From “The Epigenome: Evolution’s Newest Nightmare” (Evolution News & Views, February 15, 2012), we
learn,
The epigenome looks like it could be the evolutionists’ newest nightmare — and the latest icon of intelligent design. Back in the 1950s, the genome coded in DNA could well have finished off Darwin. Its digital code, faithfully copied and reproduced by a host of molecular machines, was not the kind of sophistication that Darwinian theory expected, or seemed capable of explaining. Nevertheless, fancy footwork and rhetorical swordsmanship has kept the theory in a standoff with versions of ID for some sixty years.
Enter the epigenome, with its codes, upon codes, upon codes. Discovery Institute’s Richard Sternberg has made this the focus of his research lately and, as Casey described the other day, it’s also the subject of a new book based on Sternberg’s work, by Tom Woodward and James Gills, The Mysterious Epigenome: What Lies Beyond DNA.
When all else fails, look brave. Three Harvard biologists, Ben Hunter, Jesse D. Hollister, and Kirsten Bomblies, have now sought to face the daunting new challenge with an essay in Current Biology, “Epigenetic Inheritance: What News for Evolution?”
Wherein they try to pretend that nothing much has happened.
In fairness, Darwinism rules in media and education, and both are now increasingly facts-optional environments, like Wikipedia. Once you’ve got the “consensus scholarship” claiming that nothing has happened, what more do you need?
See also: Darwin’s world sticks its toe in epigenetics