Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Fossil Record, Case Closed?

I am reading Douglas Futuyma’s Evolution, which, like his previous textbook Evolutionary Biology, will probably become the standard college text on evolution. On pages 48 and 49 Futuyma lists the “proofs” of evolution. I find the list interesting not so much for what it includes but for what it excludes – transitions in the fossil record. If the leading college text on evolution no longer appeals to transitions in the fossil record as proof that evolution occurred, is it safe to say that the case on the fossil record is now closed, and the Darwinists have ceded the field to their victorious opponents? Just asking.

Hi all, from Denyse O’Leary

As Bill Dembski noted here, I will be sharing the task of moderation with him. Joining us will be Bill’s research assistant, Joel Borofsky, who can say a bit more about himself in his own posts. Anyone wondering what sort of changes will ensue at UD should note that I am a journalist and my main interest is in promoting a responsible public discussion of ID. I am not qualified to evaluate hypotheses in mathematics, biochemistry, or exobiology. But I am well qualified to study public issues and attempt to pull a discussion back from the abyss. My approach will combine “editor of the Letters section” and “moderator of a discussion group.” In my experience, this approach best serves the Read More ›

“ID is a Myth” Quilt Wins National Contest

This story is utterly implausible since we don’t know who made the quilt maker. The art of quilting By Tanya Foubert Wednesday July 19, 2006 Barbara West stands in front of her quilt called Myths of our Time: Intelligent Design, which won the National Award of Excellence for innovative quilts from the Canadian Quilters Association. Canmore Leader — The story goes that a well-known scientist was giving a public lecture on astronomy. The talk went through the planets and how they orbit the sun and in turn the sun orbits our galaxy. When the scientist, who some say was Bertrand Russell, finished, a little old lady says to him: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really Read More ›

Bio-inspired design

Check out this slide show at Slate.com: http://slate.com/id/2145813. It’s about bio-inspired design. If a system inspires us to design something, is that evidence that the system itself was designed? When or when not?

Natural selection does it again

Too bad that Nobel Prizes are only awarded to people — natural selection deserves dozens of them. Scientists decode how plants avoid sunburn Source: Arizona State University Too much sun – for plants as well as people – can be harmful to long-term health. But to avoid the botanical equivalent of “lobster tans,” plants have developed an intricate internal defense mechanism called photoprotection, which acts like sunscreen to ward off the sun’s harmful rays. “We knew that biomolecules called carotenoids participate in this process of photoprotection, but the question has been, ‘How does this work?’ ” says Iris Visoly-Fisher, a postdoctoral research associate in the Biodesign Institute at ASU. Carotenoids act as “wires” to carry away the extra sunlight energy Read More ›

Looking for work? NCSE is hiring.

Faith Project Director The National Center for Science Education, a non-profit organization that defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools, seeks candidates for the post of Faith Project Director. The FPD’s duties will include: **developing materials pertaining to evolution and religion for print and web; **representing NCSE to the faith community, in print and in person; **serving as liaison between NCSE and professional theological societies and religious organizations; **speaking to the press about issues involving evolution education and challenges to it; **counseling teachers, administrators, parents, and others facing challenges to evolution education. Candidates should have either formal academic training in or extensive informal knowledge of theology, particularly as it relates to science. A record of involvement in or Read More ›

Molecular DNA Switch Found to be the Same for All Life

The molecular machinery that starts the process by which a biological cell divides into two identical daughter cells apparently worked so well early on that evolution has conserved it across the eons in all forms of life on Earth. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley have shown that the core machinery for initiating DNA replication is the same for all three domains of life — Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya. MORE Given that, according to Carl Woese, the three domains are not descended from a common ancestor (see here), is it plausible that this same switch could have arisen apart from design three times?

The new UD with Denyse O’Leary

Uncommon Descent is about to become “The Intelligent Design Weblog of William Dembski, Denyse O’Leary, and Friends.” O’Leary is a Toronto-based Canadian journalist and the author of By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg 2004), an investigation of the intelligent design controversy. In addition to being an equal partner with me on this blog, Denyse has also agreed to moderate it. I want to thank DaveScot for his untiring efforts this last half year in moderating this blog. But as he wrote here: Commenting is what I like doing here. Moderating is a pain that I can do without. If appending my comments directly onto others is too much to ask in return for all the time spent moderating then I’m Read More ›

Congratulations All On Another Record Month

Aside from setting new records in almost all categories June’s growth was larger than normal in that the total number of referring sites grew by over 20% month over month to 38,209. Growth in all other categories was our normal 10%. Way to go everyone! We continue to get our message out to more and more people! I wonder if Panda’s Thumb continued their decline? Maybe our loyal opposition will give us an answer at ATBC.

