2010

You probably learned in high school biology class that the new DNA data has powerfully confirmed evolution. Take any gene and it reveals differences between the species exactly as we would expect. And this sentiment is not limited to high school textbooks. As the Chair of a university Biology department once wrote to me, “DNA sequences provide an absolute and irrefutable record” that evolution is a fact. “Virtually every single gene sequence we examine,” he explained, “can be seen to be represented in closely related species and in more distantly related species with increasing numbers of nucleotide changes as we look at more distant species.” It was, he concluded, “absolute proof, in hard copy, reiterated in every single gene of Read More ›

A friend writes, regarding this information regarding some information about science philosopher Karl Popper on a Scientific American blog: “It’s the first time I’ve read that Popper later regretted allowing himself to be browbeaten on the subject of the irrefutability of Darwinism.” In “A Dubitable Darwin? Why Some Smart, Nonreligious People Doubt the Theory of Evolution”, John Horgan writes (Jul 6, 2010) The philosopher Daniel Dennett once called the theory of evolution by natural selection “the single best idea anyone has ever had.” I’m inclined to agree. But Darwinism sticks in the craw of some really smart people I don’t mean intelligent-designers (aka IDiots) and other religious ignorami but knowledgeable scientists and scholars. He goes on to trash knowledgeble scientists Read More ›

An interesting conference bringing together ID proponents and theistic evolutionists is coming up in Austin this October:  The Vibrant Dance of Faith and Science (http://vibrantdance.org). The organizers are hoping to bring unity to the science-faith debate: Our Mission is to inspire, educate, and unify pastors, scientists, Christian leaders, and concerned lay people, as well as seekers and skeptics, with the growing congruence of scientific discovery with our Christian faith and to explore the implications and applications of that congruence. The key word here is CONGRUENCE. The problem is that ID theorists and theistic evolutionists see such congruence in very different terms. For ID theorists who are also Christians (some are not), evidence of design in nature mirrors the faith claim that God by wisdom created Read More ›

(The following piece makes reference to the late philosopher of science David Hull’s ‘God Of the Galapagos’.  Hull died peacefully earlier this week at the age of 75)

Much has been said about how in The Origin of Species, the problem of suffering in nature tinted Darwin’s view and convinced him of a world that bore none of the expected hallmarks of a loving God (Ref 1). Indeed in a letter to a friend Darwin reflected on the “misery in the world” and expressed his aversion towards the female digger wasp that, ghastly as its feeding habits were, could not have been the product of a,”beneficent and omnipotent God” (Ref 1, p.12). So it is that we begin to understand biophysicist Cornelius Hunter’s assertion that much of Darwin’s own theory was based not on scientific premises but instead on a personal expectation of what God’s creation should look like (Ref 1, p.13). Darwin was disenchanted with Christianity and he wrote as much in the autobiographical account of his younger years (Ref 2, p.57). But he was also deeply affected by the ugliness of nature and what this meant for the existence of a benevolent God. As he wrote:

“A being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a God who could create the universe, is to our finite minds omnipotent and omniscient, and it revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of the lower animals throughout almost endless time? Read More ›

I’m including some quotes from a Science magazine feature that is just out. I just posted the other day about results that conflict with Darwinian expectations/predictions. We’ll just add this to the list. You know, you really have to be a true believer to keep insisting that your idea is correct when almost invariably every true prediction made using your idea turns out to be wrong. I’m beyond even being surprised any more. Here goes:

“It was the most radical of a flurry of recent discoveries of human genes that evolution has strongly favored, a process called positive selection. Four years ago, researchers thought that they would find hundreds of examples in which an advantageous mutation spread rapidly in a particular population. That prediction, based on the first scans of human genome sequence data, did not pan out, and by last year, some researchers were ready to give up.

A growing number of researchers now think it is rare for a particular mutation to spread rapidly to most people within a population, as was the case with the EPAS1 gene.”

