Category: Evolution
New Mexico: Science standards changes draw protest
| October 17, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, science education |
From Stephen Sawchuk at Education Week: A standard dealing with the process of evolution deletes that word entirely, replacing it with a standard that asks students to construct an explanation based on evidence that biological diversity is “influenced by” things like competition for limited resources, the proliferation of organisms that are better equipped to […]
Rob Sheldon challenges zoo-ocentric thinking in evolution
| October 17, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Genomics, Tree of life |
In response to Jumpin’ Genes!: A quarter of cow DNA came from reptiles, our physics color commentator writes, This whole business of parasites transmitting retrotransposons from reptiles to cows is just so zoo-centric. What about plants? What about viruses? Don’t they get to originate DNA too? When are they going to admit that this whole […]
Jumping’ Genes!: A quarter of cow DNA came from reptiles?
| October 16, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Genomics, Intelligent Design, Tree of life |
From Ed Yong at The Atlantic: This jumping gene seems to have entered the cow genome from the unlikeliest of sources: snakes and lizards. Retrotransposons typically jump around within a single genome, but sometimes they can travel further afield. Through means that scientists still don’t fully understand, they can leave the DNA of one species […]
Alpbach Symposium: Another 1960s revolt by serious thinkers against Darwinism
| October 14, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
Science historian Michael Flannery writes to tell us of another early revolt by serious thinkers against Darwinism: While this may be old news, I thought I’d share my belated discovery of the Alpbach Symposium held in March of 1968 edited by Arthur Koestler and J. R. Smythies. The title, Beyond Reductionism: New Perspectives in the […]
Researchers: Novel mechanism protects mitochondrial DNA
| October 14, 2017 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
From Eurekalert: Researchers at the University of Eastern Finland have discovered a novel mechanism safeguarding mitochondrial DNA. The study, published in PNAS earlier this week, was carried out in close collaboration with research groups from CBMSO in Madrid, Spain, and Umeå University in Sweden. A central part of the protective mechanism is an unusual enzyme, PrimPol, […]
Study: Darwinian fitness does not overcome mutational decay during tens of thousands of bacteria generations
| October 12, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
With comments by Michael Behe. The finding is a setback for origin of life theories that depend on conservation of favorable mutations. Creation-Evolution Headlines draws our attention to a very recent paper on the Lenski long-term evolution experiment (LTEE) which shows that, contrary to hopes, Darwinian fitness did not overcome mutational decay: “Here, we document […]
From Biology Direct: Darwinism, now thoroughly detached from its historical roots as a falsifiable theory, “must be abandoned”
| October 12, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
Evolutionary biology, we are told, does not need a master theory. Researchers should think in terms of “contemporary mainstream thinking.” From Arlin Stoltzfus at Biology Direct: Why we don’t want another “Synthesis” Abstract:High-level debates in evolutionary biology often treat the Modern Synthesis as a framework of population genetics, or as an intellectual lineage with a […]
Ouch! Scott Turner on “settled science”
| October 10, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science |
From J. Scott Turner’s Purpose and Desire:What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It, Traditionally, therapeutic bloodletting was justified by the need to release from the patient an excess of one vital humor that was out of balance with another. Release the excess humor, and the balance of humors would […]
Not just the Third Way or ID: The floodgates are opening against Darwinism
| October 9, 2017 | Posted by News under Books of interest, Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Philosophy |
A lot of people are now reading Scott Turner’s Purpose and Desire:What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It, and one of them is retired linguist Noel Rude (Native American languages). Turner’s challenge to Darwinism is the fact that life shows internal purpose, which cannot be accounted for by the […]
Darwinian philosopher asks: Do we need purpose in biology?
