The more that evolutionists claim nature is full of junk, the more that science finds uses for the junk. An intriguing example are the retroviruses which, for several years, have been found to have various functions. Yet another retrovirus function was published last fall in a study out of Canada. This retrovirus works with several proteins in human embryonic stem cells and without it the stem cells lose their key functionalities.  Read more

Further to Junk DNA hires a PR firm (by the time you can’t tell the difference between Darwin’s elite followers and his trolls, you know something is happening): Rob Sheldon writes to say, There may be some very good reasons for onions to have large genomes. Let’s start with an analogy. My son says the computer game “Starcraft” will play on just about any old piece of computer hardware in the house. However, he tells me, when you go to download the game from the website, it takes up 15 GBytes of space. Evidently, in order to be compatible with older hardware, it has to use less CPU power–since the older machines were not as powerful. Much if not most Read More ›

From The Evolution Revolution by Lee Spetner: Much has been learned in the life sciences in the last several decades about how an organism can alter its genome to enable it to adapt to new environmental conditions. Transposable genetic elements were discovered some seventy years ago by Barbara McClintock (McClintock 1941, 1950, 1955, 1956, 1983), but they were initially dismissed by mainstream geneticists as spurious phenomena. McClintock pursued her research despite it being considered a backwater area, and eventually the importance of her work was recognized by the Nobel Prize committee in awarding her the Prize in Medicine in 1983. The transposable genetic elements she discovered have been subsequently revealed to be members of a class of genetic rearrangements that do Read More ›

Further to: Where did the term irreducible complexity originate, Michael “Forbidden Archeology” Cremo writes to say, Richard Thompson and I used the term “irreducible complexity” In our 1984 publication Origins. “Looking at the complex phenomena that confront any observer of the universe, scientists have decided to try a reductionistic approach. They say, ‘Let’s try to reduce everything to measurements and try to explain them by simple universal laws.’ But there is no logical reason for ruling out in advance alternative strategies for comprehending the universe, strategies that might involve laws and principles of irreducible complexity.” (p. 4) Drutakarma Dasa (Michael A. Cremo), Bhutatma Dasa (Austin Gordon), and Sadaputa Dasa (Richard L. Thompso) 1984. Origins: Higher Dimensions in Science. Los Angeles: Read More ›

IMO, an entailment of the scientific theory of ID as it pertains to biological evolution, is that at least one of the following occurs: (1) directed variation, and/or  (2) artificial selection/maintenance, and that such processes produce outcomes that are detectable as the product of directed/artificial input.  (Note: these are posited as entailments of ID theory as it relates to biological evoloution, not origin-of-life or cosmological fine-tuning.  If ID is involved in biological evolution, it seems to me it must be involved in either the variation or selection process in some way; otherwise, we’re talking about the origin of a life form.) Directed variation may include the insertion of extra-species genes or other systemic instructions, the application of a system to Read More ›

Fights back. Well, that seems to be what’s happening. Further to: New York Times science writer defends junk DNA (Old concepts die hard, especially when they are value-laden as “junk DNA” has been—it has been a key argument for Darwinism), one of the conundrums on which the junk DNA folk rely heavily is the “onion test” (why does the onion have such a large genome?). Without waiting to answer the question, the junk DNA folk assume that that’s because most of it is junk. But let’s face it, when even Francis Collins, the original Christian Nobelist for Darwin, is abandoning ship, they really need to double down on that junk. From Evolution News & Views: What’s so striking about Zimmer’s Read More ›

Suzan Mazur’s The Origin of Life Circus continues with an interview with David Deamer, a serious origin of life researcher. One gets the sense that previous interviewee chemist Harry Lonsdale, founder and funder of the eponymous origin of life prize, was wedded to the idea that life must come about via Darwinian means. And that the second interviewee, physicist Larry Krauss— the go-to man for the Lonsdale origin of life prize—is something of a showman, though Darwin’s man at heart. In Mazur’s third chapter, we meet a genuine origin of life research scientist in UCal Santa Cruz David Deamer, president of ISSOL (origin of life society): Suzan Mazur: Freeman Dyson told me that the garbage bag world scenario probably went Read More ›

It’s why we pay taxes for this stuff: I had occasion to read a rather lengthy essay this week by the Washington Post’s science reporter, Joel Achenbach, which left me feeling not only annoyed but somewhat insulted. Titled, “Why science is so hard to believe” the article didn’t spend much time talking about specific theories under debate, but rather chose to focus on all of you out there in the hoi polloi and why you have such a difficult time sitting down quietly and listening to your betters. I invite you to go through it yourself because there’s a lot of material to cover. But I would point out just one example of the overriding theme which is present throughout Read More ›

