Cornelius Hunter

A report today on new research out of Spain on embryonic development of zebrafish reads “From Fish to Man: Research Reveals How Fins Became Legs.” In this study evolutionists altered the expression levels of some regulatory genes resulting in deformed fins. The idea is that the deformed fin is taking its first step toward evolving into a tetrapod limb, and that this significant evolutionary transition was due not to an altered protein changing the way fins are built, but rather a change in the levels of existing proteins. As one of the researchers explained:  Read more

Researchers at the University of Warwick have found another round of “conserved” non coding sequences, this time in the four plant species: the papaya, poplar, Arabidopsis and grape. And if the these similar DNA sequences are found in such disparate species, then the sequences must have been present in a very distant, and much simpler, common ancestor. The problem these CNS’s are apparently rather clever. Not only do they appear to be regulating gene expression by influencing transcription factor binding, but they many of the genes regulated by these sequences are themselves transcription factors. As one researcherexplains:  Read more

What happens when engineers look at biology? Unlike evolutionists, they see designs for all kinds of useful applications. “Biomimicry,” explains one article, “is an incredibly productive technique.”  Read more

You’ve heard of novel genes—genes that are found in only one species, and you’ve heard of alternative splicing—complex genes that are edited in different ways. Now put them together and on steroids, and to top it off, all in a mere unicellar algae. It’s another damage control nightmare as evolutionists again can’t figure out what went wrong.  Read more

As the truth becomes ever more clear, so too the mythology must become ever more powerful. As we learn more, we must deny more. They once said biology was made of simple building blocks, but as this BBC video shows in pixel-level detail, that was just another myth. So now we need a new one. I don’t know what the twenty first century’s origins theory will be, but it will be called evolution.  See more

“Avian flight,” a new studyexplains, “is one of the remarkable achievements of vertebrate evolution.” Indeed, there is the “complex biotechnical architecture of avian wings,” the “magic structural wing asymmetries” so important for aeroelastic flight control, and the “extremely precise coordination of the complex wing beat motions, together with a perfect flight guidance and control performance.”  Read more

Proteins consist of a long sequence of amino acids and those amino acids are supplied by the so-called transfer RNA, or tRNA, molecules. The tRNA molecules, in turn, are loaded with the right amino acid by the so-called aminoacyl-transfer RNA synthetases, or aaRS, proteins. There are several different versions of aaRS proteins, which load the different tRNA molecules with the different kinds of amino acids. These aaRS proteins hang around the ribosome where proteins are constructed. But as I discussed in the previous post, the lysine aaRS, also known as LysRS, has an interesting dual role. Normally it hangs around the ribosome where it binds to another LysRS to form what is known as a dimer. In this dimer configuration, there is Read More ›

You’ve seen those amazing multi-purpose kitchen utensils and jackknifes that perform a dozen tasks, but it is all standard fare in biology. From the DNA molecule which stores all kinds of information (you can see examples here, here, hereand here) including overlapping genes, to molecules that fulfill various roles depending on the cellular context and gene sharing, biology is the model of efficiency. Call it multi-purpose design, component reuse, optimization of information density, or whatever, it is one of biology’s biggest unsung feats and last week yet another example was published.  Read more

The twentieth century’s eugenics movement was eventually discarded, but eugenics did not go away entirely. Today eugenics continues, but it is a much more diverse and technologically sophisticated. There are the so-called eugenic abortions where the unborn with higher disease risks are “terminated.” And today’s technology allows for specific embryos, and even genes, to be selected. There seems to be, as Nathaniel Comfort observed this month, a eugenic impulse that drives us to seek a better human race. Underlying such health concerns, however, are the usual less benevolent motivations. In addition to the promised health benefits, Comfort explains that eugenics offers an intellectual thrill, and the profits of genetic biomedicine. Such lures are, explains Comfort, “too great for us to do Read More ›

Nature is, as Tennyson lamented, red in tooth and claw, but Darwinism turned death and bloodshed into a virtue. It is evolution’s natural selection that makes way for the more fit by killing off the less fit. Natural selection did not, indeed it cannot, induce better mutations. But when by chance they luckily arise, then they propagate at the cost of the lesser designs. Spencer’s phrase “the survival of the fittest,” which Darwin adopted, is more optimistic sounding but no less telling. With evolution, death is the engine of progress. Or as Matt Ridley explained today, … Read more

Here is a must see video that is well worth the five minutes of your time. It will have you asking, with evolutionist Ed Scholes, “Why?”  Read more

Evolutionary thought holds that the universe, the quasars, the galaxies, the solar systems, the planets and moons arose spontaneously by chance events and natural law. How that occurred is uncertain and under scientific investigation. That it occurred is not uncertain, it is a fact. These two different departments of evolutionary thought are disjoint. The fact of evolution does not derive from the particular theories of how it could have happened. It must be that way because there is substantial uncertainty of how it could have happened. Theories of the Solar system evolution, for instance, fall into two broad categories. In the monistic theories, the planets and Sun arise from the same process, such as in Laplace’s Nebular Hypothesis. In dualistic Read More ›

A culture’s creation narrative is foundational, for it forms the template for everything else. One of the consequences of evolution—the belief that the world spontaneously arose by itself—is that it underwrites moral relativism, which is not to say there is no right and wrong but rather that right and wrong is something that we decide. And since evolution is true, it is to evolution that we go for our rights. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” proclaims the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But with evolution there is no such endowment, for there is Read More ›

It’s another rags-to-riches evolutionary story, this time with epigenetics going from dog house to white house. First evolutionists denied epigenetics, then they said epigenetics are inconsequential and now they say epigenetics may be instrumental in, err, the origin of the human brain. That’s quite a turn around. When (i) leading evolutionists such as Jerry Coyneare saying epigenetic characters are not usually inherited past one or two generations and so are not “going to change our concept of evolution,” while (ii) research papers are concluding that epigenetic changes, coordinated with genetic changes, “could play a role in the evolution of the primate brain,” then you know something is wrong. Evolutionists are having to rewrite their story at an ever increasing rate to try to Read More ›

Ideas have consequences. Over the past century evolutionary thought has become dominant in much more than just the historical sciences. Other branches of science as well as education, law, history, public policy and media have increasingly been influenced by the idea that the world arose spontaneously. This tremendous influence of evolutionary thought has consequences that are largely misunderstood. The misconception is that, while there have been some missteps along the way such as in the twentieth century’s eugenics movement, those were both minor and largely behind us now and the greater and lasting consequences of evolution have been positive. Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Read more