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Here. As we know, random changes and undirected natural processes routinely succeed in assembling functional equipment for a range of uses. Wait…it doesn’t work that way? The Revolutionary Behe website, at http://revolutionarybehe.com/, features more information about Dr. Behe’s research, other molecular machines, and evidence for intelligent design, and the stories of revolutionary scientists changing the evolutionary paradigm. See the documentary now and pass it along! Behe is the author of Darwin’s Black Box and Edge of Evolution Note: News posting light till later today due to other alternate night job. See also: How ID theorist Michael Behe forced Darwin’s faithful to start talking nonsense and Eric Metaxas on Michael Behe, Revolutionary

From Creation-Evolution Headlines: Will Brown bring Darwin’s Down House down? Look at the title of a paper in the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics by Christopher J. Graves and Daniel M. Weinreich of Brown University: “Variability in Fitness Effects Can Preclude Selection of the Fittest.” The very title suggests that core concepts underlying neo-Darwinism (fitness and selection) are in trouble. Although the paper is behind a paywall, we get an idea of the trouble from the Abstract: Evolutionary biologists often predict the outcome of natural selection on an allele by measuring its effects on lifetime survival and reproduction of individual carriers. However, alleles affecting traits like sex, evolvability, and cooperation can cause fitness effects that depend heavily on Read More ›

Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994), philosophy professor at the University of California (Berkeley), sometimes said that what is termed science in one culture is called voodoo in another: To those who look at the rich material provided by history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order to please their lower instincts—their craving for intellectual security in the form of clarity, precision, ‘objectivity,’ [or] ’truth’—it will become clear that there is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It is the principle: anything goes.” Paul K. Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (1975, 1993), 18-19. ) Just came across an interesting contrarian piece by John Horgan in Read More ›

From Jordana Cepelewicz at Quanta: Nigel Goldenfeld applies the physics of condensed matter to understand why evolution was blazingly fast for the earliest life — and then slowed down. Cepelewicz So how can collective effects in physics inform our understanding of evolution? Goldenfeld: When you think about evolution, you typically tend to think about population genetics, the frequency of genes in a population. But if you look to the Last Universal Common Ancestor — the organism ancestral to all others, which we can trace through phylogenetics [the study of evolutionary relationships] — that’s not the beginning of life. There was definitely simpler life before that — life that didn’t even have genes, when there were no species. So we know Read More ›

Paper published in June in PLOS Biology: Environmental change drives accelerated adaptation through stimulated copy number variation From author summary: Stimulated copy number variation (CNV) operates at sites of preexisting copy number variation, which are common in eukaryotic genomes, and provides cells with a remarkable and unexpected ability to alter their own genome in response to the environment. pdf (public access) Abstract: Copy number variation (CNV) is rife in eukaryotic genomes and has been implicated in many human disorders, particularly cancer, in which CNV promotes both tumorigenesis and chemotherapy resistance. CNVs are considered random mutations but often arise through replication defects; transcription can interfere with replication fork progression and stability, leading to increased mutation rates at highly transcribed loci. Here Read More ›

From Abigail Beall at New Scientist: We thought electrons and their two mysterious siblings were fundamental particles. Now there are hints that we need to go smaller still to understand matter But the truly inexplicable thing about the electron is that it has two heavier siblings. The universe would tick along fine without these particles, which never hang around long anyway. So why do they exist? And why are there three siblings, not four or 104? More. There may be, we are told, “a hidden world buzzing beneath the surface of the electron – one that would force us to rethink all the fundamental building blocks of matter.” Interesting questions: Why do so many things come in threes? Stability? Also, Read More ›

Here: The conventional NeoDarwinian appraisal of evolution is based on corresponding pillars of random genetic variation and selection via differential fitness. In the 21st century, a salient question arises. Is this a sufficient evolutionary narrative? This Special Issue will offer several differing perspectives on evolutionary development and phylogeny that extend beyond Darwinian selection. The role of cellular cooperativity, cellular cognition, self-reference, niche construction, stigmergy, self-organization, epigenetic modifications, genetic transfer and mobility, endosymbiosis, hologenomics, and non-stochastic genetic mechanisms will be addressed. In particular, cell–cell communication and aspects of cellular/genetic self-engineering will be considered. Over many years, movement towards a substantial revision of the NeoDarwinian synthesis has gained slow momentum through many diverging approaches. This Special Issue will explore a variety of Read More ›

