2013

Here are a couple of difficult mathematical problems for you to work on, in your spare time: And here is a difficult problem from biology: You can spend a lot of time trying different solutions to mathematical problem #1, after a while you might begin to wonder if it can be done, but don’t give up, there are always other integers to try. You can also spend a lot of time drawing maps, if one map doesn’t work, don’t give up, there are always others you can try. I once told my 10-year old son that if he could find such a map, he would be famous. He drew map after map and gave them to his older brother, who Read More ›

BBC News reports, Richard Dawkins and Rowan Williams will discuss religion on Thursday Richard Dawkins and Rowan Williams are to discuss the role of religion at a Cambridge Union debate. Prominent atheist Prof Dawkins and the former Archbishop of Canterbury will discuss whether “religion has no place in the 21st Century” on Thursday. They were involved in a public discussion at Oxford University last year. Ben Kentish, president of the union, said it should be a highlight of the debating society’s 200-year history. “Our speakers are the most renowned commentators on this subject,” he said. In Cambridge, about 1,000 students will be in the audience. “The prospect of seeing Professor Dawkins and the former Archbishop of Canterbury debate the subject Read More ›

From Science Insider, Virtually all books about evolution—along with more than 100 other titles from other fields—have apparently disappeared in recent months from the selection of popular science books for sale by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK), the country’s main science funding agency. The missing books have prompted the latest skirmish in the long-running conflict between the government and parts of the country’s academic community. But TÜBİTAK has denied censoring the books, saying that they are unavailable because of copyright issues. Click here to continue reading. Objective seekers of truth and proponents of academic freedom should find this report concerning. When one disagrees with a position or perspective, the right course of action is to present arguments Read More ›

I believe there are big problems with evolution. But I could be wrong. Or perhaps I’m right but some form of evolution is nonetheless true. Evolutionists, on the other hand, are much more certain and there is a never-ending drum roll of high truth claims from their camp. These truth claims are unwarranted and it is them, rather than the theory itself, that are the problem. So I’m not so much concerned about the theory itself as I am about the certainty with which it is presented.  Read more

I just wanted to extend my congratulations to Deborah Haarsma, the new president of BioLogos! I hope that in the coming years, whether BioLogos embraces Intelligent Design or not, they can at least come to understand better the positions we hold. I have not read Dr. Haarsma’s book on creation/evolution/intelligent design, but I would be interested to hear from people who have. Anyway, many congratulations, and I hope the BioLogos Foundation’s search for truth is effective and fruitful.

From the Biologic Institute blog: What do Han Chinese characters and proteins have in common? Both can be thought of as two- or three-dimensional functional shapes. Change their shapes significantly and you change what they mean or do. For proteins the flow of functional information goes like this:   protein coding sequence ⇒ 3-D structure ⇒ function If a code could be devised that specifies Han character traces in vector space, then the Han character set would have a similar information flow:  Han coding sequence ⇒ 2-D structure ⇒ meaning And suddenly all the parallels between genetic code and language become a rich environment in which to test evolutionary scenarios. Click here to continue reading.

A couple of days back, we saw where Cornelius Hunter put up one of his dual post comments here at UD; on the recent proposal to set up a Darwin Day celebration. In glancing at the commentary at his personal blog, I came across the following highly revealing exchange involving one of the most virulent objectors against UD, from here on: N: [cites T] “but not okay to name a day after someone who actually lived,…” [Responds:] I hope by this statement you aren’t implying Christ never existed. Later, we find this comeback: T: [Cites N]  “I hope by this statement you aren’t implying Christ never existed.” [Comments:] Can you provide any evidence that “Jesus Christ” ever existed? And no, Read More ›

One of the great things about UD is the commenters. In this case Eric Anderson has put up a summary — some days back — on an aspect of the blind- chance- and/or- necessity- in- a- chemical- stew- in- a- pond (or the like) OOL challenges that is well worth headlining: ___________ >> biological structures are not simply an aggregation of smaller units that naturally come about through the processes of physics and chemistry. We first need to clarify which building blocks we are talking about. If we are just talking about chemical elements (atoms with their constituent protons, electrons, neutrons) then, yes, everyone agrees that those exist naturally. In addition, if we are talking about some simple molecules, yes, some Read More ›

See the story here.

New research on how certain transcription factors work together is causing major problems for the theory of evolution. Transcription factors are proteins that attach to DNA and turn genes on or off. These regulatory proteins have recently been promoted to star status by evolutionists because their expectation that evolution proceeds by creating new proteins has fallen short. Instead of creating new proteins, our modern-day Epicureanism is now supposed to have reprogrammed how existing proteins are used in a mind boggling circuitry of molecular regulators, of which transcription factors play a major role. As one evolutionist explained:  Read more

You won’t believe this one. According to evolutionists, millions of years ago a retrovirus infected our ancestors’ genome causing disease, but then through the usual random events, which is to say the usual unknown events, it somehow turned hero and now appears to be highly active and playing a crucial role in stem cells. As one evolutionist admits:  Read more

Rep. Rush Holt (NJ), with the help of the atheists at the American Humanist Association, wants Congress officially to designate February 12, 2013 as Darwin Day. And you wondered why our government is a disaster. Holt believes that “Without Charles Darwin, our modern understandings of biology, ecology, genetics, and medicine would be utterly impossible.”  Read more

In a recent post over at Why Evolution Is True, Professor Jerry Coyne repeats the tired old canard that science progresses but theology doesn’t: When lecturing on their incompatibility, I always mention that although science has progressed enormously in the past few hundred years, theology has not. That is, we know no more about the nature or existence of God than we did in, say, 800 C.E. Hell, theologians aren’t sure whether there’s one god or many gods (as Hindus believe), or a red-horned devil, not to mention more trivial issues like whether the wine and crackers at communion are wholly Jesus’s blood and body (“transubstantiation”) or only partly Jesus’s blood and body (“consubstantiation”). The only “progress” theology has made Read More ›

DI has just released a video on the ATP Synthase in action (HT: ENV): The blurb at Youtube reads: ATP Synthase is a molecular machine found in all living organisms. It serves as a miniature power-generator, producing an energy-carrying molecule, adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. The ATP synthase machine has many parts we recognize from human-designed technology, including a rotor, a stator, a camshaft or driveshaft, and other basic components of a rotary engine. This machine is just the final step in a long and complex metabolic pathway involving numerous enzymes and other molecules—all so the cell can produce ATP to power biochemical reactions, and provide energy for other molecular machines in the cell. {Added, courtesy commenters below, here is another Read More ›

One of the most common tests evolutionists use, when studying how genes are supposed to have evolved, is to compare the non-synonymous and synonymous genetic differences. That is, if a gene that codes for a particular protein is found in several species, then evolutionists interpret differences in the gene, across those species, as the result of mutations in the evolutionary process. And while most mutations cause a change in the resulting protein amino acid sequence, some mutations do not affect the amino acid that is coded for. These two kinds of mutations are referred to as non-synonymous and synonymous, respectively, and their relative proportions are important to evolutionists. They believe that the while the non-synonymous mutations are important, because they Read More ›