According to Jerry Coyne, atheistic evolutionists and ID proponents have at least this in common — they can expect no bribes from the Templeton Foundation. Read Coyne’s post on the topic here.
Month: February 2010
The Real Conflict Between Science and Religion
The supposed conflict between science and religion is not only bad history, it also goes unsupported by on-going polls of the religious beliefs of scientists. As the story goes, empirical science uncovers inconvenient truths that religious people resist in a losing battle. But if there was a conflict between science and religion, and furthermore if […]
Just Whose Science Is Todd Wood Stopping?
Yours? His? Theirs? Anyone’s? I’ve known Todd since we were graduate students in the 1990s, and have a hardbound copy of his UVA dissertation (Theory and Application of Protein Homology, 1999) sitting on my office shelves. Todd knows more evolutionary biology than many evolutionary biologists. Yet, perversely, or inexplicably, in the eyes of his critics […]
Top Ten books to read on the intelligent design controversy, 2009 #5
some have assumed it was Le Fanu who complained. I do not know, but the article is back up now, with a comment from Le Fanu, so I assume this is a minor happy ending. Libel law reform in Britain would be a major happy ending.
Primordial soup is “well past its sell-by date”
It is well known that Darwin speculated on what might happen in “some warm little pond”. But it was not until 1929 that J.B.S. Haldane developed a testable hypothesis involving a “prebiotic broth, or primordial soup”. He proposed that organic compounds were made when methane, ammonia and water reacted as a result of energy supplied […]
GATA-1: A Protein That Regulates Proteins
Proteins are the cell’s special machines that perform a variety of tasks. Some of them help to regulate the production levels of other proteins by influencing the transcribing of the DNA genes that code for the proteins. New research is investigating how one such transcription factor, GATA-1, works and, as usual, it isn’t simple. Read […]
The Infinite Headaches Of The Adjacent Impossible
Santa Fe Institute economist Brian Arthur believed that much of what we see in global economic patterns can be explained by a process of ‘locking in’ of historical events (1). Notably, the success of the QWERTY keyboard or the increased sales of the VHS video system over its arch rival Beta Max did not depend […]
Top Ten books to read on the intelligent design controversy, 2009 #6
You have heard enough publicly funded nonsense. Why not hear some sense? (Note: These are the key books, not science or media news. The Top Ten Darwin and Design Science News Stories for 2009 are here, the Top Ten Darwin and Design Media News Stories for 2009 are here, and my comments on the latter […]
Garter Snake Immunity, Sodium Channels, and Evolutionary Expectations Dashed Again
Certain species of garter snake are remarkably immune to tetrodotoxin, a deadly compound that paralyzes and kills. That’s fortunate because the newt, one of the snake’s favorite meals, is loaded with the toxin. The resistance of these lucky snakes is due to tiny adjustments in a protein segment which otherwise is highly conserved across a […]
Origin of Everything
I would like to direct our wonderful readers here at UD to an interesting new website www.originofeverything.com. Their purpose: “Origin of Everything is dedicated to providing leading viewpoints, evidence and arguments for both Intelligent Design and Scientific theories associated with the origin of the universe, life and related subjects. Origin of Everything is designed to […]
Can you distinguish photoshopping vs nature?
RomanM has a fascinating challenge. Out of seven photos at: MyPics Which one was not manipulated by Photoshop?
QUESTION TO UD READERS: Professors of Highest Caliber Who Are Also Christian
I’m trying to determine which Christian faculty would be regarded as absolutely tops in their respective disciplines but which would also be completely up front about their Christian worldview. Who would be on your top ten list? Of those on the list, how many would be supporters of or at least sympathetic to ID? Please think objectively […]
Pius XII would be turning in his grave
I’ve been trying to obtain a full transcript of last year’s Vatican conference on evolution, if only to confirm my fears that it had been hijacked by the ‘Darwin was right but that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t exist’ brigade. So far I have had to make do with a summary of the papers presented […]
Top Ten books to read on the intelligent design controversy, 2009 #7
(Note: These are the key books, not science or media news. The Top Ten Darwin and Design Science News Stories for 2009 are here, the Top Ten Darwin and Design Media News Stories for 2009 are here, and my comments on the latter are here. Also, to get the links, you must go here.) My […]
A New Evolutionary Mechanism Based on Inefficient Selection
The origin of complexity is a key problem in evolutionary theory. How did the blind process construct so many precise and elaborate biological designs? The evolutionary expectation has always been that Darwin’s process of natural selection is the driving force that creates everything from biosonar to the brain. But new research indicates that much of […]