Within 20 words of the beginning of the prologue to his book, The End of Darwinism, former U.S. Information Agency Assistant Science Adviser Eugene Windchy announces the thesis upon which the rest of the book will be built: “In reality, Darwin was a master of tact and charm, but underneath those polished manners lurked an intensely ambitious scientist who advanced his career by means of deception and intrigue. In that way he also advanced the theory which is attributed, incorrectly, to him.”
Upon that forthright foundation is built a compelling and certainly controversial compendium of the foibles, fibs, and outright fabrications that undergird Darwinism and the quasi-religion established around it.
Flawed
Most disinterested scientists will admit the existence of gaping holes in the tapestry of Darwinism, the most famous of which is the story of the origin of the long necks on giraffes. Darwin asserted that the necks of the giraffes were elongated over time so as to aid the animal in eating the leaves from tall trees. Truly, as Windchy reports, “most American adults living today have had this hoary nonsense foisted upon them,” despite overwhelming contrary scientific and observational evidence regarding the feeding habits of giraffes that makes this “proof???” absurd and illustrative of other fatal cancers in the body of Darwinian “science.” (Giraffes eat mostly from bushes, not to mention that the female giraffes are so much shorter than males that according to Darwin’s theory, they would eventually die out.)
The sine qua non of Darwinian doctrine is the theory of natural selection. Darwin argued that 90 percent of the evolutionary change we see is the result of natural selection. Yet the former president of the Paleontological Society and recipient of the National Science Medal, David M. Raup, has called into question the importance of natural selection and, as Windchy rightly reasons, “that criticism goes to the very heart of Darwinian theory.” As fossils are found and the tools for studying them improve, there is much in them that reveals contradictions to Darwinian natural selection and shines the light of doubt onto many of the central assumptions of this well-established key principle of evolution. Windchy’s book is rife with compelling examples of these scientific advances and the problems they cause for Darwinism’s first article of faith.
Stolen
ot only is Darwinism a theory that hasn’t well withstood peer scrutiny, it wasn’t even developed by Charles Darwin, according to Windchy. He quotes journalist Arnold C. Brackman as saying, “Darwin engaged in what Leonard Huxley called ‘a delicate arrangement,’ the greatest conspiracy in the annals of science.” In fact, so successfully did Charles Darwin steal the theories ascribed to him that the other scientists from whom he plagiarized are unknown to most people, even the educated.
After briefly (though engagingly) describing ancient Roman and Greek adherents of evolutionism, Windchy begins his explication of the theft of the theory by revealing other scientists who had contemplated the same subject.
Despite the synonymous attachment of “natural selection” with Charles Darwin, two British scientists had works on the subject that preceded Darwin’s own and, according to Windchy, significant portions of the findings of these two men were stolen by Darwin, including the term “natural selection,” which was derived from a book written by Patrick Matthew in 1831. Despite Darwin’s assertion that he never read Matthew’s book, much less plagiarized from it, Darwin biographer Loren Eiseley reckons that, given many circumstantial similarities, Darwin was in fact familiar with Matthew’s work. As a matter of fact, Darwin mentioned Matthew in later editions of his own book.
The second prominent man to publish theories of evolution was naturalist Edward Blyth. Blyth wrote of natural selection, variation, adaptation, and gradualism in his studies that were published in 1835 and 1837 in the journal The Annals and Magazine of Natural History. Again, Darwin failed to give proper credit to this seminal work and passed off much of Blyth’s proposals as his own.
Neither of these examples mentioned by Windchy is nearly as shocking or shameful as the scholarly swindle perpetrated by Darwin on the work of a third biologist, Alfred Wallace.
Wallace was a Welshman who published an article entitled “On the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of a New Species” in 1855. This article described what came to be known as the Sarawak Principle, the salient point of which was quoted by Windchy: “Every species has come into existence coincident in time and space with a closely allied species.” Despite the well-founded explication of his theories, Windchy relates, Wallace’s work made little mark in the scientific community, with the notable exception of Charles Darwin, who was involved in writing his own monograph on the subject.
Surprisingly and notwithstanding their apparent status as academic rivals, in 1858 Charles Darwin received a “completed formal paper on evolution by natural selection.” In the letter accompanying the manuscript, Wallace asked Darwin to forward it along to Sir Charles Lyell. Although reputedly meticulous as to saving correspondence, Windchy reports, Darwin destroyed all the letters he received from Wallace, a fact Windchy calls “odd.” Odd or not, it is remarkable if one accepts the description of Darwin as a fastidious letter saver (evidence of which is provided by Windchy, who mentions that Darwin’s collected correspondence fills 15 volumes). Windchy, it seems, describes this habit of Darwin for the purpose of implying that Darwin deliberately destroyed the correspondence with the purpose of hiding his tracks.
Other scholars have unearthed indisputable evidence that Darwin drew significantly from Wallace’s effort and then took advantage of his money (Darwin’s father was prosperous and his mother was a Wedgewood) and his connections at the influential Linnean Society to diminish Wallace’s contributions to the field of evolutionary theory and exaggerate his own. Two of Darwin’s cronies — Sir Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker — acted as co-conspirators in concocting and carrying out the plan to promote Darwin and thus relegate Wallace to footnotes in the annals of scientific development. Regarding the particulars of this all-but-untold story, Windchy adroitly stacks brick after brick of evidence into a seemingly insuperable wall of proof.
Sold
Although it only took three powerful and prominent men to invent “Darwin as the father evolution,” it took many more to foist this theory on the public as sound scientific fact. It took support by moneyed interests, ambitious investors, and scientists servile to an “ism” in opposition to Christianity and its doctrines (including the creation of all things by God).
One of the conspirators in on the ground floor was Thomas Huxley. Windchy quotes Darwin as explaining to Huxley, “If we can once make a compact set of believers, we shall in time conquer.” Huxley stepped to the sound of his master’s voice and immediately wrote a favorable review of On the Origin of the Species. Darwin demonstrated his gratitude by making a timely deposit of £ 2,100 into Huxley’s perpetually empty bank account, thus enabling the penniless Huxley to pay off his mountainous and immobilizing debts.
Huxley found and formed a cadre of influential and well-placed scientists and socialites (Darwin’s “compact set of believers”). Huxley and his band would capitalize on the seminars, books, and speeches to be given, not to mention trading on the allure of the power to be had by placing converts in positions of power whereby they could make gain from peddling influence.
In fact, many of these wealthy investors and silk-stockinged hucksters were able through the pulling of school ties and purse strings to place Darwinists on the science faculties of Oxford and Cambridge Universities, thus ensuring that the theories would be disseminated in the minds of generations of students, who in turn would broadcast them throughout the world.
A Telling Tale
Eugene Windchy has convened a trial on the merits and true provenance of the theory of evolution known as “Darwin’s theory of evolution.” He has ably and convincingly presented evidence to inculpate Darwin and others in masterminding and purposely perpetrating a massive fraud on the world. To this day, Darwinism has supporters, including scientists, who are as zealous and brainwashed as followers of any of history’s notorious cult leaders, even in the face of dispassionate, disinterested, distinguished detractors.
In fact, Eugene Windchy’s book is a convincing, well-researched, and well-crafted brief against the continuing and irrational acceptance and spread of Darwinism and its concomitant doctrines.
The End of Darwinism: How a Flawed and Disastrous Theory Was Stolen and Sold, by Eugene Windchy, Bloomington, Indiana: Xibris Corp., 2009, paperback, 264 pages
