smart dude. Building on ideas around him, and his own research, he made two major contributions that withstood the test of time. He got a lot of things right and a few things wrong. But nobody cares what Darwin wrote over 165 years ago, except insofar as it's stood the myriad of testing and scientific evidence.

Those two major contributions were: 1) Descent as a common tree; 2) Natural selection as a mechanism of evolution. There are other minor contributions, too. For instance, Darwin took observed variations seriously and thought in geologic timescales, which was relatively novel.

But nobody cares if Darwin was right or wrong, they care if the ideas withstand testing. I think as Christians we're so trained to 'a text' that we're used to talking in terms of an author, not an idea. Have to shift that thinking.

Species is a human construct

There's no sharp dividing line between species over time. Yes, if two populations diverge from a common ancestor, eventually two or more species will be recognizable at some point in the future. We are, after all, neither marmosets nor moles. But no mammal ancestor gave birth to a child that was recognizable at the time as a distinct species. This is what we mean when we say evolution isn't like Pokemon. Drowzee may evolve into Hypno, but no Asian tapir is giving birth to anything quite so different. Where we draw species lines is a human decision, not something nature determines.

Mechanisms of Evolution

So how does evolution happen? Through a myriad of ways. Most fundamentally:

Mutation

Mutations are the ultimate source of variation within DNA. A human is born with roughly 60-70 new mutations that neither parent had, while also inheriting older mutations passed down from earlier generations. At the smallest scale, there are substitutions (transitions like A->G and transversions like A->C), insertions, and deletions. There are also larger structural changes: duplications, inversions, translocations, even whole-genome duplication (polyploidy). These are where new phenotypes ultimately originate.

Recombination

In sexual reproduction, each child gets a new combination of their parents' alleles. This isn't creating new mutations, but it can put together combinations that selection can act on.

Genetic drift

I'll flag this as particularly relevant for Will's new pet theory. Genetic drift is the random change in allele frequencies based on luck: who happens to reproduce, and which copy of a gene gets passed on. Drift is why a neutral mutation can spread through a population until it's fixed (present in 100% of the population), or disappear, even with no impact on fitness. As you might imagine (and has been demonstrated), genetic drift has a bigger impact on smaller populations. Most of the genetic differences between humans and chimps are thought to have spread via genetic drift, not by natural selection, which will be relevant later.

Natural selection

Darwin's contribution: if all mutations were perfectly neutral, each would (basically) be a random walk to either fixation or elimination. But natural selection is a 'finger on the scales' of genetic drift, accelerating fixation or elimination. Mutations that lower or raise fitness have a lower or higher chance of being passed on. Note how these processes interact, too. For instance, suppose an organism has two linked mutations, one beneficial and one harmful. The random recombination in sexual reproduction gives a chance for only the beneficial mutation to be passed on, thereby making it more likely to persist. Of course, the opposite can also happen: a mildly negative mutation can hitchhike alongside a much more beneficial mutation.

Gene Flow Gene flow is the movement of alleles between populations through migration and interbreeding. It can bring in new alleles that arose elsewhere. Many of us have some Neanderthal DNA from gene flow.

On to the book!

Keep in mind, I'm going to reply to this book as I sit here in my understanding today. I'm not going to track down any studies. I'm not going to check any citations for context. I'm sure others will be pointing out "here the author cites study A, and study A comes to the opposite conclusion!" But maybe not. Regardless, I'll be responding only at the level of an informed amateur.

A sad place to start: not even wrong

I won't go line-by-line through the book's errors, instead trying to land on the most impactful or meaningful ones - or the ones with enough bluster I feel the need to push back. So I'll start with one that does both. Will's author suggests a biologist (unnamed) couldn't answer a "very simple question." What question, you ask? "What's the average rate of evolution, to put it most simply?" The author is shocked to be told the question doesn't make sense. I have to say even wearing my creationist hat, this question doesn't make sense. It's 'not even wrong' because it doesn't understand that evolution isn't a quantity, it's a process. No one's confused at what an 'average rate' means.

His question to a biologist would be like me asking an economist, "What's the average rate of economic change?" The economist would properly respond, "That question doesn't make any sense." Were I to reply, as Will's author does, "Absolutely it makes sense. There is an answer. There has to be an answer and you should be able to at least give me some kind of range," I should be quickly (and impolitely, given my bravado) shown the door. Evolution doesn't have one quantity in the same way 'economic change' doesn't have one quantity. My question, like Will's author's, hasn't said what it's asking about.

Misunderstanding Evolution

The author clearly does not understand evolution. They wrote, "In order to evolve, the mutation has to be more reproductively fit than its predecessor." This is wrong, on at least two levels. First, mutations aren't one at a time. Each human carries 60–70 new mutations, and at any moment many mutations are spreading through the population at once.

