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Richard Dawkins has often expressed faith in the ease of evolving eyes. It shows what strong faith he has in the power of RM and NS. Although he was completely wrong about this, he still has immovable faith in the power of Darwinian evolution. This is because his speculations rather than being based on evidence, simply depend on his very fruitful imagination. Dawkins, Richard, Where d’you get those peepers?Vol. 8, New Statesman & Society, 06-16-1995, pp 29. “Serviceable image-forming eyes have evolved between 40 and 60 times, independently from scratch, in many different invertebrate groups. Among these 40-plus independent evolutions, at least nine distinct design principles have been discovered, including pinhole eyes, two kinds of camera-lens eyes, curved-reflector (“satellite dish”) eyes, and Read More ›

I have been thinking about E. coli and their evolution. E. coli live in the gut. They are passed environmentally from parents to children. When humans and baboons had their presumed common ancestor ~ 20 mill years ago, that should be the last time when E. coli in our bowel had a common ancestor with E. coli in the bowel of baboons in the wild. The following study looked at Baboon and Human E. coli (1985). “The biotype data indicate that the amount and distribution of genetic variation in the E. coli among free-ranging baboon troops are similar to those in isolates from humans. However, E. coli isolates from baboons are able to utilize a greater variety of sugars as their Read More ›

Paul Davies Tuesday June 26, 2007 The Guardian    Condensed Just why is Intelligent Design referred to as a “movement” when Multiverse is called a “theory”?  “The universe looks like a fix. But that doesn’t mean that a god fixed it. We will never explain the cosmos by taking on faith either divinity or physical laws. True meaning is to be found within nature. Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth – the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient “coincidences” and special features in the underlying laws of the universe. Change any one of them and the consequences would be lethal. Fred Hoyle once Read More ›

Your responses to this condensed version of an editorial would be appreciated. (This item is available free as a special feature.) “Anti-Darwin activism is alive and well. The most insidious movement promotes ‘intelligent design’ (ID) – the notion that some features in nature are best explained by an intelligent cause – as an alternative scientific theory to evolution by natural selection. Pro-ID interest groups can be found throughout US and Europe. It becomes increasingly likely for a scientist to be confronted by a pro-ID campaigner or challenged by a student, friend or neighbor intrigued and seduced by the concept of a scientific theory of design. How to respond is not a trivial matter. One can choose to fully engage in debate Read More ›

I would like to apologise to Prof Krauss for a posting which inferred, based entirely on the quotes in a Telegraph UK interview(see here), that he had asserted that observing the universe had adversely changed the universe. Unfortunately the New Scientist paper upon which the Telegraph article is based is not available on line without subscription. idnet.com.au

SCIENCE, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. The problem is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way, that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws of an unspecified origin. The very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Christians envisage God as upholding the natural order from beyond the universe, while physicists think of their laws as inhabiting an abstract transcendent realm of perfect mathematical relationships. Until science comes up with a Read More ›

The road to modularity Günter P. Wagner, Mihaela Pavlicev and James M. Cheverud Nature Reviews Genetics Volume 8 Dec 2007  “From our reading of the literature, origin of modularity research is still mostly based on model analysis rather than data. It is likely that we have not yet fully explored the range of theoretical possibilities to explain modularity, and more theoretical work will still be valuable. The models reviewed here, however, suggest an emerging theme. It seems that the origin of modularity requires both a mutational process that favours the origin of modularity and selection pressures that can take advantage of and reinforce the mutational bias.” Hot off the press and freely available, this EvoDevo paper admits that we need a Read More ›

Package models and the information crisis of prebiotic evolution Daniel A. M. M. Silvestre,  Jos´e F. Fontanari http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0710/0710.3278v1.pdf The coexistence of different types of templates has been the choice solution to the information crisis of prebiotic evolution, triggered by the finding that a single RNA-like template cannot carry enough information to code for any useful replicase. In principle, confining d distinct templates of length L in a package or protocell, whose survival depends on the coexistence of the templates it holds in, could resolve this crisis provided that d is made sufficiently large. We review the prototypical package model of Niesert et al. (1981) which guarantees the greatest possible region of viability of the protocell population, and show that this Read More ›

