A significant figure in the Intelligent Design set, William Dembski of the Discovery Institute, set out to review Probability Zero, then wisely handed the book over to a Professor of Mathematical Statistics at Stockholm University to look more closely at the numbers on his behalf. This is what the Swedish mathematician concluded, in marked contradiction to the critiques of the world’s leading Shakespeare scholar:
First of all, I want to congratulate Day on a well written book. The mathematical arguments are explained in a pedagogical way, yet they reveal deep insights into population genetics — the mathematical tool for evolutionary theory. It is also courageous to follow the tradition of the Wistar Institute conference 1966 and put forward mathematical challenges to evolutionary theory…
Vox Day concludes that since Neo-Darwinism relies on natural selection acting on mutations with a selective advantage, Neo-Darwinism cannot explain the observed genetic divergence between humans and chimps by means of common ancestry, within a time frame of 9 million years. I agree with this conclusion, also after adjusting the MITTENS equation for the different mutation rates of humans and E. coli…
Vox Day has written an excellent book where mathematical tools are used to showcase that unguided evolution (Neo-Darwinism or the neutral theory of evolution) cannot be used as an argument for common ancestry between humans and chimpanzees. In my view these conclusions remain even after some adjustments to the MITTENS equations.
Now, note that these reviews were both of the first edition of the book. I have since sent both of them the second edition, which contains the updates to the genomic mappings, but not my latest revisions involving Kimura’s equations and their ramifications for neutral theory, population genetics, and the molecular clock.
You can download the mathematician’s full paper in PDF format here. I would merely note that the problem with postulating how a larger genome might afford more opportunities for fixations is that such a postulate doesn’t incorporate the bottleneck necessarily imposed by the limits of sexual reproduction, which is why the speed of fixation in humans when measured in generations has never, and will never, approach the speed of fixation in bacteria.
It should be interesting to see what happens to the evolution debate now that the most staunch critics of Neo-Darwinianism are armed with more effective intellectual weaponry. Because math doesn’t lie, and while it’s possible get away with waving your hands and invoking fairy tales in response to logical criticism, no amount of fairy tales will make your numbers add up correctly when the maths don’t math.
I should also mention that I don’t have a position on common descent vs uncommon descent. I have a vague suspicion that Intelligent Genetic Manipulation utilized a melange of genetic material, including both proto-chimps and proto-pigs, which would technically fall more on the uncommon descent side, but is so far outside that debate that I don’t see how it even applies. I simply don’t have anything strong enough to be described as an opinion on the matter.