| October 9, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Philosophy |
J. Scott Turner’s recent Purpose and Desire:What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It makes the case that life is not comprehensible without the concept of purpose and that Darwinism’s failure to explain is an “impending crisis.” Michael Ruse, author of many books on the triumph of Darwinism, tells us […]
J. Scott Turner on why we do not have a coherent theory of evolution…
| October 9, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
… without taking purpose into account, which he addresses through Biology’s Second Law, homeostasis. From J. Scott Turner in Purpose and Desire: What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It: away. And the uncomfortable question is this: what if phenomena like intentionality, purpose, and design are not illusions, but are […]
“Darwin’s point”: A common ancestry myth that can’t just die
| October 6, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Human evolution, Intelligent Design |
From Günter Bechly at Evolution News & Views: In a recent post for Evolution News, we discussed vestigial structures as alleged evidence for evolution (Chaffee 2017). As an illustration, the article featured an image of the auricular tubercles or “Darwin’s ear points,” a bump-like thickening on the helix of the auricle (exterior ear) of many […]
Iconic Darwinian John Maynard Smith on teaching the controversy
| October 6, 2017 | Posted by News under academic freedom, Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
From John Maynard Smith (1920–2004): I am convinced that a proper training in science requires that undergraduates are confronted by the problems of contemporary science. Only then can they see science as an activity, and not as a body of received doctrine. Evolutionary Genetics, 1989. p. v. But now, come on. Did Smith really think […]
You have to be pretty hard up for evidence of evolution if you think this is evolution
| October 5, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
From Chris Baraniuk at New Scientist: New York City mice may be evolving to eat fast food like pizza They examined the mice’s RNA to see if the rural and urban populations expressed different genes. Ultimately, they homed in on 19 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs): places in the genome where a single letter varies from […]
What is the term “surprisingly complex” doing in science PRs about life forms these days?
| October 5, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity |
From ScienceDaily: Cell signals that trigger wound healing are surprisingly complex The researchers were testing two prevailing hypotheses for the wound-response trigger. One is that damaged and dying cells release proteins into the extracellular fluid which surrounding cells sense, causing them to boost their internal calcium levels. This increased calcium concentration, in turn, triggers their […]
Doubts surface about 4 billion-year-old life claims
| October 4, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Origin Of Life |
Re “Evidence of life 3.95 billion years ago found in Canada,” Michael Marshall notes at New Scientist: His [spokesman Komiya’s] only evidence for the existence of life is the unusual ratio of carbon isotopes, and this may not be definitive. “There are many ways in which abiotic processes can produce such an imbalance, so to […]
Coffee!! Darwin-in-the-schools lobby elects self-described creationist as leader
| October 3, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, science education |
One after whom an informal logical fallacy is named, too. From Glenn Branch at National Center for Science Education: At a recent meeting of NCSE’s board of directors, Kenneth R. Miller was elected as president, replacing Francisco J. Ayala, whose term on the board expired. Miller is Professor of Biology and Royce Family Professor for […]
Astonishing explanation: Why we did not evolve to live forever
| October 1, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Evolution |
If we evolve at all, we are transient by nature and cannot live in a transient state forever by definition. Never mind, from ScienceDaily: As Charles Darwin explained, natural selection results in the fittest individuals for a given environment surviving to breed and pass on their genes to the next generation. The more fruitful a […]
If evolution were repeated, would jellyfish be intelligent?
| September 28, 2017 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind |
From Douglas Fox at Aeon: The ctenophore was already known for having a relatively advanced nervous system; but these first experiments by Moroz showed that its nerves were constructed from a different set of molecular building blocks – different from any other animal – using ‘a different chemical language’, says Moroz: these animals are ‘aliens […]
Researchers: First Ediacaran animal identified
| September 28, 2017 | Posted by News under Ediacaran, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
Mysterious Ediacaran Dickinsonia, from 550 mya was definitely an animal, they say. [pic] From ScienceDaily: ‘Dickinsonia belongs to the Ediacaran biota — a collection of mostly soft-bodied organisms that lived in the global oceans between roughly 580 and 540 million years ago. They are mysterious because despite there being around 200 different species, very few […]