This debate is really worth a listen. Lennox speaks very well. What follows are some classic Richard Dawkins statements. What do you think? (A, B C refer to the sound files 1 2 and 3 form the download, and the number to the time into the sound file.) A14 I lost my faith because Darwin left me with no good reason to believe. B2 Life is explained by Darwin. Cosmology is waiting for its Darwin. B6 I invoke the Anthropic principle … and the multiverse. B18 I would not for a moment say that all religion is bad or all religion is dangerous or Christianity is dangerous. Only a minority of religious people are bad or do bad things. B20 The one belief I would give Read More ›

From “Evo-Devo of feathers and scales: building complex epithelial appendages”  http://www-hsc.usc.edu/~cmchuong/2000CurrOpinGenetandDev.pdf p5 and p6 “Archeopteryx existed ~145 million years ago and appears relatively advanced: it has different types of feathers over the body but still has teeth, claws in the wing, and a feathered tail. The flight feathers in the wing are asymmetric, suggesting that it could fly. Confuciusornis ~140 mya had both down and flight feathers. The well-developed asymmetric flight feathers and toothless beak suggests that it flew well. The fossils even indicate the establishment of sexual dimorphism in the tail feathers. Protarchaeopteryx ~120-136 mya also had bilaterally symmetric pennaceous feathers, but still lacked the asymmetric vane required for flying. Caudipteryx ~127mya had evolved different feather types over the Read More ›

According to Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, Richard Dawkins is “out of date” with his genetics. Listen to his opinion on how changes happen in science. This interview is edited from Australian ABC Science Show 11th August 2007. http://www.idnet.com.au/files/pdf/ssw_20070811.mp3

Dr David Seargent from NSW Australia has just published PLANET EARTH and the Design Hypothesis In many respects, our planet is a cosmic anomaly. Moreover, it is anomalous in such a way as to provide an excellent environment for complex life in what appears to be a largely hostile universe. Is this simply a fortunate coincidence, or does it speak of something more fundamental, even an underlying intelligent design in nature? To answer this question, we must isolate the characteristics of design and determine whether these are apparent in the natural world. The ensuing discussion will take us beyond the important contributions of mathematician and philosopher W. Dembski and biologist M. Behe to the concept of “Transitive Complexity” (TC). It Read More ›

“I believe that if fossil birds are found very low down in the series, they will be seen to have a double or bifurcated wing. Here is a bold prophecy!” http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F1452.2&viewtype=text&pageseq=226 Does any one know if his prophecy came true?

Many RNA-binding proteins have modular structures and are composed of multiple repeats of just a few basic domains that are arranged in various ways to satisfy their diverse functional requirements. Recent studies have investigated how different modules cooperate in regulating the RNA-binding specificity and the biological activity of these proteins. They have also investigated how multiple modules cooperate with enzymatic domains to regulate the catalytic activity of enzymes that act on RNA. These studies have shown how, for many RNA-binding proteins, multiple modules define the fundamental structural unit that is responsible for biological function. Bradley M. Lunde, Claire Moore & Gabriele Varani  Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 8, 479-490 (June 2007) | doi:10.1038/nrm2178 http://www.nature.com/nrm/journal/v8/n6/abs/nrm2178.html This paper is yet another of Read More ›

From Nature this week. “Knowing how plants and bacteria harvest light for photosynthesis so efficiently could provide a clean solution to mankind’s energy requirements. The secret, it seems, may be the coherent application of quantum principles. Roseanne J. Sension doi:10.1038/446740a Full Text 

Photosynthesis provides the primary energy source for almost all life on Earth. One of its remarkable features is the efficiency with which energy is transferred within the light harvesting complexes comprising the photosynthetic apparatus. Suspicions that quantum trickery might be involved in the energy transfer processes at the core of photosynthesis are now confirmed by a new spectroscopic study. The study reveals electronic quantum beats characteristic of wavelike energy motion within the bacteriochlorophyll complex from the green sulphur bacterium Chlorobium tepidum. This wavelike characteristic of the energy transfer process can explain the extreme efficiency of photosynthesis, in that vast areas of phase space can be sampled effectively to find the most efficient path for energy transfer. Read More ›