The bottom line to all of this is that population genetics is dead. (Have I said that before?!) Notice, though, how the Darwinists talk about it amongst themselves:
‘”In only a handful has there been much progress in identifying the causal mutations and extracting these biological insights about their function,” Sabeti wrote in the 12 February issue of Science (p. 883). Says McVean: “That’s why the whole field—the program of trying to find selective sweeps—kind of ground to a halt.”‘

Never able to admit that they might be wrong, they had to begin all over again in a new and different way.

“Yet McVean and others were convinced that positive selection had shaped much of the genome but lay beneath the radar of methods used to detect it. . . . “It’s very likely that many traits that are different between populations are coded by different alleles; any one may not be so strong,” says population geneticist Pleuni Pennings of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany.

Detecting such polygenic selection is one of the new frontiers. . . .”

Notice that they are “convinced”. They just know. Isn’t this wonderful?
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Jerry Coyne is exasperated with the findings of a scholarly publication that surveyed the beliefs of biology teachers. Coyne interprets the results of this survey as follows:

47% believe in Intelligent Design
28% in [godless] evolution
16% in creationism
9% no opinion

(See: We Suck and Selective Creationists)

He labels the 47% who believe in Intelligent Design (which is he equates with Theistic Evolution) as “Selective Creationists”. So combined with the 16% of traditional creationists, that’s 63% of the biology teachers who are in his view “creationists”.

But what would happen if the 47% of Theistic Evolutionist/Intelligent Design biology teachers realized that Darwin is being refuted by secular scientific literature with every passing day? Will they, as Coyne fears, join ranks with ID proponents? Coyne observes:
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A Review of Peter Forbes’ The Gecko’s Foot: Bio-inspiration: Engineering New Materials from Nature

ISBN-13:978-0-393-06223-6

Bio-inspiration is a relatively new field of science that is trying to replicate the phenomena and designs of nature in ways that are of benefit to man. The manner in which a gecko’s foot allows it to climb glass, the way in which the wings of a butterfly sparkle in the sunlight and the complex methods of flight used by insects have all inspired technologists to emulate nature. More recently the cellular world with its molecular machines has provided a source of ideas for nano-technological design. This ‘nanorealm’ that is the cell has become the last frontier of natural exploration. Bioinspiration has likewise brought together disparate disciplines of science to tackle some of the major challenges of engineering and medicine – proteins that stick onto silica chips, for example, that may one day help in finding a cure for cancer. Read More ›

Greetings this Friday the 13! It is an unlucky day for Darwinism when Dawkins and Darwinism are criticized by the most elite members of the scientific community.

The most elite scientists in the United States are recognized by their membership in the National Academy of Sciences. To date, I’m now aware of 3 members who have expressed some form of serious criticism of Darwinism. The first brave NAS member was Phil Skell (see: Phil Skell Writing for Forbes ). Another NAS member critical of Darwinism is Masotoshi Nei (see: Peer-Reviewed Article Critical of Darwinism by NAS Member, Evolution by Absence of Selection.).

And now with his recent induction into the National Academy, Michael Lynch is the third member I’m aware of to be openly critical of Darwinism. This time Lynch uses the Proceeding of National Academy to lambast the behavior of Darwinists. He delivers the ultimate insult of his colleagues, he likens them to creationists!

His lambasting can be found here in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity

The article was a gold mine of quotable morsels:

the myth that all of evolution can be explained by adaptation continues to be perpetuated by our continued homage to Darwin’s treatise (6)
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Denton Bible Church, in Denton, TX, will be hosting the “2010 On Guard Christian Apologetics Conference” on November the 5th and 6th.

Denton Bible Church is delighted to bring a powerhouse group of speakers to the Dallas/Fort Worth/Denton area for this year’s apologetics conference entitled, “On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision.” The name of this year’s conference is taken from the title of one of William Lane Craig’s newest books addressing the subject of apologetics in the local church. We have invited some of the greatest defenders of the Christian faith to speak at this year’s conference on a wide variety of subjects including the historical reliability of the New Testament, the evidence for the resurrection, scientific challenges to the theory of Evolution, and the battle of Worldviews.

Speakers include William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, Sean McDowell, Paul Nelson (whose address is titled “The Power and Promise of Intelligent Design in Biology”), Mike Licona, Craig Hazen,  and others.

