Author: John Umana
Date of birth: May 31, 1947
Website:
John Umana is a trial and appellate lawyer in Washington, DC with a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Michigan. In 2005, Umana authored the book, “Creation: Towards a Theory of All Things.†He is a leading proponent of Intelligent Design. (Legal Times May 22, 2006). He is both a biological evolutionist and creationist/intelligent design theorist, and not affiliated with any group. The debate on evolution suffers from confusion from the failure to distinguish two different senses of the term ‘evolution.’ MEANING NO. 1: In one sense, evolution means that all life on Earth shares a common ancestor (and that different species share common ancestors, such as for example the hippopotamus, dolphin and whale share a common ancestor). It maintains that all organisms on earth are descended from a common ancestor. Umana argues that Wallace's/Darwin’s theory that living things evolved or descended from common ancestors is true and proved by the convergence of the sciences. MEANING NO. 2: But ‘evolution’ in Darwin’s full-blown sense is taken to mean that a new species originates as a result of "natural selection," random incremental mutations over millions of years. In this biological and Darwinian sense, the term ‘evolution’ means a process whereby life emerged from non-living matter and subsequently new species emerged and developed entirely from natural means. Darwin’s theory is that all complex species and organs such as the eye and animal instincts “evolved by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations ….†(1859, p. 459) This latter thesis is unsupported by modern microbiology and is bad science, Umana argues. The book maintains that the evidence (including Big Bang analysis from NASA’s WMAP probe) points to a cause external to the physical universe as responsible for the biodiversity that exists on this planet and on other living worlds. His theory predicts that there is no life on Mars or other bodies of our solar system and never has been – an empirically verifiable proposition. At the same time, he argues that the Universe is teeming with life and with intelligent life. He maintains that science offers the best hope of answering these questions.