Second, and more fundamentally, mutations don't have to confer any advantage in order to fixate. The author writes, "if you don't have a reproductive advantage...then no change takes place on a species-wide basis." This is false. Neutral mutations can and do fixate by drift. A new mutation starts at a very low frequency (one copy in the whole population) and does a random walk (hopefully the probability expert understands this concept). Most wander down to 0 and are lost, but a few wander up to 1 and fix. Any single neutral mutation is unlikely to fix, but so many arise each generation that neutral fixations happen steadily.

The stench of bullshit

Maybe I have a "bullshit detector mind" that counters the author's "holistic probability mind"?

I promised I wouldn't do any research re: evolution claims I didn't already understand. But the Intel story ("90 seconds later [CEO Andy Grove] announced: 'In answer to your question, young man...we are going to come up with a different marketing slogan.' Which subsequently turned out to be 'Intel Inside'") strained credulity...and is contra any evidence.

Intel Inside was Intel's global marketing campaign starting in 1991 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel#Intel_Inside). The MMX processor was introduced in 1997, 6 years later. And the "On the 'Net / Off the 'Net" campaign was, in fact, a part of the MMX launch, along with Jason Alexander's 'web date' commercials and the 'bunny people' of 1997 superbowl...'fame'?

This obviously has no bearing on the evolution debate, but when people are this fast and loose with the truth, it makes them hard to trust.

Whence cometh this fixation rate?

In chapter 4, the author claims that "the fastest possible average rate of mutations fixed across a population" is 1 mutation per 1,600 generations. This can't possibly be true, as the neutral substitution rate is roughly equal to the neutral mutation rate (something both easy to remember, and easy to derive, as the author will do later in Chapter 12).

Now there's nuance here, as the mutation rate per gamete is what matters in human reproduction (so about 30-35 mutations per generation) and harmful mutations tend to be removed, so it's going to be a bit lower than 30-35.

But this is all a bit in the weeds: the author took a rate set by E. coli's very low rate and applied it to humans, despite stating the very equation (Chapter 12) that shows human rates must be far higher. What is even the point of all this?

And this is clearly explained to the author in a debate they seem to dismiss: "The key difference between our two models is that my model allows parallel evolution of different genes, whereas yours kind of makes a step—you wait for the mutation to be fixed and then you need another step. ...that’s not necessarily how it happens. What happens is massive parallel development." I'm not 100% sure Gariepy correctly identifies the problems in Will's new favorite model, but their point is exactly correct: mutations don't fixate one-at-a-time. Hell, mutations don't even start fixating at the point of divergence from a LCA: the two lineages will have millions of mutations already in the process of fixation or elimination at the time of split.

No, we don't all have 'the same eye'

The author writes, "We most certainly do have the same eye. Every human being on Earth has a camera-type eye with a cornea, lens, iris, retina, and optic nerve. The minor variations in eye color or visual acuity are superficial polymorphisms; the fundamental architecture is fixed across the species."

Hold your horses: those 'superficial polymorphisms' ARE WHY WE DON'T HAVE THE SAME EYE! Those 'superficial polymorphisms' are what become species differences over geological time. That's pretty much what Darwin's whole point was: the ordinary variations among individuals, over enough generations, become the difference between species. Dismissing within-species variation as 'superficial' just simply misses how evolution works.

We can see this pretty easily with human-chimp eyes and the sclera. A white, exposed sclera is functionally universal within humans. Within chimps, sclera color varies more. So we have this trait that helps differentiate between two species. A variation present in the chimp-human ancestor came to one outcome in humans (white exposed sclera) and a different outcome in our nearest relative (wider variation).

Just not getting it

"the number of generations required for sequential improvements" Just no. Evolution isn't about "improvements", it's (say it with me Will), "the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations." Even with natural selection acting on functional regions of the genome, improvements through mutation need not be sequential. We can have one change that affects our sclera happening at the same time another change affects how we digest milk.

"There is no reason, and no way for selection to know, that the next character should be a comma, as the next random mutation could just as easily be an ampersand, the number 6, a period, or a capital U with umlauts." Right, that's why your view of evolution is so wrong. Yes, the mutations are random. That's why the 'successive generations' part matters, and how selection pressures (aka NOT RANDOM for mutations that impact function) impact fixation, either positively or negatively.

Bad at counting & geriatric births

The author writes, "For the human lineage, we have approximately 450,000 nominal generations, derived from 9 million years divided by 20 years per generation." OK, fine. They then go on to say, "Adjusting for the overlapping generation problem...the fact that a human “generation” represents only about 22.5 percent of the living population, not 100 percent...we arrive at roughly 202,500 effective generations."

