Are you not allowed to criticise Darwin?

NOTE: This is an article published in Sweden, written by Johnny Bergman (not Jerry Bergman), and translated into English.

Johnny Bergman is a Swedish author of a dozen books and pamphlets on the subject of creation or evolution. He is a member of the editorial board of the magazine Genesis, which is published by the Swedish creation organisation Genesis. Throughout his life he has written articles and posts arguing against the theory of evolution. His books include ‘Why doesn't everyone believe in Darwin?’ and ‘Nobel laureates who have doubted Darwin’. He has given several seminars at conferences organised by the Genesis Association in Sweden. They are only available in Swedish. Bergman manages the Bergmans Media publishing house in Bankeryd, Sweden. 

The Swedish Schools Inspectorate recently threatened to impose a fine of SEK 300 000 on Mariaskolan in Umeå because their biology teacher had mentioned that some scientists were seriously criticising certain aspects of Darwin’s teachings. A lot can be said and done today in the name of freedom of expression. You can mock and ridicule most things today, but when someone criticises old Darwin’s ideas from the 19^th century, the line has apparently been crossed.

Now we have it in black and white again. Two years ago, a fine of SEK 100 000 was imposed on Ekebyholm School in Rimbo for the same reason: you are not allowed to criticise evolution in school! This is despite the fact that Darwin himself mentioned several problems with his theory, including the fact that there are hundreds of so-called living fossils and an apparent lack of transitional forms. Several Nobel Prize winners have also criticised the theory - are they not allowed to do so either? These include Werner Arber, Robert A. Millikan, John C. Eccles, Ernst Chain, Richard Smalley, Arno Penzias and Albert Szent-Györgyi. This shows that questioning Darwin has absolutely nothing to do with a lack of intelligence.1

The critics also include 50 living evolutionists (‘Oxford 50’ they are called) who have criticised Darwin on their website ‘The third way of Evolution’ and said that the explanations presented in schools are no longer valid. And one wonders if they are not allowed to criticise Darwin either?  2

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Evolutionist Suzan Mazur has written two books 3, 4  in which she has published interviews with 35 different evolutionists who say that the classical current explanations of evolution no longer hold up - are they not allowed to think and say this either? They make statements like ‘Natural selection has nothing to do with evolution’, ‘There is too much that Darwinism does not explain’, ‘I don’t think anyone knows how evolution works’ and ‘There is no evidence that random mutations result in new species’.

Conferences on the weaknesses of current theory

In 2008, 16 evolutionists held a conference in the Austrian town of Altenberg, where the criticism of current evolutionary theory was that it needed to be replaced with something else. Participants included Stuart Newman, Gerd Müller, Paul Nurse and David Jablonski. Once again, one wonders if they are not allowed to criticise evolution either? Isn’t the Schools Inspectorate aware that there are Darwin critics everywhere?

In autumn 2016, a large number of scientists from different countries gathered once again at the Royal Society in London for a conference, expressing the view that neo-Darwinism still failed to explain the complexity of life, the emergence of new structures and the transitional forms between plants and animals. It tried to propose some new and better explanations, but even these have been found wanting. Several well-known and influential scientists participated, including Prof Emeritus Denis Noble of the University of Oxford, Gerd Müller, James Shapiro and Eva Jablonka. Evolution News commented on the conference: ‘The conference did an excellent job of defining the problems that evolutionary theory has failed to solve, but it offered little, if anything, in the way of new solutions to these long-standing fundamental problems.’ 5

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A great ignorance of the Darwinian critique

When you listen to the mass media and popular science TV programmes such as Kunskapskanalen and Vetenskapsradion, you are served up the same confident versions of evolution. It is extremely rare that a serious account is given of what discussion there is among leading evolutionists, who are looking for better explanations than the old classical Darwinism.

They simply have not read the critical Darwinian literature and do not realise that there are tens of thousands of scientists who have major objections to both classical Darwinism and neo-Darwinism. Not to mention the two million people in Sweden alone who do not believe in Darwin according to an opinion poll by SIFO presented by Svt Nyheter on 19 April 2006. 6

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TV, radio, textbooks and scientific journals such as Scientific American and National Geographic drum home the message that evolution has taken place and that no one in their right mind can question it. Yet so many do! Both scientists and ordinary people! Could it be because people use their own common sense and believe what they see with their own eyes? Nature is full of wonders. The fine precision and beauty seen in creation convinces many that creation must have a Creator. Just as every blueprint has an architect and every house has a builder.

Plenty of competent critics

If Richard Dawkins, Ernst Mayr or the late Swedish cancer researcher Georg Klein are to be believed, there are no competent critics of the theory of evolution. But it is easy to show that such a claim is more propaganda than reality-based fact.

A paper entitled ‘How Religious are America & College and University Professors?’ 7 was published at Harvard University in 2006 by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons. It showed that there are no less than 113,000 academically trained Darwin critics in the US alone.

Professor Jerry Bergman, with his nine academic degrees, is considered by many to be easily among the world’s ten most educated people. He managed to compile a list of nearly 3,000 scientists and professors who reject the theory of evolution without much difficulty. Most of them have at least a PhD in some scientific field. The list is published at https://www.rae.org/essay-links/darwinskeptics/. 8 He himself says that he could easily compile a list of more than 10 000 names, if he had the time and access to all sources.

Is critical thinking cancelled?

When I was young at school, we were taught to question everything and carefully weigh arguments for and against a claim. Today, it seems that the Swedish National Agency for Education no longer rewards critical thinking. We are taught to be tolerant, but certainly not to question theories that have often passed their sell-by date without being updated with new explanations that are more in line with current research findings.

A few years ago, there was an outcry in newspapers such as Kristianstadsbladet and Norra Skåne, when a number of medical students in Malmö declared that they believed they could be just as good doctors even if they did not believe in macroevolution.9

Sometimes one wonders why criticism of the theory of evolution is largely denied. Isn’t it time instead to start recognising that there is a highly competent group of scientists with dissenting views? Now should be the time to put the papers on the table and explain that evolution is not proven but has serious flaws.

• 1

  Johnny Bergman: Nobel laureates who have doubted Darwin, Timoteus Förlag, 2021.

• 2

  https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/ 

• 3

  Suzan Mazur: ‘An Exposé of the Evolution Industry’, Scoop Media, New Zealand, 2009.

• 4

  Suzan Mazur: ‘The Paradigm Shifters’, Caswell Books, New York, 2015.

• 5

  https://evolutionnews.org/2016/12/why_the_royal_s/

• 6

  https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/var-fjarde-svensk-ifragasatter-darwin

• 7

  Neil Gross and Solon Simmons: How Religious Are America & College and University Professors, Harvard University, Oct. 5, 2006.

• 8

  https://www.rae.org/essay-links/darwinskeptics/

• 9

  Johnny Bergman: High school students doubting Darwin is not a social problem, World Today, 14 February (2023).