Darwinism

Cornelius Hunter writes: Venema’s argument is that harmful mutations shared amongst different species, such as the human and chimpanzee, are powerful and compelling evidence for evolution. These harmful mutations disable a useful gene and, importantly, the mutations are identical. Are not such harmful, shared, mutations analogous to identical typos in the term papers handed in by different students, or in historical manuscripts? Such typos are tell-tale indicators of a common source, for it is unlikely that the same typo would have occurred independently, by chance, in the same place, in different documents. Instead, the documents share a common source. Now imagine not one, but several such typos, all identical, in the two manuscripts. Surely the evidence is now overwhelming that Read More ›

Priceless: Perhaps no topic appears as potentially threatening to evangelicals as evolution. The very idea seems to exclude God from the creation the book of Genesis celebrates. Yet many evangelicals have come to accept the conclusions of science while still holding to a vigorous belief in God and the Bible. How did they make this journey? How did they come to embrace both evolution and faith? Here are stories from a community of people who love Jesus and honor the authority of the Bible, but who also agree with what science says about the cosmos, our planet and the life that so abundantly fills it. Among the contributors are Scientists such as … More. Just think. The rest of the Read More ›

At Hump of the Camel: Not that Denton’s thesis is entirely new. Perhaps the simplest summary is that it is a re-affirmation of his first book questioning the Neodarwinian Synthesis thirty years ago, now strengthened by much work in biology since, combined with a new structuralist viewpoint which he inherits from Richard Owen before and during Darwin’s time. I might add (because Denton doesn’t stress it) that structuralism – the idea that much of biological form depends on lawlike constraints, rather than adaptive contingency – was the prevalent theory of evolution, in the form of orthogenesis, at the time when Darwinism was found wanting in explanatory power at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was only the Neodarwinian Synthesis Read More ›

In response to Vincent Torley’s Leading thinker on human evolution admits: we’re more than just an ape, Anaxagoraswrites at 2: I feel reassured that at least some scientists understand that humans are unique. Most laymen allready knew that. Yes, and that’s the critical mass of the stinking corruption that infests science media on this subject today: Everyone knows it’s true, yet science media continue to shovel garbage at us, such as that chimpanzees are entering the Stone Age or can handle high-level abstractions. No one is supposed to ask: If so, why are they still swinging in the trees? If the purveyors of this stuff are sane, they must realize that it cannot be true. But they must also know Read More ›

Well, this’ll be interesting. Darwin vs. Boyle. From Suzan Mazur at Huffington Post: — In an attempt to do damage control, one of the organizers of the Royal Society paradigm shift meeting (not Denis Noble) sent me an email, which follows, asking that I stop referring to the Royal Society meeting as such. Why? Because he speaks for scientists who think they can control the scientific discourse as it was controlled at the time of Darwin. They are embarrassed. They don’t want to be seen as sitting on scientific evidence and feeding the public old science — which they are — and so they circle the wagons and deride those outside the circle who dare to point out that there is Read More ›

From Jonathan Webb at New Scientist: Ten years earlier again, Dawkins’ pioneering account of the “gene-centric” view of evolution, The Selfish Gene, also won huge acclaim. It crystallised an argument that had been brewing since Watson and Crick’s beautiful DNA structure marked a new peak in our understanding of inheritance: these sequences would tend to accumulate and propagate mutations that were beneficial to the gene itself. Any given gene “wants” to be passed on to as many future offspring as possible. Forty years on, however, this concept faces some opposition among today’s biologists. More. Um, now that you mention it … But Dawkins sees no need to rethink evolution in the light of modern developments: Perhaps the most popular challenge raised Read More ›

Further to the Arizona State U study author’s demand for “acceptance” rather than mere “understanding” of evolution, two thoughts: 1. The difference between “accept” and “understand” becomes quite clear when we turn away from Darwinism and look instead at a fact-based field. Let’s say, sterile procedure in the operating room. One doesn’t really care whether health care personnel “accept” sterile procedure, as long as they understand and follow it. Indeed, “acceptance” is valueless by itself. It is in fact counterproductive by itself: Bimbette Fluffarelli, popular host on Airhead TV, knows that “evolution is true,” with a fervour that would shame Jerry Coyne. Fortunately for her (and everyone), she has never had to think about it. Brownell frets about a lack Read More ›