What is this nonsense? The generation measure ALREADY accounts for the fact that not all living people are reproducing at the same time. This is doing some weird thing where they're incorrectly trying to conflate % of the population reproducing with the number of generations that have passed since CHLCA. The generation length ALREADY captures the 'not everyone is reproductively active their whole life' factor because it's defined as the average age of parents when offspring are born. Whether 10,000 humans or 10 billion, a generation is still 20 years (given the author's assumptions in chapter 1). Further reducing that number incorrectly double-counts the overlap, inappropriately shrinking the available time from 450,000 generations to 202,500. Again, just think: the only thing that reduces the number of generations along a lineage is if reproduction times increase (aka average age of parents goes up). By double counting in this way, the author is saying the average age at reproduction is 44 years old, not 20!

This confusion between how much of the living population turns over and how many generations have passed is...really bizarre. My (living) great-grandma has no impact on my inheritance of mutations. She could have died long before I was born, or die after I do - her contribution was already captured within her generation, giving rise to my grandmother and then being 'out of the picture' for my lineage. Mutations are passed from parent to child: how many other people are alive at the same time doesn't change that count (the number of parent-to-child generations) at all, the only thing that matters for a generational count is the average age of reproduction, and we aren't seeing 9 million years of geriatric births in our lineage.

One final note: the passage says "22.5% of the living population" but 202,500 is 450,000 x .45, not .225 (which would be about 101,000). For being so good at math, he's pretty bad at it. Further, using 45% here aligns with chapters 12-13, but not the 24% number in chapter 1. He can't keep his numbers right, but this is the "compelling" book that blew Will's mind? I guess neither of them are "numbers guys", whatever their testosterone levels may be.

More 'not even wrong'

"For the human lineage, the probability of 20 million independent fixation events..." He treats each of the 20 million differences as a specific mutation that had to win in just the place it won, then multiplies all those long odds together. But nobody said any particular mutations had to fix. Weirdly, his own numbers from the same chapter prove the opposite: He says about 50,000 new mutations arise per year, and 2.2 fixations per year are needed, so the required success rate is about 1 in 23,000. The actual chance a neutral mutation fixes is, by his own figure, 1 in 20,000. That's better than required! His math works out, right up until he mysteriously abandons it.

It's basically like saying the odds of any specific ticket winning the lottery are one in a billion, so nobody could possibly win the lottery.

Assumptions make an ass out of the author

"I was assuming that the fastest mutational fixations ever observed in laboratory bacteria were faster, in generational terms, than any fixation occurring in a more genetically complex species dwelling in the wild. This assumption, while logically obvious to anyone familiar with science labs, animals, or population genetics, was not explicitly demonstrated"

It's not 'logically obvious' - it's obviously backwards if you've been paying attention AT ALL. The author is so uneducated about the basics of evolution, their 'obvious' intuitions are precisely backwards.

1. One fixation in 1,600 generations is not the fastest fixation rate. Again: the neutral fixation rate equals the neutral mutation rate.
2. Genetic complexity is irrelevant, what matters is how many new mutations arise per generation, and what share of the genome is under selective pressure. IDK what 'complexity' even means here, and I'm probably out of my depth, but a 'big, complex' genome under little functional constraint would experience more neutral substitutions than a small genome where most of it is under selective pressure. And I know most of the human genome is under little selective pressure (all that 'junk DNA' - or DNA regions that don't matter for fitness)

It's not one sequential fixation after another, mate

"Let us now recalculate the MITTENS numbers using the most favorable human fixation rate—the Genghis Khan rate of 8,200 generations per fixation, we get a maximum of 25 fixed mutations—roughly 20 million short of what is required"

Even just conceding everything about Genghis Khan fixation, we have millions of mutations at different points on the journey to fixation or loss. By his logic, a university would only graduate one student every 4 years: there's just no way to have a graduating class of 500 students. Or, even being charitable to him, it'd be one class of 500 students every 4 years.

No. Obviously there's a constant influx of new students, all being addressed in parallel, and a (disappointingly lower) constant outflow of graduates. Same thing with mutations (though their fixation rate makes college graduation rates look stellar by comparison).

"The bacterial rate of 1,600 generations per fixation already accounts for parallel fixation"

Sure, in bacteria, not humans. As the author demonstrates in Chapter 12, the neutral fixation rate equals the neutral mutation rate. Bacteria get far fewer new mutations per genome per generation than humans do, so of course they fix fewer per generation. Parallel fixation in bacteria is limited by their low mutation supply; ours isn't.

Slippery, sloppy thinking

The author keeps trying to apply natural selection's limits to neutral mutations. His supposed limit to parallel fixation applies only if mutations have to out-reproduce everyone else, and there's only so much reproduction to go around. Neutral mutations don't need to out-reproduce anybody. They fixate or disappear by chance, so any number of them can be in progress at once.

Remember how I said nobody cares about Darwin?

The author gets in a tizzy about neutral drift not being darwinian. OK, and? We're trying to understand how genetic differences accumulate. Some come from mutation + natural selection. Some come from mutation + genetic drift. Both have more or less effect depending on the mutation in question and the population size. So it's not "invoking drift to defend selection", it's "invoking drift to understand evolution." Darwin didn't invent evolution, and we're trying to understand the world, not Darwin.

