Dr. Kozulic has requested UD to post the following response to Dr. Torley’s recent retraction vis-à-vis the fixation issue: Since my reputation is at stake, I kindly ask you to make my position public in another post at Uncommondescent under the title: ‘When I am not wrong’, with the following text: Dr. Kozulic would like to state the following: There is nothing wrong with the arguments and questions put forward in the post “Branko Kozulic responds to Professor Moran” In his reply “On being “outed” as a closet Darwinist” Professor Moran has not answered any of the questions and arguments raised. Until that happens, his claim that 22,000,000 million neutral mutations can be fixed in 5,000,000 years cannot be but Read More ›

If you can’t find a missing link, just make one up with plaster and body parts and put it in museums. I don’t think the deception was deliberate in as much as it was self-deception and they just added plaster to conform a land fossil to look like a whale. The two scientists who found the lion’s share of walking whale fossils essentially created the best fossil proof of evolution using plaster models and drawings and supplied these to museums and science magazines. In each case, they started with incomplete fossils of a land mammal. Whenever a fossil part was missing, they substituted a whale body part (blowholes, fins and flukes) on the skeletal model or skull that they distributed Read More ›

Here is a case of evolutionary bias causing misrecognition of orphan genes in humans. Orphan genes are presumed protein coding genes that exist in only one species and have such non-similarity to anything in any other species they are called orphans (a play on words of the ORF acroym for Open Reading Frame). This came up in the Nelson-Velasco debate where Velasco said there are 0 orphan genes, and Nelson pointed out the reason some say they are zero is because of their biases. Nelson has been vindicated as I pointed out in New Mechanism of Evouion — POOF Here’s is the proof of this cover up Distinguishing protein-coding and noncoding genes in the human genome: 1. “The remaining 1,177 Read More ›

In a recent post, Professor Moran issued me with a challenge: Vincent, let’s test your honesty. Considering the two sides of this debate, do you honestly think that evolutionary biologists are more likely — or at least as likely — to be swayed by ideological bias and emotion as the creationists who argue against evolution? In today’s post, I’d like to explain why I believe that evolutionary biologists who regard evolution as an unguided process are more ideologically biased than people who believe that God made us – whether through a process of (a) direct creation or (b) guided evolution. The distinction between the latter two positions is totally irrelevant, from Professor Moran’s perspective: he has written that he regards Read More ›

Are you an ID proponent, a creationist, a recovering Darwinist wanting to fellowship with your fellow outcasts from the church of Darwin? For the creationists at UD wanting more than just ID but some undiluted creationism with not as much theology and solicitation for money, www.reddit.com/r/creation might be for you. One of UD’s own, JoeCoder, is a moderator there, and he can sign you up if you are sympathetic to ID. This is a private chat room for now, so you won’t have to worry about getting jumped by DarBots. That’s why JoeCoder restricts participation. Many of my recent UD posts were inspired by what JoeCoder posts privately there. I’m mentioning his work because he has supported UD with a Read More ›

I would like to thank Professor Moran for kindly addressing the issues raised in my previous post, “Branko Kozulic responds to Professor Moran”. The answers did help me clarify some points that I was struggling with, in my thinking. In this reply, I am speaking in my own name only. (Note by vjtorley: I have made a few minor corrections to Dr. Kozulic’s English, but the views expressed below are his, not mine. However, since he does not have posting privileges on Uncommon Descent, I have agreed to put up this post at his request, as I’m a firm believer in free speech.) At the outset, I would like to express my conviction that in matters relating to science, Professor Read More ›

[cross posted at CEU IDCS Neutral theory and non-Darwinian evolution for newbies, Part 1 ] The Darwinian view: Natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers Charles Darwin Software that models the Darwinian view are genetic algorithms like Avida, Tierra, Ev, Steiner, Geometric and Cordova’s remarkable algorithm. Winston Ewert discusses these here. By way of contrast, I expressed my view as: Evolution in the wild slowly lets go of the good, and keeps adding up the bad. Software that models this view is Mendel’s Accountant. This view is also unwittingly modeled in most Read More ›

We had an experience a couple years ago where some of the Discovery scientists were traveling with one of our supporters. So that night, we were at this cowboy steakhouse feeding the troops. So I jumped in and offered the Discovery Institute credit card to pay for the Discovery Institute scientists, and this young waitress came back with the bill and the credit card. And she looked left and looked right and lowered her voice and said, “Can you tell me what the Discovery Institute is?” Well, I said, we’re a scientific think tank, and we’re investigating the evidence for intelligent design and challenging standard Darwin. She says, “I thought so!” She said, “Our professors hate you.” And then she Read More ›

The Happy Atheist PZ Myers’ blog was once the world’s most visited science blog. He then migrated his blog toward other issues like freethought and became involved in some of the most entertaining internet dramas like Elevator Gate. He actually took time as a science professor to answer questions intended for science professors: No not the list of stumpers again. I don’t have time right now to go through his responses, but he did have some good ones like: Most molecular evolution is neutral. Done. I’d like to thank PZ, Arthur Hunt, Larry Moran and all the science professors who responded to my draft list of questions. Their feedback will be very helpful to on going improvements to that list Read More ›