March 2012

This is like the junkiest of junk, and it turns out to be so critical: From a PhysOrg article: To find out what was going on, the researchers began testing the DNA of several families that showed a proclivity for harboring the disease. Some actually had it, while some did not. Comparing the two allowed the team to track down which differences in their genes might be accounting for the presence of the disease. Much to their surprise, they found it lay within gene SLC7A2, which is known to be used by the brain during its development stage. But what was most remarkable was the fact that it was a single letter change, from an A to a G, found Read More ›

A couple of years ago I trotted out the “highly improbable things happen all the time” meme our Darwinist friends use to such advantage at my home poker game.  For those who don’t recall, this is what happened.  I dealt myself a royal flush in spades for the first 13 hands.  When my friends objected I said, “Lookit, your intuition has led you astray. You are inferring design — that is to say that I’m cheating — simply on the basis of the low probability of this sequence of events.  But don’t you understand that the odds of me receiving 13 royal flushes in spades in a row are exactly the same as me receiving any other 13 hands.  In Read More ›

In reply to a personal email I saw this morning, I have done a point by point markup of LT’s reply to my comment at no 10 in the current UD atheism and tolerance thread, here on. Let it be further understood that I am on record that the proper response to the now common dismissal of first principles of right reason, is that therapy is what is needed. Banning and moderation should be reserved for specifically disorderly behaviour. Finally, since there is an open thread as just linked, replies should be made there. END

Which came first the chicken or the egg? In evolution’s case, the question is between DNA or proteins. The DNA stores the data to make the proteins, but proteins do things (like get the data out of the DNA). It is all so circular: proteins operate on DNA to get the data to make … themselves. When a new individual is conceived, the zygote has both already in place to begin with. But how could this whole biological system evolve from a mud patch? And which came first, DNA or proteins? Twenty five years ago evolutionists hit upon a new just-so story to solve this riddle: It wasn’t DNA or proteins, but RNA, that worked the magic. RNA is what Read More ›

Even before Darwin scientists knew that completely new kinds of species appeared rather abruptly in the fossil record. And a century later—when scientists uncovered the genomes of different species—they discovered that if evolution were true, then genes that build highly complex designs must have been around long before those complex designs appeared on the scene. Over and over, evolutionists have come to realize, very early life not only must have been extremely complex, but it even must have anticipated the later complexity by having the right genes all ready to go. Evolutionists even have a word for this. They call it “preadapted” genomes. Of course evolutionists insist all this must have spontaneously arisen, for no reason. It was just lucky. Read More ›

From “Orientation of desert ants: Every cue counts” (EurekAlert!, 9-Mar-2012,PLoS ONE), we learn, Desert ants use the polarized sunlight and count their steps in order to return to their home. Scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology have now discovered that ants can also use magnetic and vibrational landmarks in order to find their nest. In addition, carbon dioxide produced by their nest mates’ breathing also helps to pinpoint their nest entrance. The desert ants’ navigational skills prove enormously adaptable to their inhospitable environment. The individual ant isn’t smart. Even thecolony isn’t smart. It never has any new ideas. So something is smart, it just isn’t the ants.

At PhysOrg a new article review puts the kabash on the RNA-world hypothesis. “I’m convinced that the RNA world (hypothesis) is not correct,” Caetano-Anollés said. “That world of nucleic acids could not have existed if not tethered to proteins.” Also “This is a very engaging and provocative article by one of the most innovative and productive researchers in the field of protein evolution,” said University of California at San Diego research professor Russell Doolittle, who was not involved in the study. Doolittle remains puzzled, however, by “the notion that some early proteins were made before the evolution of the ribosome as a protein-manufacturing system.” He wondered how – if proteins were more ancient than the ribosomal machinery that today produces Read More ›