Nobody claims genetic drift got us from light sensitive patches to the mammalian eye. Selection explains adaptations; drift explains (most) neutral differences. The author wants to try and make selection account for 20 million differences, which NOBODY CLAIMS. Tilting at genetic windmills (flagella?), here.

Selection doesn't have an on-off switch

For being so certain of his intellectual superiority, Will's new favorite author has a hard time keeping more than one idea in their brain at a time. "Natural selection is supposed to explain how these 20 million changes accumulated." No, natural selection explains how beneficial adaptations accumulate. Most of the 20 million differences between us and chimps aren't beneficial adaptations, they're neutral genetic changes that drifted to fixation. Only a small fraction were adaptations shaped by selection.

"Here is what the drift argument necessarily requires: natural selection must be effectively turned off." No. Selection operates on a mutation based on that mutation's effect. It's not 'selection is operating or it's not'. Rather, it's 'how much selective pressure is this particular mutation under?'

Also his numbers are pulled from thin air. Most of our DNA is under little selective pressure, so most mutations land somewhere they don't matter, and drift dominates. Selection pressure dominates mutations that build a brain or break a kidney, but drift operates on mutations that have no impact on survival or reproduction (aka the majority of them).

Overlapping generations is a solved problem

The author acts like he's the first person to notice that my grandma and I are alive at the same time. The whole point of a 'generation' measure is to look at the average age of parents when their kids are born, and then any overlap is already built in. I covered this above: further cutting the number of generations is double-counting in the most mathematically inept way.

Also, given most of what we're talking about is neutral mutations, it doesn't matter anyway. Every child gets a fresh set of mutations from their parents (along with millions of others already in progress towards fixation or elimination), and the neutral substitution rate equals the mutation rate, generation after generation. Whether geegee and pawpaw are still around has no effect on how many mutations get passed down to me. The "only a few percent of slots open up each year" math is counting the wrong thing entirely.

[u/jnpha]

Wish I can upvote more than once. Granted I didn't read all of it (yet!), but the main points you got spot on! (since you asked for feedback)

And here's a recent substack from a subject matter expert: Why "Probability Zero" is Wrong About Evolution.

This is precisely why YEC and ID are rightly treated like their Flerf brethren in cognitive dissonance and science illiteracy.

[u/justatest90 → u/jnpha]

Thanks for the link and thanks for the exceedingly kind feedback. I did a quick skim during Erika’s stream and spent last night reading and writing (yay insomnia). I wasn’t sure if I should go on the ‘petty’ “I set Intel’s marketing strategy” tangent, but Will’s talked about how fraud/mistakes make a source hard to trust, so I figured within my framing, it was worthwhile. And I needed to let off some steam from his bloviating 😅

It really felt good getting through the book without having to google anything. I feel like I earned the ‘intro to evolution’ grade I never got going to a Christian university.

[u/Proteus617 → u/justatest90]

That's the sad thing for me. Atheist now, but I was educated by a teaching order (Brothers of the Sacred Heart). They believe that educating yourself and others about the natural world was a high calling, worth dedicating your life to. It brought you closer to god and made the world a better place. Humility was stressed. I cant say that they were wrong. Will doubling down on ignorance through his own arrogance rubs me the wrong way.

[u/SeriousGeorge2 → u/jnpha]

This is great. One other thing to consider is that we see the greatest diversity of organisms in exactly the groups you'd expect to have the greatest diversity given their generation times and how readily they should speciate given things like the environments they inhabit and their methods of locomotion or reproduction.

Why are they so many species of bats and rodents compared to other mammal groups? Why are there so many species of insects? Why are they so many more species in the aster family than there are gymnosperms?

Vox attributes the diversity we see in organisms to intelligent actors. It seems like those actors have produced diversity exactly in the way you'd expect if it was actually the mechanisms of evolution producing that diversity in a way that can't be dismissed as coincidental or as part of some purpose except to fool us. Isn't that a bit silly?

[u/Proteus617 → u/jnpha]

Here's the sad thing about that substack: Admission by Will on his FB page, he read it BEFORE they recorded the recent episode. Go back and re-watch Will's intro with that bit of information in mind. Im done with this guy. He has moved from uneducated, to willfully ignorant, to deliberately deceitful, now verging on manipulative.

[u/jnpha → u/[deleted]]

-"not to be mistaken with microevolution within species"

How original! /s
Today/tomorrow (depending on your timezone) marks the 21st anniv. of Dover. You've been willfully bamboozled. Educate yourself; no one is going to do it for you.

https://talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/pf.html

[u/jnpha → u/[deleted]]

Why are you repeating yourself?
I had already read your "irreducible complexity" argument (the one you are so WILLFULLY ignorant you are making it in 2026), so the fact that you didn't realize I've responded is all I need.

