2011

An insect every gardener hates, the female scale insect carries her own sperm—harbored in tissue passed down through the generations—so she doesn’t need a male to have her babies. – Natalie Villacorta, “ScienceShot: Sex and the Single Insect,” Science, 15 July 2011 Scientists differ as to whether this is a good strategy, but a recent finding is that males may be going extinct as a result. If so, there is no more recruitment for the gene pool, in which case …

Over at Design Matrix, Mike Gene defends the view that “Complex LECA [Last Eukaryoic Common Ancestor] is no tautology”:

Someone with the moniker DrREC replied to my posting about the complexity of the last eukaryotic ancestor as follows:

This is almost a tautology. The last Eukaryotic common ancestor had the defining features of a Eukaryote….which happen to be more complex than prokaryotic life.

He replies:
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Over on his Evolution Blog, Professor Jason Rosenhouse has written a post (which has been highly praised by Professor Jerry Coyne) entitled, Where can I find the really good theology? Part one. Apparently he really believes there isn’t any to be found:

We New Atheist types are often lectured about the need for studying theology. The idea is that if we tuned out the distressingly popular and highly vocal forms of religious extremism and pondered instead “the best religion has to offer,” then we would not be so hostile to religion.

…I have read a fair amount of highbrow theology. I have read my share of Augustine and Aquinas, Barth and Tillich, Kierkegaard and Kuhn, just to pick a few names. I have read quite a lot of Haught and Ward and Swinburne. I did not go into this expecting to be disappointed. Conversion seemed unlikely, but I expected at least to find a lot of food for thought. Instead, with each book and essay I read I found myself ever more horrified by the sheer vacuity of what these folks were doing. I came to despise their endlessly vague and convoluted arguments, their relentless smugness towards nonbelievers, and, most seriously, the complete lack of any solid reason for thinking they weren’t just making it up as they went along. I thought perhaps I was just reading the wrong writers, and that I would eventually come to the really good theology. But I never did.

Well, Professor Rosenhouse, I’ve been reading theology for over three decades myself, and I’ve compiled a collection of the “best of the best”: a dozen or so online articles which, when taken together, constitute a very strong philosophical case for belief in God. Read More ›

Here (7/15/2011).

For nearly a decade Democrats have sought a religious wedge issue that could separate big chunks of white evangelical voters from their Republican home. Now they’ve found it, and are thrusting at the Social Darwinist/Ayn Rand underbelly of American conservatism.

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At Genomes Unzipped: Personal Public Genomics, Joe Pickrell starts another round of “What’s wrong with peer review,” raising the stakes: He asks, “Why publish science in peer-reviewed journals?” (13/07/2011), arguing

In this post, I will argue that cutting journals out of scientific publishing to a large extent would be unconditionally a good thing, and that the only thing keeping this from happening is the absence of a “killer app”.

For one thing, Read More ›

In my previous post I discussed a paper published in the leading journal Nature on protein evolution. In spite of the scientific evidence showing the evolution of proteins is unlikely, this paper is used as an apologetic by evolutionists for why said evolution is actually no big problem. The paper uses a somewhat circuitous method to arrive at its conclusion that protein evolution occurs early and often and that the findings are yet more “novel evidence of the common ancestry of life.” These conclusions are false and are based on a naïve and circular analysis. This is not easy to understand, however, because the analysis is circuitous. Here I will provide a simple explanation to help illustrate the fallacy.  Read Read More ›

For many of us, an important characteristic of science is self-correction. We are proud of the way new findings catalyse re-evaluation and, if corrections are needed, the development of new knowledge. If you are like this, be prepared to be shocked when you read Jonathan Wells’ latest book. The concept of Junk DNA was widely held by evolutionary biologists during the 1990s, but only a few were prepared to expose the hypothesis to tests of its validity. Yet this is when publications started to accumulate that reported functionality in genetic material widely regarded as “nonsense”. Instead of alerting popularisers of science to be cautious, these writers treated the new data as unrepresentative exceptions. They pressed on with their claim that Read More ›

Here’s a new, UK-based blog, The Darwin Deception,

Darwinism as an explanation for life is dead. The final death blow was administered by discoveries about intracellular nanomachinery, which amply satisfy Darwin’s own test of falsification. Dead, but it won’t lie down. …

Dude: Darwinism and a multitude of other dead ideas and popular delusions are crowded so thick, they can’t fall down when they die. Read More ›