[off topic] My New Blogspot Icon

I finally broke down and this morning added one of those pictures that appear with Blogger comments. As many of you know I proudly served 4 years in the United States Marine Corps and consider that a defining period in my life. The USMC motto is “Semper Fidelis” which means “Always Faithful”. This describes (in order of importance) where our faith is placed: What do y’all think of it?

Evolution’s Idiot Stepchild — Evolutionary Psychology (this time without the gratuitous comments)

Here’s your second chance to make this thread productive. Stay on topic. Janiebelle has been booted. NEW RULE AT UD: No more bold insertions into existing comments. I’ve done it as has DaveScot. That’s now a thing of the past. One-comment-one-poster is now the rule.

Brilliant men always betray their wives
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/07/13/baaffairs13.xml

Einstein’s affairs should surprise no one, says Desmond Morris. It is all in the genius’s genes

So Albert Einstein did not, after all, spend all his waking hours chalking up complex symbols on a blackboard. According to letters newly released this week, he devoted quite a bit of it to chasing the ladies. And with considerable success.

To many, the idea of Einstein having 10 mistresses does not fit the classical image of the great, remote genius. Why was he wasting his valuable time with the exhausting business of conducting a string of illicit affairs – affairs that would cause havoc with his family life, damaging especially his relationship with his sons?

The answer is that he, like many other intensely creative men, was over-endowed with one of the human male’s most characteristic qualities: the joy of risk-taking.

Every creative act, every new formula, every ground-breaking innovation, is an act of rebellion that may – if successful – destroy an old, existing concept. So every time a brilliant mind sees a new possibility, it is faced with a moment of supreme risk-taking.

The new formula, the new invention, may not work. It may turn out to be a disaster. But the man of genius – such as Einstein – has the courage to plough ahead, despite the dangers, both on and off the intellectual field.

Not that Einstein is by any means an isolated instance. Indeed, far from being the exception he is closer to the norm where great men and sex are concerned. Read More ›

“How man’s best friend overcame laws of natural evolution”

How man’s best friend overcame laws of natural evolution Jan Battles A GENETICIST says he may have solved the mystery of how 350 breeds of dog evolved from a single ancestor, the grey wolf. Matthew Webster of the Smurfit Institute of Genetics at Trinity College, Dublin, and colleagues at Uppsala University, Sweden, say the domestication of dogs may be allowing them to override the natural laws governing evolution. They suggest natural selection, which ensures the survival of the fittest and weeds out genetic mutations that don’t provide a survival advantage, was relaxed when dogs became domesticated. Living with people allowed harmful genetic variations to flourish that would never have survived in the wild. This interference with nature could also explain Read More ›

The design of lightning and thunder

An objector to ID posed the following question to a friend of a friend: “According to Michael Behe’s view of ID (as developed in Darwin’s Black Box), it seems right to say that the system by which thunder and lightning is generated (composed of the sun, water on the ground to heat up and evaporate, thundercloud, air, ground) would qualify as “designed.” After all, it is, a la Behe, a system of several well-matched, separate, interacting parts accomplishing a function beyond the individual components and in which removing one piece does away with the function. But since it obviously wasn’t designed, the method of design detection given in Behe’s book is fundamentally flawed and gives many false positives. Is this Read More ›

Is this an ID article?

Emergence of protein fold families through rational design Feng Ding1, Nikolay V Dokholyan1¤ 1 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Biochemistry and Biophysics, Chapel Hill, NC, United States of America PROVISIONAL ABSTRACT Diverse proteins with similar structures are grouped into families of homologs and analogs if their sequence similarity is correspondingly higher or lower than 20-30%. It was suggested that protein homologs and analogs originate from a common ancestor and diverge in their distinct evolutionary time scales, emerging as a consequence of the physical properties of the protein sequence space. Although a number of studies have determined key signatures of protein family organization, the sequence-structure factors that differentiate the two evolution-related protein families remain unknown. Here, we stipulate that Read More ›

More entertainment from Jim Downard . . .

For your further amusement from a man who just doesn’t know when to stop. From: RJDownard@snip Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 15:39:30 EDT Subject: Uncommon Descent indeed! To: william.dembski@snip Dear Bill You take “all responsibility for any errors” in Coulter’s evolution chapters. Your words, not mine. Coulter has written what she has written. Either you are willing to defend each of her published assertions, or you may repudiate them. You have done neither. Thus the questions I asked remain. As amply evidenced by her prior works, Coulter can get confused entirely on her own. But it is also legitimate to wonder to what extent her published antievolution statements due to your proud tutoring? In my effort to resolve this point, Read More ›