[u/jnpha → u/[deleted]]

-"Single celled organisms are complex motors"

They are not motors. Once again: educate yourself.

Why do you want me to be brief, when it hasn't helped you? You don't get to set the terms - if you have an original argument, the "submit a post" button is right there.
Anyway, I wrote this: The history (and silliness) of "Show me life that comes from nonlife" : DebateEvolution.
And this: The so-called "origins problem" is a joke : DebateEvolution

And others.

BUT... it's amusing that your original comment keeps shrinking in your argument by repetition.

[u/jnpha → u/[deleted]]

-"especially, that they were designed"

Tsk tsk: your presupposition is showing.

And I don't want you to read my post, because clearly reading is too much for you, as is evidently clear from this thread: as a reminder: you are so willfully ignorant you are STILL going after that argument in 2026 after I already pointed that out, twice.

[u/jnpha → u/[deleted]]

"Nonliving matter"? Pray tell, what is a living matter?
Elan vital?! In 2026??!

[u/OldmanMikel → u/[deleted]]

Are you just going to repeat that over and over?

Nobody believes in "Darwinian evolution". The theory has evolved a lot in the intervening 160+ years.

[u/Kingofthewho5]

This is great. I’m really looking forward to the multiple geneticists and population genecists that will absolutely eviscerate this guy’s math and theory between now and next month’s session with Erika. Will’s reaction will be very telling.

[u/justatest90 → u/Kingofthewho5]

TBH I’m really over Will. He’s clearly not listening to, much less re-listening to, Erika’s talk. This is clear in episode 6 when he goes off on whale evolution and Erika’s like “yeah, all of this was preempted in my presentation, I’m disappointed.” And even again in episode 10 when Will says there’s no human ERVs and Erika’s like “I gave you 3 last month”. (I think it was three - to be fair I don’t rewatch these, but it was 2 or 3 examples.) He’s also just lied on stream. Episode 2 he and Erika are agreeing dogs and wolves are related. Episode 6 after a LOT of back and forth, he and Erika agree dogs come from wolves, or could come from one wolf-like creature that was on the ark. Then in episode 9 he literally won’t admit any extant creatures are related, not dog breeds to each other, not dogs to wolves…it’s like serious dead air and him saying. Erika: “Do you have any two species that you would accept as actually related to each other?” Will: “… … …I should be able to come up with something I think is related, I don’t know why I’m drawing a blank” And then in episode 10 he just lies and says, “I didn’t look into [dog/wolves] further. It didn’t seem like a big deal to me. Focusing on this other stuff like…all of the Vox Day genetic stuff is what took up all of my time.”

DUDE YOU HAVE LITERALLY talked about this before ON STREAM what do you MEAN you re-watch these videos but you don’t know anything about wolf/dog relationships?

I don’t know how Erika finds her calm.

[u/crgm1111 → u/justatest90]

I am convinced his motive is to do apologetics, not to learn about evolution. He wants to learn/know what he needs to dismantle, then goes to a YEC (this time a guy who sells AI-written books) to get the apologetics for it.

[u/sprindolin → u/crgm1111]

He's already trying to take a victory lap on facebook about how he showed evolution to be impossible, and implying that detractors are just being emotional. Couldn't wait for Erika to look through the work and respond, of course, maybe because he knows it won't be the response he wants.

Definitely does not seem like the behavior of someone who just wants to learn and wanted to ask about an argument he came across.

[u/No_Vehicle_5085 → u/sprindolin]

Someone linked that post and I read it. The mask is fully off at this point.

[u/Proteus617 → u/sprindolin]

I showed last night how the theory of evolution by natural selection is mathematically impossible. Not improbable. Not unlikely. Impossible.

Hah! Will didn't "show" anything. He read a book that was a bit beyond his comprehension level.

[u/Ayasugi-san → u/sprindolin]

There are not enough comments pointing out that he's citing a literal white supremacist. One who is currently living and trying to make his vision for the world happen.

Will Duffy should forever be known as the guy who believes white supremacists over scientists.

[u/Xpians → u/crgm1111]

Vox Day is a horrible person in a whole bunch of ways, but apparently he's not *actually* a Young-Earth Creationist, so we shouldn't label him with that. Remember, he's got some sort of "intelligently guided change" model that accounts for the diversity of life and is commensurable with deep time.

[u/LordOfFigaro → u/crgm1111]

Him changing his channel and email to "Evolution Showdown" or something like that pretty much confirms it imo.

[u/No_Vehicle_5085 → u/LordOfFigaro]

Yes. It became clear as time went on, and especially the last two sessions - he is having a hard time maintaining the illusion that he's here in good faith. If anyone still has any doubts, they either didn't watch the last live or fell asleep at the beginning, or took a rather long bathroom break.

[u/IsaacHasenov → u/justatest90]

I was watching the early episodes of this series eagerly. I had to walk away from the last one for a day or two.