Further to: If atheism is not a religion, in a meaningful sense, why are there atheist chaplains at U.S. colleges now?, Gray had commented at the Guardian, It has often been observed that Christianity follows changing moral fashions, all the while believing that it stands apart from the world. The same might be said, with more justice, of the prevalent version of atheism. If an earlier generation of unbelievers shared the racial prejudices of their time and elevated them to the status of scientific truths, evangelical atheists do the same with the liberal values to which western societies subscribe today – while looking with contempt upon “backward” cultures that have not abandoned religion. The racial theories promoted by atheists in Read More ›

… why are there atheist chaplains at U.S. colleges now? New York Times: LOS ANGELES — When Bart Campolo broke with the church almost five years ago, he immediately began to feel something missing. It wasn’t so much that the pastor’s son no longer believed in God; he’d never been that much of a believer anyway. What he missed, Campolo said, was what the church had represented to him: a place where like-minded people could gather for fellowship, to pursue moral justice, to help one another and to try to live good lives. So the onetime United Methodist youth minister, who worked for decades with the poor in inner-city neighborhoods in Philadelphia and Cincinnati, figured he’d try to keep doing Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: th three decades of data from more than 475,000 participants, a new study on narcissism from the University at Buffalo School of Management reveals that men, on average, are more narcissistic than women. Forthcoming in the journal Psychological Bulletin, the study compiled 31 years of narcissism research and found that men consistently scored higher in narcissism across multiple generations and regardless of age. “Narcissism is associated with various interpersonal dysfunctions, including an inability to maintain healthy long-term relationships, unethical behavior and aggression,” says lead author Emily Grijalva, PhD, assistant professor of organization and human resources in the UB School of Management. “At the same time, narcissism is shown to boost self-esteem, emotional stability and the tendency to emerge Read More ›

News writer O’Leary’s night job The Internet can help the grass roots grow—or lay down astroturf. False climates of opinion can be built up through new media. Jihadi brides: Don’t overlook how new media market cruelty as well as porn Some women were captivated by beheading videos. Librarian: The Internet doesn’t harm the good student, but it make the poor student worse http://www.mercatornet.com/connecting/view/15720 Students confuse “available” with “helpful” When the bookstore closes, do the lights go out on culture? In one case, the atmosphere suddenly electrified. Are libraries just too unCool to survive in an Internet age? We can’t discard what libraries do. The Silicon Rift Valley—the deep social divides Silicon Valley itself is, overall, a highly unequal society. Follow Read More ›

Worries Carl Zimmer, a “No junk DNA” scenario could help creationists: It’s no coincidence, researchers like Gregory argue, that bona fide creationists have used recent changes in the thinking about junk DNA to try to turn back the clock to the days before Darwin. Zimmer is responding to the recent realization that there is very little junk DNA, and is apparently refurbishing and remarketing the concept, invoking of course the Sacred Name of Darwin: The human genome contains around 20,000 genes, that is, the stretches of DNA that encode proteins. But these genes account for only about 1.2 percent of the total genome. The other 98.8 percent is known as noncoding DNA. Gregory believes that while some noncoding DNA is Read More ›

Chris Fields, for perhaps obvious reasons an independent researcher, offers a thesis that attempts to grapple with the nature of information in cosmology, as discussed at the Physics arXiv Blog: In fact, Fields argues that it is the interaction between the cosmic microwave background and all large objects in the universe that causes them to decohere giving them specific positions which astronomers observe. But there is an important consequence from having a specific position—there must be some information associated with this location in 3D space. If a location is unknown, then the amount of information must be small. But if it is known with precision, the information content is much higher. And given that there are some 10^25 stars in Read More ›

For decades, the creationist movement was primarily situated in the United States. Then, in the 1970s, American creationists found their ideas welcomed abroad, first in Australia and New Zealand, then in Korea, India, South Africa, Brazil, and elsewhere—including Europe, where creationism plays an expanding role in public debates about science policy and school curricula. In this, the first comprehensive history of creationism in Europe, leading historians, philosophers, and scientists narrate the rise of—and response to—scientific creationism, creation science, intelligent design, and organized antievolutionism in countries and religions throughout Europe. Providing a unique map of creationism in Europe, the authors chart the surprising history of creationist activities and strategies there. Over the past forty years, creationism has spread swiftly among European Read More ›