Category: Darwinism
If Braterman wants to learn something from creationists, he could begin by wiping the sneer off his face.
| September 17, 2017 | Posted by News under Atheism, Creationism, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
From Paul Braterman of slam dunk creationists fame at The Conversation: Listening to creationists can strengthen our understanding of evolution Sounds promising. As John Sturt Mill put it, people who do not understand the arguments against their position do not know their own position well. One naturally wonders why it takes so long for some […]
Evolution predictable or haphazard? Or is the discussion a waste of time?
| September 16, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
From Jonathan B. Losos, author of Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution at Nautilus: Is convergence pervasive, a demonstration of inherent structure in the biological world, channeled by predictable forces of natural selection toward outcomes predestined by the environment? Or are examples of convergent evolution the exceptions, cherry-picked illustrations of biological predictability […]
Debate: Michael Shermer vs. Alister McGrath
| September 15, 2017 | Posted by News under Atheism, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, theistic evolution |
Here, 7:00 pm EST Toronto Michael Shermer and Alister McGrath: Is God a Figment of Our Imagination? Our dialogue brings together two leading thinkers who have thoughtfully wrestled with this question, each not only having embarked on a personal pilgrimage, but each bringing a lifetime of erudition, experience, and insights to bear on this theme. […]
Homeostasis: Life’s balancing act as a challenge to unguided evolution
| September 14, 2017 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
From Biologic Institute’s Ann Gauger, on J. Scott Turner’s forthcoming Purpose and Desire: at Evolution News & Views: Claude Bernard (1813-1878) was a French physiologist, one of the most famous scientists of his age, so famous that he appeared in poems, novels, and memoirs of the period both in France and abroad. Think Albert Einstein. […]
Evolution as a good mother, in the eyes of believers
| September 14, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Religion |
Laszlo Bencze writes to note this letter he wrote to American Scholar in 2004 in response to an article therein, one that does not seem to be online: Evolution, that good mother, has seen fit to guide us to the apple instead of the poison berry by our attraction to the happy sweetness of the […]
Claim: Evolutionists do not use the term “Darwinism”
| September 13, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
A friend writes: “When I discuss evolution in social media, some complain about the word Darwinism. They say, ‘Darwinism is a term I never hear outside of Christian circles.’ Is that so?” No, of course not. Another friend offers many citations, but just this, from 2005: Here: Even prominent Darwinist scientists use the term in […]
Michael Behe, Revolutionary, documentary now free online
| September 12, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity |
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 […]
New paper hopes to “salvage the concept of fitness”
| September 11, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
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 […]
Special issue of Biology: Evolution Beyond Selection will be open access
| September 10, 2017 | Posted by News under Biology, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
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 […]
What? Questioning evolution is not science denial?
| September 8, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, science education |
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 […]
Are there really few thought experiments in biology?
| September 8, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolutionary biology, Intelligent Design |
A friend writes to draw our attention to an interesting 2014 paper Thought Experiments in Biology, by Guillaume Schlaepfer and Marcel Weber: Unlike in physics, the category of thought experiment is not very common in biology. At least there are no classic examples that are as important and as well-known as the most famous thought […]
Darwin’s icons morph into zombies! Only intelligence kills really nasty zombies
| September 7, 2017 | Posted by News under Books of interest, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, science education |
From Salvo online: Zombie Killer: The “Icons of Evolution” Have Joined the Ranks of the Undead: You cannot kill all zombies simply by destroying their brains. Only intelligence will kill the really nasty ones. About fifteen years ago, I read Jonathan Wells’s Icons of Evolution (2000). The sheer brazenness of the outdated information that continued […]
Origin of mitochondria a “unique and hard” evolutionary problem
| September 7, 2017 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
From an article in Biology Direct, Breath-giving cooperation: critical review of origin of mitochondria hypotheses: Major unanswered questions point to the importance of early ecology: Abstract: The origin of mitochondria is a unique and hard evolutionary problem, embedded within the origin of eukaryotes. The puzzle is challenging due to the egalitarian nature of the transition […]
Evolution, Darwin, and the alt right
| September 4, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism |
From David Klinghoffer at Evolution News & Views: While the Confederate cause in the Civil War has been the subject of much chatter, the modern racial right owes far more to Charles Darwin than to Robert E. Lee. That’s a takeaway from a pre-print study, “A Psychological Profile of the Alt-Right,” by two social psychologists, […]
Michael Chaberek: Darwinian theory is past its best-before date
| September 3, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Intelligent Design, theistic evolution |
Laszlo Bencze writes to say, Michael Chaberek. I’m currently reading Catholicism and Evolution, by Michael Chaberek. It would be easy to assume that the book deals in esoteric matters of interest to Catholics only. However, I’m finding that it offers one of the best summaries of the history of evolution that I have ever read. […]
Eugenics: How consensus science can be dead wrong
| September 3, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design |
A friend writes to urge us to listen to John West’s podcast on eugenics: John’s account is thorough and accurate onthe application of Darwinian principles to the “improvement of humankind.” Most Darwinists today would like to forget this, but as John shows, eugenics wasn’t an aberration of those principles but a natural and logical outgrowth […]
Study: Global patterns in human epigenetics show strong methylation-mRNA-genotype links
| August 30, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Epigenetics, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
From Ashley Yeager at the Scientist: A study of five far-flung human populations gives clues to adaptations to environmental pressures. The results revealed a strong link between population-specific DNA methylation, mRNA levels, and genotypes. However, the CpG sites where methylation occurred that had the highest degree of population specificity were more strongly associated with a […]
Postmodern language studies weighs in on design in nature
| August 29, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Naturalism |
From Politics in science—High modulation of engagement in intelligent design discourse at Journal of Language and Politics: Intelligent design is a pseudoscientific concept conceived in an attempt to bring religion-based teaching into the classroom. As such, it is involved in a constant struggle for dialogic space with the dominant scientific discourse of the theory of […]
Philosopher of biology: Darwinian natural selection is a poor predictor of evolutionary success
| August 28, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
From Bengt Autzen at the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science: Musing on Means: Fitness, Expectation and the Principles of Natural Selection How to measure fitness in the theory of natural selection? A fitness measure that has been proposed in both the biological and the philosophical literature is the expected relative reproductive success. The […]
Epigenetics may explain how Darwin’s finches respond to environment
| August 28, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Epigenetics, Intelligent Design |
From ScienceDaily: Epigenetics may explain how Darwin’s finches respond to rapid environmental changes, according to new research published in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. By studying rural and urban populations of two species of Darwin’s finches on the Galapagos Islands, researchers were able to show that while there was very little genetic variation, […]