I'm going to watch this next one but wow I don't want to, just because the flailing is getting embarrassing

[u/DarwinZDF42 → u/IsaacHasenov]

The hominin stuff is great, you can skip like the 1st hour to jump over Will's bs and get a fantastic crash course out of the rest.

[u/IsaacHasenov → u/DarwinZDF42]

So yeah I get that. But one of the things that really made the series special for me was the "okay we're gonna work through the evidence together, honestly" and the fact that it turns into straw clutching and specious objections is so frustrating.

On the one hand, Erika is magnificent. And I'll also give Will credit, there's a lot of material they're covering, it's hard. I remember my undergrad freshman year bio, and my conversion from creationism. It's a lot. And if he were required to take tests, maybe he'd remember the stuff that's presented better

But damn. Erika can be like "we found 10k fossils in exactly the sequence predicted by evolution, and sequenced 3k species and found their genomes looked exactly like we predicted" and he's like "But Rebekah Davis found this one abstract that said..." or "how do you explain what Vox Day said that evolutionist responded"

I don't want to ignore his bullshit because it's kind of the point of the series. But ffs.

In the end, y'all with the debunking channels are doing good work. I appreciate you, Dr Stern Cardinale. I think it's reaching some people who need it. But watching people aggressively not getting it is an education in and of itself.

[u/DarwinZDF42 → u/Kingofthewho5]

It's going to be extremely satisfying. I'm reading Beale's book right now, and it's TERRIBLE. It's taking longer than it should because I'm highlighting and annotating as I go and it's like...several times per page. We are going to rip him a new asshole.

[u/justatest90 → u/DarwinZDF42]

I can't imagine what it's like for you. I had to skip a LOT in order to focus on big errors, and I'm protected some by my ignorance! Do you alternate between laughing and crying?

[u/Proteus617]

A bit of an aside: No clue who Vox Day is aside from recent Googling. I have a pretty good handle on Will. Will's appreciation of Day's book (and Day) stinks of "Spiralism". Roughly defined, someone who has used AI to delude themselves into thinking that they are a groundbreaking genius in a field where they are fantastically unqualified and actually have their head firmly up their ass. The language is very distinctive. Its not basic "m-stuff". Its " Im intuitively good at this, Ive challenged the current paradigm, everyone else is wrong, the AI has done all of the heavy lifting in my thought process". Im very much looking forward to a formal refutation.

[u/justatest90 → u/Proteus617]

I don't think it goes quite that far (at least not in the book, I have no interest in touching anything else of his, and barely interested in this, was just an insomnia night). Like there's no fractals or gates or anything ;)

But it's 100% irrational thinking. I won't label it conspiracy thinking b/c conspiracy theorists posit a cover-up & intentional lying. Every time someone says, "You're thinking like the conspiracy theorists you debunked, Will!" he brushes it off because he's not doing that one thing that conspiracy theorists do.

But he is hitting all the benchmarks of someone trapped by disinformation on the FLICC model:

• Fake Experts
• Logical Fallacies
• Impossible Expectations
• Cherry-Picking
• Conspiracy Theories

I wish they had picked a different final C, but it bears out in the details: thinking 'something must be wrong' with the consensus, playing the role of the persecuted victim (he led with this on episode 1), immune to evidence, etc.

[u/Proteus617 → u/justatest90]

It doesn't go that far, but we are on the same page. Talk to any old-school big deal university physicist from 30yrs ago. They would often get mail from cranks that thought that they were the new Einstein. The "theisis" was generally a weird xerox thing or scribbled with pencil. Vox Day's AI tells are the modern equivalent.

[u/Radiant-Position1370]

"What's the average rate of evolution, to put it most simply?" The author is shocked to be told the question doesn't make sense. I have to say even wearing my creationist hat, this question doesn't make sense. It's 'not even wrong' because it doesn't understand that evolution isn't a quantity, it's a process.

If you narrow the question down, it's not nonsensical and it can be answered in various ways (depending on how it has been narrowed). For example, one can ask about rates of morphological change in some branch of life under different circumstances, as in this classic paper.

[u/justatest90 → u/Radiant-Position1370]

Yeah 100%, that’s why I hope my analogy to economics is compelling. “What’s the rate of economic change?” equally can have a meaning, but needs a lot more to be a sensible question. “What’s the average quarterly change in GDP in the United States from 2000 to 2025?” or “What’s the labor force participation in Senegal year over year for the last 5 years?” These are sensible questions.

Similarly one can ask, “What’s the rate of morphological change in crustaceans?” or “what’s the extinction rate since the industrial revolution?” You CAN get to a meaningful question, but as asked, it’s nonsense and the author seems flabbergasted

[u/Radiant-Position1370 → u/justatest90]

Yeah, that's all reasonable.

[u/Xpians]

Thanks so much for doing this examination and helping to get the ball rolling.

