At Outside Online (“Fair Chase,”May 2011), Charles Bethea tells us

On the plains of New Mexico, a band of elite marathoners tests a controversial theory of evolution: that humans can outrun the fastest animals on earth.

Controversial? Yes, apparently:

As ridiculous as this spectacle might appear, the men are testing a much-debated scientific notion about when and how humans became hunters. Between two and three million years ago, when our australopithecine ancestors ventured out of the forests and onto the protein-rich African savanna, they were prey more often than hunter. They gathered plant-based foods, just as their primate brethren did. Then something changed. They began running after game with long, steady strides. Evolutionary biologists like Harvard’s Dan Lieberman think the uniquely human capacity for endurance running is a distant remnant of prehistoric persistence hunting.

You’ll have to read the article to see if the runners succeeded and whether they think they proved something (another story). Read More ›

Genome mapper Francis Collins, who founded BioLogos, is hailed in the June 2011 article as “one of the most eminent scientists ever to identify as an evangelical Christian.”

An unexpected paean – and one that furrowed my brow (p. 23).   Read More ›

This had to happen, of course: John R. Schneider at Calvin College, according to “The Search for the Historical Adam” (Christianity Today, June 2011 ) Vices we associate with consequences of the Fall and original sin, such as self-serving behavior, exist in lower primates ad would have been passed on via evolution to humans. Thus Eden “cannot be a literal description of how things really were in the primal human past.” (p. 26)0 So does the Evolutionary Agony Aunt chair the psychology department at Calvin? Yes, the Aunt’s  real, just as real as the Christian profs getting in on the act.

We often hear the phrase “the science is settled” from Darwinists who claim that the infinitely creative powers of the Darwinian mechanism (random errors filtered through natural selection) can explain everything. This claim is simply absurd on its face. Anyone with any awareness of the evidence and a simple education in basic mathematical logic, who is not blinded by a precommitment to Darwinian ideology, could tell you that that the science really is settled: Darwinism is greatest con job in the history of junk pseudoscience. The only evidence we have for the “creative” powers of the Darwinian mechanism is the selection of existing biological information for survival (nothing new is created; it’s just a mixing and matching of existing biological Read More ›

From my notes on Christianity Today’s June 2011 “Darwin ‘n Jesus ‘n me” article. The article offers a look at Christian Darwinist think tank BioLogos: Biblical exegete Daniel C. Harlow, along with theologian John R. Schneider, are being investigated for violating doctrinal standards at Calvin College, for their work in ASA’s Perspectives. BioLogos (Christian Darwinist think tank) has as its biblical expert Peter Enns, whose Old Testament theorizing led to his suspension from Westminster Theological Seminary (p. 26). Similarly, Tremper Longman III found that he was no longer an adjunct faculty member at Reformed Theological Seminary, due to an article he published at BioLogos, saying that nothing insists on a literal understanding of Adam. So, if this is the new Read More ›

Dennis Venema, Biologos’s senior fellow for science, and biology chair at Canada’s evangelical Trinity Western University, would have us know (p. 25) that the chimp genome(total genetic heredity encoded in DNA), which was fully mapped by 2005,displays “near identity”with the human genome as detailed by Collins’s team, with a 95 to 99 percent match depending on what factors are included. As Reasons to Believe biochemist Fuz Rana has pointed out (and he’s quoted), that would merely suggest that genes don’t count for much in determining what an entity will be like. As a result, the figure is widely disputed. Here’s geneticist Richard Buggs to start. More notes on Christianity Today’s “Darwin ‘n Jesus ‘n me” article here. The article here.

Or so some paint it. I’ve now had a chance to read Christianity Today’s “The Search for the Historical Adam” by Richard N. Ostling (June 2011). Recommended to all. I’m not sure re crisis. I think it comes down to a simple choice. Linked here. Some notes follow: Read More ›

No evidence that there is enough time for evolution[*]

Lee M Spetner

Redoxia Israel, Ltd. 27 Hakablan St., Jerusalem, Israel

Abstract: A recent attempt was made to resolve the heretofore unaddressed issue of the estimated time for evolution, concluding that there was plenty of time. This would have been a very significant result had it been correct. It turns out, however, that the assumptions made in formulating the model of evolution were faulty and the conclusion of that attempt is therefore unsubstantiated.

