2011

In “Oldest Known Wood” (The Scientist , August 11, 2011) Jef Akst reports that “Two newly described fossils suggest that wood is some 10 million years older than previous believed” (No kidding!): … two relatively small fossils provide new clues, and suggest that wood evolved at least 10 million years earlier than previously documented, according to a study published today (August 11) in Science. One fossils is 407 million years old and the other 397 million years old, give or take a few million. See also: Live birth in lizards developed earlier than thought

Philosopher Michael L. Peterson explains junk DNA for us at BioLogos in “Evolution and the Deep Resonances between Science and Theology, Part 5” (July 20, 2011):

Evolution is the only rational way to account for the molecular uniformity of all organisms, given that numerous alternative structures and fundamental processes are, in principle, equally likely. Moreover, the accumulation of damaged or “junk” DNA (mutations that do not affect function and thus are not subject to negative selection), passed on over time to species further down that branch of the Tree, makes the probability that evolution did not occur infinitesimally small.

Okay, so that means that if much that is thought junk turns out not to be, “the probability that evolution did occur infinitesimally small.” Right? Read More ›

David R. Abel of the Origin of Life Science Foundation, Inc., says no. And also that the law he formulated on the subject has never been falsified, despite a number of journal publications. He posits it as The Law of Physicodynamic Insufficiency, as follows:

The Law of Physicodynamic Insufficiency states that physicochemical interactions are inadequate to explain the mathematical and formal nature of physical law relationships.

He offers his law for falsification.

Read More ›

ID-friendly Oxford math prof JohnLennox has a new book out, Seven Days That Divide the World: The Beginning According to Genesis and Science . Can’t imagine which seven days. Blurb:

What did the writer of Genesis mean by ‘the first day’? Is it a literal week or a series of time periods? If I believe that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, am I denying the authority of Scripture? Read More ›

Pity the poor readers of The Huffington Post. Not only do they have to put up with biased coverage of controversial scientific issues, such as the Intelligent Design controversy (see here, here, here and here for recent examples), but they also have to endure poorly researched articles on religion that are riddled with errors, despite the fact that these articles are often written by ministers of religion, who really should know better. This post is about one badly misinformed minister, Rev. Dr. David J. Lose, who has just written a terrible article for The Huffington Post.

Intelligent Design, as readers of Uncommon Descent are well aware, is a scientific quest for patterns in Nature which exhibit signs of being the product of some intelligence – a quest which is rapidly yielding new results in fields as diverse as cosmology, biochemistry and neurology. Read More ›