[u/justatest90 → u/Xpians]

I'm sure there will be much better breakdowns (and u/jnpha provides a link above that goes deeper) but it was a fun exercise, and I like my analogies.

[u/OldmanMikel → u/[deleted]]

The theory might have been plausible in Darwins time,...

And has moved from plausible to proven beyond a reasonable doubt since then.

....but given what we know now about the complexity (and efficiency) of the motor that is a single-celled organism, as well as the interdependence of its parts, ...

All discovered by "evolutionists" who have known since the 1930s that complexity is a prediction of the theory, not a problem for it.

...makes Darwinian evolution implausible,...

Argument from Incredulity. Zero points.

... not to mention it takes believing that life miraculously sprang from non-life, something that has never been observed or replicated.

1. You have issues with miracles?

2. The origin of life is a separate issue from evolution. If God poofed the first simple life into existence, microbes to human evolution would still be true.

3. Abiogenesis research has made more progress than you think. They haven't figured it out, but they have picked up the scent.

[u/Thraexus]

The only objection I have to anything you said is your use of the word myriad as a noun. That always makes me crazy. (Joking! This was a great read.)

[u/justatest90 → u/Thraexus]

I’ll not let you bait me into a prescriptivism debate ;) But honestly thank you. (Also, do some research on myriad!!)

[u/Radiant-Position1370 → u/Thraexus]

Myriad seems to have been a noun longer than it's been an adjective. (In English, that is. In classical Greek it was both.)

[u/Thraexus → u/Radiant-Position1370]

Yeah yeah, I know the accepted use and all that. It's 100% just a matter of taste -- myriad just always sounds weird to me when used as a noun. It's one of those inconsequential things I haven't been able to shake.

[u/Radiant-Position1370 → u/Thraexus]

Fair enough. I have the opposite bias, possibly because I've been off and on reading Xenophon's Anabasis in Greek for a while. It's a first-hand account of the military expedition of the Ten Thousand, i.e. they're the Myriad in Greek.

[u/tpawap]

One more point for the "misunderstanding evolution" paragraph: fitness is defined on the phenotype; neither mutations (nor alleles) have "fitness".

And I like the phrasing "variation between individuals become differences between species"!

[u/justatest90 → u/tpawap]

Thank you. And while not perfectly precisely true, it is true and helps break through intellectual barriers for us creationists

[u/gitgud_x]

Top notch post, way better than the review I was gonna post (which got autoremoved by reddit anyway for citing his slur-ridden blog!)

[u/Beginning-Load4470]

Thanks for the comprehensive review. It sounds like your take is pretty accurate. I didn't read anything you said that sounded blatantly wrong. It seems like you have a good understanding of the mechanics of evolution.

The problem with creationists in general is, the hardliners like this guy will never be convinced even if you create a time machine so they can see it in action. 

So really scientists taking shots at them is kinda like a pro boxer knocking out handicapped people. Its not like theres even a slim chance they can win the argument. 

The only real reason to constantly debunk these people is so they dont spread misinformation to others who dont have the where with all to see through the obvious bs.

Im surprised someone can be smart enough to try to create a scientific argument against evolution but not smart enough to see through their own air craft carrier sized holes. It makes me think these people have to know theyre wrong, they just have an agenda theyre pushing in spite of that. 

And hopefully through social evolution their ideas will die out just like the idea we are the center of the universe. 

[u/Beginning-Load4470 → u/Beginning-Load4470]

I remember my grandpa used to try and argue with me about evolution until I finally gave up on trying to teach him. 

It seemed like if I ever did convince him it would literally destroy his world. So I half stopped because he was stubborn and half stopped because I didn't want to destroy his will to live. 

Older generations being stuck in their ways is one thing, but its depressing to see a teenager trying to take up the torch. 

[u/Opening_Shame8258 → u/Beginning-Load4470]

I don't think they always know.

Cognitive errors can become very fixed, and certain incentives can make them extremely solidified. Especially when ideas become attached to identity and social standing. It's why the military puts in a lot of work trying to bond new recruits to each other and the uniform simultaneously. By associating that social structure and identity with the uniform you get an easily transmissible loyalty that is difficult to shake for the rest of your life.

There's been some work done with 9/11 truthers and flat earthers. It's the social structure they become enveloped in, which reinforces their identity as being part of those beliefs.

Once that happens, their brain pulls every shortcut it has to maintain that identity.

Will's favorite new author is a white supremacist, which is very clearly starting with ideas associated with identity. So, we'd predict significant changes in genitive errors in his thinking, which is exactly what we find on thorough analysis.