[This post will remain at the top of the page until 00 hours Tuesday May 31. For reader convenience, other coverage continues below. – UD News]

Read More ›

Wintery Knight asks why intelligent, educated Christians won’t speak up for their views.

Why is this not being addressed by churches?

Do you have an experience where a Christian group stifled apologetics? Tell me about that, and why do you think they would do that, in view of the situation I outlined above? My experience is that atheists (as much as I tease them) are FAR more interested in apologetics than church Christians – they are the ones who borrow books and debates, and try to get their atheist wives to go to church after they becomes interested in going to church. Why is that?

A couple of thoughts: Read More ›

“A Psychopath Walks Into A Room. Can You Tell? (NPR May21, 2011) Arresting title, that, for an interesting proposition: “Robert Hare, the eminent Canadian psychologist who invented the psychopath checklist, … recently announced that you’re four times more likely to find a psychopath at the top of the corporate ladder than you are walking around in the janitor’s office,” journalist Jon Ronson tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered. Of course, some allowance should be made for the fact that bosses are noticed/hated much more than other folk, and big bosses are larger than life. The effect one comes away with is that psychiatry has not done a better job than traditional wisdom in explaining things like: Why Read More ›

In “Evolution, sex and dinosaur necks, BBC’s Wondermonkey, Matt Walker asks (24 May 2011) whether long-necked sauropods like diplodocus evolved their necks via sexual selection:

A recent theory proposed is that sex, or more accurately sexual selection, was the main driver.The idea is that down the generations, male sauropods evolved ever longer necks to dominate rivals for the affections of females.

Dinosaurs are long dead, making it harder to test ideas about why certain traits evolved, and what they were adapted for. But evidence can still be brought to bear to analyse the different hypotheses.

Most hypotheses emphasized the practical uses of the neck, such as eating from trees, but in 2006, the idea surfaces that

… male sauropods that inherited a longer neck, caused by a chance mutation, would be more attractive to females.The length of their neck would signal their virility and suitability as a sire.

“Neck fighting” was hypothesized, with the longest neck producing the most offspring, thus fixing the trait. Great fantasy, but less imaginative researchers have pointed out Read More ›

I wish to publicly commend UD commenters ellazimm and Dr Elizabeth Liddle for their seriousness, civility, responsiveness in dialogue, and general positive tone. We need more objectors like these ladies. And, I hope that, increasingly, we will have them. Ladies, well done.   END

… it doesn’t evolve.

Remember when AVIDA proved Darwin right?

These results provide evidence that low-impact mutations can present a substantial barrier to progressive evolution by natural selection. Understanding mutation is of primary importance, as selection depends on the mutational production of new genotypes. Numerous changes that would be beneficial may nevertheless fail to occur because mutation cannot produce them in the time available.

Further, it is important for biologists to realistically appraise what selection can and cannot do under various circumstances. Selection may neither be necessary nor sufficient to explain numerous genomic or cellular features of complex organisms [2-4].

PDF and poster here:

Nelson CW, Sanford JC (2011) The effects of low-impact mutations in digital organisms. Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling 8:9.

Nelson CW (2011) Selection threshold constrains adaptive evolution in computational evolution experiments. Great Lakes Bioinformatics Conference. F1000 Research 2:A13. Read More ›

At MSNBC (5/25/20), Charles Q. Choi tells us “Bizarre shrimp-like predators grew larger and survived longer than thought”:

The creatures, known as anomalocaridids, were giant predators (ranging from 2 to possibly 6 feet in length) with soft-jointed bodies and toothy maws with spiny limbs in front to snag worms and other prey.

[ … ]

Past research showed they dominated the seas during the early and middle Cambrian period 542 million to 501 million years ago, a span of time known for the “Cambrian Explosion” that saw the appearance of all the major animal groups and the establishment of complex ecosystems. Read More ›