From Arizona State University, a classic in propaganda masquerading as research: In a first-of-its kind study, scientists from Arizona State University’s School of Life Sciences have found that a majority of professors teaching biology in Arizona universities do not believe that helping students accept the theory of evolution is an instructional goal. In fact, a majority of study participants say their only goal is to help students understand evolution. researchers at work School of Life Sciences assistant professor Sara Brownell (left) and graduate student Elizabeth Barnes are studying the perceived conflict in the classroom between evolution and religion. According to the study’s authors, this finding was surprising. The exploratory research, published May 18 in the scientific journal CBE—Life Sciences Education, Read More ›

Nancy Pearcey, offers an article based on Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes, her most recent book. The public has responded swiftly and strongly against the Obama administration’s demand that public schools admit transgender students into the showers, locker rooms, and sports teams of their choice. But to be successful, the response must also be informed. Where did transgender ideology come from, and how can we respond more effectively? The answer may surprise you. If we dig deeply, we discover that the turning point, historically, was Darwin’s theory of evolution. It had a lasting impact in at least three ways. Matter Does Not Matter Let’s tease out its impact through the language of the Read More ›

Say Brian Boutwell and J.C. Barnes at Nautilus: That’s right, the most compelling evidence for transgenerational epigenetics is in rodents, not humans. We are fans of animal research, but as Pinker noted, the strengths of it (fast reproductive cycles allowing for the study of numerous generations in a short window of time) may also curtail its applicability to humans in this particular case. Additionally, scientists can randomly manipulate a rodent pup’s exposure to different parenting/rearing strategies. But doing this with human babies would never fly with a university ethics committee. When you can’t do experiments, you have to be very careful about something called confounding. Confounding is a pernicious problem that can make one thing look like it’s causing something Read More ›

More goodness brought to us by naturalism From philosopher Stephen Cave at the Atlantic: The sciences have grown steadily bolder in their claim that all human behavior can be explained through the clockwork laws of cause and effect. This shift in perception is the continuation of an intellectual revolution that began about 150 years ago, when Charles Darwin first published On the Origin of Species. Shortly after Darwin put forth his theory of evolution, his cousin Sir Francis Galton began to draw out the implications: If we have evolved, then mental faculties like intelligence must be hereditary. But we use those faculties—which some people have to a greater degree than others—to make decisions. So our ability to choose our fate Read More ›

Only religion prevents us from seeing the Darwinian truth about evolution. Or at least that’s what one would think reading ScienceDaily: Generally seen as antithetical to one another, evolution and religion can hardly fit in a scientific discourse simultaneously. However, biologist Dr Aldemaro Romero Jr., Baruch College, USA, devotes his latest research article, now published in the open access Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), to observing the influences a few major religions have had on evolutionists and their scientific thinking over the centuries. … “Since the advent of Modern Synthesis we have a pretty consistent set of evidence that evolution is not linear, that there is not such a thing as direction for evolutionary processes, and that nothing is predetermined Read More ›

In response to “Mendel holds back genetics teaching,” a post on the way in which Nature is moving to quietly distance itself from today’s Darwinism, Jonathan Wells writes to say, Radick is right to criticize the gene-centric view that dominates modern biology, but the problem was not Gregor Mendel, who merely described patterns of inheritance for some traits in peas and never encouraged anything like a “genes-for” approach. Even Wilhelm Johannsen, who coined the word “genes,” regarded genes as abstractions. The problem came from the Darwinian materialists’ determination to reduce heredity to material particles on chromosomes. The materialists (most prominently Thomas Hunt Morgan) were the source of what Radick calls “the doctrinaire Mendelism that came later.” Poor Mendel. Sure. The big Read More ›

From Gregory Radick at Nature: The problem is that the Mendelian ‘genes for’ approach is increasingly seen as out of step with twenty-first-century biology. If we are to realize the potential of the genomic age, critics say, we must find new concepts and language better matched to variablebiological reality. This is important in education, where the reliance on simple examples may even promote an outmoded determinism about the power of genes. … What of Mendel? Some might complain that it is a poor anniversary gift to jettison him from his place of honour in the genetics curriculum. Let me suggest that this grumbling, although understandable, is misguided. If we want to honour Mendel, then let us read him seriously, which Read More ›

From an interesting 2013 paper: on peafowl courtship: Conspicuous, multicomponent ornamentation in male animals can be favored by female mate choice but we know little about the cognitive processes females use to evaluate these traits. Sexual selection may favor attention mechanisms allowing the choosing females to selectively and efficiently acquire relevant information from complex male display traits and, in turn, may favor male display traits that effectively capture and hold female attention. Using a miniaturized telemetric gaze-tracker, we show that peahens (Pavo cristatus) selectively attend to specific components of peacock courtship displays and virtually ignore other, highly conspicuous components. Females gazed at the lower train but largely ignored the head, crest and upper train. When the lower train was obscured, Read More ›