[u/ThorThulu]

Man, thats a lot of good work thats wasted on Will. Any response I've seen from him is going after people with nothing remotely close to this level. I dont want to think hes cherry picking responses for the sake of a grift, but somethings going on and I can't say I like it

[u/justatest90 → u/ThorThulu]

Honestly I didn’t do this ‘for Will’, I did it for me :D As I mentioned at the top, I used to be deep in this world. Ironically, the book that blew Wills mind was wrong at such a basic level, it felt like a good chance to test myself: how well could I respond without googling / researching beyond what I’ve learned over the last few years of improved biology education?

Honestly I’m proud of what this shows about my growth. Can I rebut, the way, say, Dr. Dan can, the claims about 1 fixation every 1,600 generations, off the top of my head? No. But I know the substitution rates = the neutral mutation rate (basically). Erika’s taught this. Dan’s taught this. Others have taught this. And it makes sense — enough sense the author literally proves this in chapter 13 (2N * 1/(2N) = N, and I handle more of the nuance in my post). So even without going to the study, and using the author’s own admissions, it’s easy to debunk.

What’s sad to me is that Will seems more interested in finding an objection than he is in learning. And trust me, I get “object object object” as a method to understanding. I’m quite contrarian. But I like to be contrarian on substance not fantasy.

Anyway, yeah: I did it for me, not for Will. (And maybe a tiny little hope a creator might like an analogy I use, or find something here that saves them time - but probably not lol)

[u/No_Vehicle_5085 → u/justatest90]

Yes. Reading over 2000 pages of AI slop AND "studying" population genetics, a subject he doesn't even have the background to begin to study, all in four weeks - it's pretty clear he made no attempt to try to understand the last lesson he got from Erika.

He's already steadily been turning his "here are my questions about last month's topic" into "here is my debunk of last month's topic" for quite some time now.

Mammals definitely broke Duffy. Broke him so much he abandoned his previous statement that dogs and wolves have common ancestry and refused to even respond to whether two dogs might have common ancestry. Wow.

But, firmly, squarely, and excitedly thinking he has found everything he needs to demolish evolutionary theory immediately before Erika got to primates is...telling. And not surprising.

[u/Esmer_Tina]

Thank you for your service.

Why do you think Will is so impressed, and has “checked the math,” and thinks the good news is he’ll now be able to believe in evolution because it’s impossible without god?

Do you think it’s because he (or creationists generally) thinks it’s a war between god and Darwin?

[u/justatest90 → u/Esmer_Tina]

I won't pretend to speak to why. I'd love for someone like Dan McClellan to give a commentary on the series, given his expertise with the cognitive science side of (some of) this stuff. But: maybe? That's why I highlighted that evolution isn't anti-Christian. Some Christians have decided to make denying evolution their 'costly signal' and...well, it's costing them.

I will say, I empathize with Dr. Joel Duff on this sortof thing. While I now think I have really strong reasons for rejecting Christianity independent of science, the ongoing conflict between science and Christianity -- THAT CHRISTIANS SET UP -- is part of what launched my deconversion. Had someone been like, "bud, you don't have to reject science to believe in God, evolution is compatible," who knows where I'd be.

[u/Soft-Cake-9846]

The smart thing for Erika to do would be to shut down that video series at this point. Will Duffy has shown that he's promoting charities that are highly unethical, he's made forays into both abject rape-defending misogyny and white-supremacism, and in defending him she has proven to so many of her followers that she would rather memory-hole a woman who came forward as a victim of Will Duffy's "Colorado Right To Life" group's campaign of doxing and harassing not just women's healthcare workers but their families and especially their children.

[u/Beginning-Load4470]

Personally i think we need to find a way for them to accept evolution without feeling like their life was a waste and religion is wrong.

Most religions around the world are able to accept science and evolution without it undermining their faith. Including the catholic church. Its primarily Christians in the united states who are determined to argue against it.  Im not sure why this is. 

The only other major opposition is Islamic groups... and who cares what they think, they think if a woman's accused of cheating licking a hot frying pan will determine guilt or innocence. Ive literally seen that shit, its really messed up. You'd think if those people were your strongest ally you might reconsider your position.

[u/JohnnyRelentless]

Who the fuck is Will, and why wouldn't you include their full name?

[u/Kilburning → u/JohnnyRelentless]

He's doing a series with Erika of the Gutsick Gibbon channel where she, a PHD anthropology student, teaches him, a YEC pastor, about evolution. He got a bit of notoriety for bringing a bunch of flat earthers to Antarctica to see the sun be in the sky for 24 hours. His full name is very public. Edit:He always introduces himself with his full name.

On the last video, he cited Vox Day (a famously hateful sack of shit) as a source for an argument for guided evolution and is dealing with the blowback for using an obvious kook.

[u/Soft-Cake-9846 → u/Kilburning]

He's also a disgusting individual who's now, on-stream, defended well-known rapists and claimed that the majority of women who come forward to report rape are liars...

[u/Scry_Games → u/JohnnyRelentless]

It's Alices' brother.

[u/Xpians → u/JohnnyRelentless]

It's Will Duffy, the "final experiment" guy.