Well then, how did a complex process like photosynthesis get the time to “evolve” by natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism)? Researchers (wisely, for now) state such findings without making any obvious inferences. But the number of these situations is building.
Darwinism
At Popular Mechanics: The universe is a “machine that keeps learning”
It sounds as though some would like to hold onto the name of Darwinism while — in reality — adopting panpsychism. That would be consistent with other trends we’ve noted.
Scott Turner, author of Purpose & Desire, has a new video series on evolution
Readers may remember J. Scott Turner, author of Purpose and Desire: What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It. He was taking a risk even putting things that way (we thought he’d been Canceled a while back) but now he has a new video series out.
Darwinism as useless padding for news media prose
Bencze: the “evolutionary hack” is … “the task of safely raising the next generation.” That is certainly an odd way of referring to parenting but, by alluding to evolution, the tone of the review rises to a more exalted scientific level thus confirming that reviewer Emily is no mere mommy but sort of a scientist herself.
Has New Scientist returned abjectly to Darwin’s fold?
New Scientist: “Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is arguably the most important scientific idea ever” … Thing is, last year (was it only last year?), New Scientist published a thirteen-part serious that would make you think they’d sworn off all that Darwin stuff. Maybe readers missed it too much. Or they need to reassure readers that nothing has changed…
Horizontal gene transfer between vertebrates: herring and smelt
We don’t know that HGT is “extremely rare” in vertebrates. We know that it was unexpected so no one was looking for it. We also know that it is extremely inconvenient for a discipline that invested so heavily in natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism).
How cells signal that they should be killed
Again, a complex signalling system that supposedly just so happened and in this case it doesn’t function for the protection of the cell but for it’s elimination.
Are Darwin’s loyalists dwindling in number and cultural attractiveness?
Who cares any more about the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? (You can look that up on the internet if you are not sure what it means. On the other hand, maybe you needn’t bother.)
Dawkins’s claim: “every gene delivers approximately the same tree of life” contested at Nature Portfolio Ecology & Evolution
You know, Dawkins may be losing his shine. New Scientist was making similar types of noise last October. It’s now okay to say when there’s something wrong with this stuff.
The rarity of bonobo adoption as an argument for human exceptionalism
The willingness of our pets to adopt other animals’ offspring — relative to that of the wild chimpanzees — is an argument for human exceptionalism. The real story is a reason that humans are not just animals.
Some cells increase gene expression after death
This cell activity, involving study of brain tissue removed during operations, is an exercise in futility. Maybe those genes are kind of like a school bureaucracy happily presiding over a school with no students or teachers.
Oldest (so far) cephalopods discovered at 522 million years old?
Wait a minute. Many cephalopods (octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish) are considered very intelligent though it is unclear how they got to be so. So, not only is this another instance of stasis (complex life forms emerge early and remain complex) but there is a real possibility that a high level of intelligence emerged early. Assuming that any intelligence at all could originate via a Darwinian mechanism, early origin followed by stasis does not sound like a Darwinian program for intelligence.
Is late stage Darwinism benefiting from the “Semmelweis effect”?
Ignaz Semmelweis’s story about handwashing helps us understand a culture in which — when the news coming back from paleontology doesn’t favor Darwinism, the proposed solution in many quarters is — more emphatic Darwinism! It’s part of the real story of science: Many scientists are just hangers-on, demanding that the system confirm their prejudices, for the well-being of their careers. As long as we can talk about it, things aren’t hopeless.
How Darwinism wound its way into various schemes for improving American society
Scambray: Hofstadter softened Darwin, making his a “conservative” force, supporting the laissez-faire status quo. Others classified Darwin as a change agent, a precursor to social planning. These intermural quarrels aside, Watson demonstrates that progressivism “aimed a dagger at the heart of the Constitution.” …
Grand Darwinian experiment with 10,000 generations of yeast proves that Mike Behe is right
If the authors could have predicted adaptation through loss-of-function mutations, why didn’t they let high school textbook authors and pop science presenters in on the secret?: Michael Behe is right: Darwin devolves. Evolution is mostly about devolution. Does that maybe make sense in a universe where entropy is growing? But where does it leave Darwin? At the bus stop after the last bus has left?