Mathematical Challenges to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters point to it as an interesting mathematical argument against Darwinian evolution, often in threads about creation, origins or books that change your thinking.
Recommended by 1 people across 1 different months, 2019 to 2026.
What it is
A Hoover Institution 'Uncommon Knowledge' discussion hosted by Peter Robinson with David Berlinski, David Gelernter and Stephen Meyer, who argue that mathematical and probabilistic problems, such as the rarity of functional proteins and the Cambrian explosion, undermine Darwin's theory. Gelernter, Berlinski and Meyer draw on their books and essay critical of Darwinism and favor intelligent design.
Cited in 1 Wikipedia article, including David Berlinski.
What people said
Recommends ijidak · 2019-07 · Hacker News · on “Indigenous Maize: Who Owns the Rights to Mexico’s ‘Wonder’ Plant?”
> Nobody created it I don't think we can state that as a fact, can we? I was just watching this discussion here yesterday: [this video] . Very interesting points made.
Cites james_s_tayler · 2020-05 · Hacker News · on “Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before?”
I haven't read that particular book of Dawkins, but I have encountered a mathematical argument I find somewhat troubling, though I don't have the background to really examine it in depth. It's discussed in this interview here: [this video] Essentially the number of possible configurations of the sequence of a piece of genetic code required to produce the instructions for producing a usable protein are something like 10^77 to 1. The state space is filled with an astronomical amount of unusable junk. The next part of the argument hinges on the Cambrian explosion. They claim that mathematically there isn't enough time for life produce enough trials to give rise to the amount of species seen during t
Critical Guestmodinfo · 2026-08 · Hacker News · on “Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About, by Donald E. Knuth”
Thanks :) There's a nice beautiful and long video about a Yale professor of Computer Science debunking Evolution solely by Computer Science and Mathematical logic. [this video]