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Giuseppe Sermonti — news, coverage & facts — IJR

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An acknowledged critic of Neo-Darwinian theory, Sermonti's view was that evolution encompasses more than Neo-Darwinism. At times his views have been incorrectly misrepresented and conflated with Creationism. This connection is however, a perspective that based on evidence he did not agree with. Moreover, considering his multiple documented statements denying that he was not a creationist, coupled with the content of his published works this certainly seems a substantial misreading. Like many academic critics of Neo-Darwinism parts of his work have been cherry picked by Creationists. In 1993 Sermonti published in Answers in Genesis's young earth creation magazine, an article entitled "Not from the apes", a philosophical style critique of aspects of scientific and evolutionary theory in the sense of Gould and Lewontin's critique of 'unverifiable narrative explanations', or 'Just so Stories'. The young earth creationist Henry M. Morris cited Sermonti (along with Guy Berthault, Roberto Fondi and Wolfgang Smith) as a Roman Catholic creationist in response to John Paul II's 1996 statement on evolution, but Sermonti did not describe himself as either a Roman Catholic or a creationist.

Sermonti was often engaged in discussions of the processes and limits of current evolutionary theory, whether it be Neo-Darwinism or Process Structuralism with both a broad range of scientists, philosophers and theists. He was one of the signatories of the Discovery Institute's "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism", a petition which the intelligent design movement uses to promote intelligent design by attempting to cast doubt on evolution. Sermonti did not deny, nor doubt evolution. He merely that the Neo-Darwinian model was not an adequate or complete form of explanation for evolution, and consequently was deserving of more rigorous critique by those studying evolution. Sermonti attended the Kansas evolution hearings with the Discovery Institute in 2005 but no transcript of his testimony exists as the court reporter could not understand what he was saying due to his strong Italian accent. His book Dimenticare Darwin (Forgetting Darwin) was published in 1999 and was translated into English as Why Is a Fly Not a Horse? which was published by the Discovery Institute and edited by Jonathan Wells. In the book, he denies being a creationist, saying that "For the reservations I harbor about Evolutionism, I have been accused of being a Creationist. I am not: if I am allowed, I would only aspire to being a creature".

Giuseppe Sermonti

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Giuseppe Sermonti

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