From SCIO: Scholarship and Christianity at Oxford, Application Deadline: 15 September 2017 Bridging the Two Cultures of Science and the Humanities II, 2017–19, is a significant opportunity for up to 25 early- to mid-level career faculty members from the CCCU and across the globe to experience an enhanced summer programme aimed at developing interdisciplinary skills in Science and Religion. … The Oxford-based seminars, which will take place from 1 to 29 July 2018 and from 30 June to 28 July 2019, will focus on the development of interdisciplinary skills and understanding central to the field of Science and Religion, within the unique setting of Oxford. Social and natural scientists will join those in the humanities to explore established and emerging Read More ›

From The Little Book of God, Mind, Cosmos and Truth: In an interview in the Irish Times newspaper, Dr Kevin Mitchell from Trinity College Dublin, spoke about this some years ago. He pointed out the idea “that we are effectively androids, though made out of carbon”. He says that the “mind emerges from the workings of my brain and nothing else”. If God does not exist and Naturalism is all there is, then Dr Mitchell’s views would be correct. But on theism, how can the reliability of his statement be true if it’s coming from an android made out of carbon? Surely carbon androids are primarily evolved for survival-of-the-fittest values, with truthful statements being less significant? Furthermore, an android does Read More ›

Re the ENV post, Question for multiverse theorists: To what can science appeal, if not evidence?, from experimental physicist and our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon: — It is part of the 21st century deconstruction, that it is not enough to oppose the truth, but it is necessary to undermine even the possibility of holding the truth. In physics it is the multiverse. In psychology it is the denial of free will or consciousness. In biology it is denial of teleology, the necessity of naturalism. In ethics it is not “situational” anymore; it is the desire to see all ethics as “oppressive”. Consider the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s article on fine-tuning. I tried reading it, and it echoes the same Read More ›

From Sarah Laskow at Atlas Obscura: Of the possible plant talents that have gone under-recognized, memory is one of the most intriguing. Some plants live their whole lives in one season, while others grow for hundreds of years. Either way, it has not been obvious to us that any of them hold on to past events in ways that change how they react to new challenges. But biologists have shown that certain plants in certain situations can store information about their experiences and use that information to guide how they grow, develop, or behave. Functionally, at least, they appear to be creating memories. How, when, and why they form these memories might help scientists train plants to face the challenges—poor Read More ›

From Shawna Williams at The Scientist: Genetic variants linked to a predisposition for Alzheimer’s disease and heavy smoking are less common in older people than in younger people, researchers report today (September 5) in PLOS Biology. Their study analyzed genetic alleles in two large genomic databases to find those associated with longevity, which they used as a proxy for evolutionary fitness. “Nobody’s really had the data to measure single-generation shifts in allele frequencies in humans before,” says geneticist Jonathan Pritchard of Stanford University who was not involved in the study. “It’s an important part of understanding how evolution works to go down to the smallest scale of evolutionary change, namely, what’s happening in one generation.” More. … But how would Read More ›

From Fern Elsdon-Baker at New Scientist, reporting on that recent study of people who question evolution, It sounds startling. Nearly 30 per cent of adults in the UK say evolution can’t explain the origin of humans. That rises to nearly 50 per cent for human consciousness. Does that mean we’re increasingly following a vocal minority in the US who deny the science on fringe religious grounds? … Unexpectedly, 44 per cent felt that evolutionary processes cannot explain the existence of human consciousness. It might be tempting to assume that this is just a reflection of the number of religious believers. However, while faith does appear to amplify individual doubts about evolutionary explanations, it is not the only factor at work. Read More ›

Or are they just exposing the flaws in the system? From Benjamin Jones at Smithsonian Mag: To study life on Earth, you need a system. Ours is Linnaean taxonomy, the model started by Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus in 1735. Linnaeus’s two-part species names, often Latin-based, consist of both a genus name and a species name, i.e. Homo sapiens. Like a library’s Dewey Decimal system for books, this biological classification system has allowed scientists around the world to study organisms without confusion or overlap for nearly 300 years. But, like any library, taxonomy is only as good as its librarians—and now a few rogue taxonomists are threatening to expose the flaws within the system. Taxonomic vandals, as they’re referred to within Read More ›

What pre-extinguished boffin said that? From Fern Elsdon-Baker at Guardian: We clearly need to be careful not to assume that when people say they are rejecting “evolutionary science”, they are rejecting all scientific research or indeed all of what we might think of as evolutionary science. ‘Evolution’ as a term has gained a mishmash of cultural baggage over the years, not least a strong association with ‘New Atheist’ movements. Some may just reject it out of hand because they assume you have to be an atheist to accept evolutionary science. Our data suggests that ‘genetics’ doesn’t appear to have this baggage. Furthermore, doubts about evolutionary science frequently appear to be related to the perceived limitations of evolutionary science-based explanations for Read More ›