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Casey Luskin, Program Officer in Public Policy and Legal Affairs for the Discovery Institute, has recently published an article entitled ZEAL FOR DARWIN’S HOUSE CONSUMES THEM: HOW SUPPORTERS OF EVOLUTION ENCOURAGE VIOLATIONS OF THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE in the Liberty University Law Review. Luskin continues to be a favorite target of the anti-ID crowd over at The Panda’s Thumb, and this article is no exception. The task of misrepresenting Luskin fell to attorney Timothy Sandefur, who frequently contributes to the Panda’s Thumb blog site.

Luskin clearly lays out the intent of the article in the very first paragraph and writes:

The common stereotype in the controversy over teaching evolution holds that it is the opponents of evolution who are constantly trying to “sneak religious dogma back into science education.”1 While perhaps in some
instances this caricature is not entirely undeserved,2 the mainstream media and legal community pay scant attention to incidents where proponents of Darwinian evolution transgress the boundary between church and state erected by the Establishment Clause. By documenting ways that evolution advocates encourage violations of the Establishment Clause—in some instances, explicitly advocating state endorsement of pro-evolution religious viewpoints in the science classroom—this Article will show the impropriety of the common “Inherit the Wind stereotype.”3

Apparently this clear of a statement isn’t good enough for Sandefur who sniffs:

It will come as no surprise to anyone that Luskin’s argument is flimsy, his evidence illusory, his readings of the case law distorted, and the overall effect essentially a fun-house mirror version of First Amendment law.

As explained earlier by idnet.com.au, Michael J. Murray and Jeffrey P. Schloss have contributed a paper at PNAS answering an argument in a previous paper, also published at PNAS, by John C Avise. idnet.com.au did a fine job explaining the details of the argument, I intend on focusing on the paper from Murray and Schloss in a kind of exegetical manner.

In a recent issue of PNAS, Avise (1) presents a helpful survey of suboptimal features of the human genome that are best understood as products of evolution, but in venturing to offer theological commentary on intelligent design (ID) and religious belief in general, he errs on three counts.

Those three counts are:

First, the central claims of ID have been abundantly critiqued on strict empirical grounds (2), leaving no need for recourse to his theological objection that imperfections are unworthy of deity. Laplace’s dictum about the role of God in explanations of nature—“I have no need of that hypothesis”—has become the guiding principle for science. Arguing that the presence of “genetic evil” undercuts appeals to divine agency is superfluous and detracts from rather than advances scientific discussion.

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A recent article describes an interesting idea – do bacteria in the ocean have an electrical power/signalling grid? From the article: Then the researchers did something they knew would make the bacteria unhappy: They started removing the oxygen from the water. If the bacteria were swapping materials, as Nielsen had suspected, those living below the surface of the mud would have gradually noticed that their oxygen supply was being cut off; they would have registered chemical changes in the sediment that could be detected by sensors. But instead, Nielsen and colleagues witnessed something far more rapid. Almost as soon as the researchers began removing the oxygen, the subsurface bacteria stopped consuming hydrogen sulfide in the mud. More important, this metabolic Read More ›

In this Nature Alert article, we find out that sponges, present as early as 635 million years ago in the fossil record, have 18,000 genes, among which are genes for apoptosis, that is, cell death. Now here is a creature that has “a simple body plan lacking organs, muscles and nerve cells.” Let’s remember that the number of human genes, prior to whole genome analysis, was thought to be at least 100,000. With early genomic results in, this number was revised downward. Today it stands at 25,000—and shrinking! (There are arguments for lowering it still) So the lowly sponge—no nerves, no muscles, simple as you can get—has around 65% the number of genes as humans. Well, all of this presents Read More ›

Like engineers carefully blowing up a bridge, cells have intricate, programmed suicide mechanisms. The signal is sent and an apparatus of destruction is activated. But suicide hardly fits the evolutionary narrative. Wasn’t this all about survival, reproductive advantages and leaving more offspring? Why would a cell evolve intricate and complex suicide machinery?  Read more