Evolution

The tenure denial of Guillermo Gonzalez by Iowa State University has been much discussed on this blog of late. The tenure of Hector Avalos, religious studies professor and militant atheist at Iowa State University, however, has yet to be broached here. So let’s do it. Avalos conducted a witch hunt of Guillermo Gonzalez back in 2005 (go here). He just posted on PZ Myers’ blog a response to the Discovery Institute (go here). Here is an interesting quote from it: I may not be an astronomer, but my article, “Heavenly Conflicts: The Bible and Astronomy,” passed the editorial review of Mercury: The Journal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 27 no. 2 (March/April, 1998), pages 20-24. There, I critiqued Read More ›

We often hear the argument that evidence for common ancestry can also be interpreted as evidence of common design. Some years ago I made the argument that there was no way to discriminate between the two. The argument was countered (successfully IMO) by endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). Read More ›

Researchers have discovered that in certain competitive situations, the “fittest” phenotype is the one that is “rarest” for a given population. In a study of fruit flies, when “rovers” and “sitters” were foraging together, “rovers” did better if they were surrounded by “sitters”, and vice versa. As the author of the study put it: “If you’re a rover surrounded by many sitters, then the sitters are going to use up that patch and you’re going to do better by moving out into a new patch. So you’ll have an advantage because you’re not competing with the sitters who stay close to the initial resource. On the other hand, if you’re a sitter and you’re mostly with rovers, the rovers are Read More ›

During a recent GOP debate among presidential candidates a moderator asked the field of ten to answer whether they believed in evolution by the raising of hands. How can one possibly answer this without a more rigorous definition of evolution? Three candidates Tancredo, Huckabee, and Brownback raised their hands indicating they didn’t believe in evolution. The only way to answer this ambiguous question was by gross political calculation of whether raising a hand would gain or lose more votes. Evolution of what and how? I believe in the evolution of life the same way I believe in the evolution of computers. It’s obvious both evolved in a stepwise fashion from simple beginnings but just as obvious is that neither could Read More ›

Columbia Medical Professor John Marshall made the case for scientific acceptance of Intelligent Design last night before 100 or so guests, and found himself taking fire from his peers for his view. Marshall, a signer of the ‘Dissent From Darwinism’ document and vocal supporter of ID as science is once again under attack for his views, perhaps the most prominent opposer being MU Biology Professor Frank Schmidt, who says he counted “21 distortions, 15 half-truths, and 10 untruths” in Marshall’s presentation. He further asserted that what Marshall was really doing was “cloaking a narrow definition of Christianity, which (he) found personally offensive”, and that it “really hacks (him) off”. “It’s as much science as Darwinian evolution is science,” Marshall said. Read More ›

I was reading The origin of the brain lies in a worm on the evolution of the central nervous system (CNS) and found a presumption in it based on nothing more than an Argument from Incredulity about the origin of complexity. My emphasis. “Our findings were overwhelming,” says Alexandru Denes, who carried out the research in Arendt’s lab. “The molecular anatomy of the developing CNS turned out to be virtually the same in vertebrates and Platynereis. Corresponding regions give rise to neuron types with similar molecular fingerprints and these neurons also go on to form the same neural structures in annelid worm and vertebrate.” “Such a complex arrangement could not have been invented twice throughout evolution, it must be the Read More ›

A paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences makes the startling claim that all flagellar genes “originated through the successive duplication and modification of a few, or perhaps even a single, precursor gene” (see abstract below). While consistent with Darwinian evolution, such excessive hyperevolution was too much even for the hyperevolutionists at the Panda’s Thumb (go here), who are now distancing themselves from its conclusion. What’s going on here? How could people publish such a ridiculous result, and in PNAS of all places? Let me suggest the following hypothesis: Liu and Ochman, the authors of the piece, are really ID advocates who are pulling a Sokal-style hoax, pushing the envelope to see how extreme they can Read More ›

I asked Walter ReMine to write up his recent experiences debating Haldane’s Dilemma:

Evolutionist withholds evidence on Haldane’s Dilemma
By Walter ReMine

For many years I have publicly claimed Haldane’s Dilemma is a major unsolved problem for evolution. A problem so severe it threatens macroevolution as a “fact” and evolutionary genetics as an empirical science. The problem, briefly, is that evolutionary geneticist, J.B.S. Haldane (1957), discovered an important argument that limits the speed of evolution. Under his calculations, an ape-human-like population, given a generous ten million years, could substitute no more than 1,667 beneficial mutations — which, according to evolutionary geneticists, are each typically a single nucleotide. All the human adaptations within that time would have to be explained with this small number of substitutions. For more information, see here: http://tinyurl.com/3dtzjq.

The issue at the moment is: Evolutionists are withholding key evidence.

Toward a solution, evolutionary geneticist, Leonard Nunney, published a paper reporting his computer simulations. He claimed his computer simulations show rates of beneficial evolution much faster than the Haldane limit. Evolutionists now cite Nunney’s computer simulation as a refutation of my position.

Starting December 19, 2006, I sent emails to Prof. Nunney, expressing my interest in his paper, and requesting access to his simulation software. (I also emailed one of his colleagues, in his same evolutionary genetics department.) I received no answer. After several emails, across several months, I eventually reached Professor Nunney by phone on April 5th. He acknowledged he had received my emails, and said he had not responded because I “do not publish in peer-reviewed journals.” (his words)

I again requested his software for my examination of his published results and methods. He declined, saying he will not share his software with “people who do not publish in peer-reviewed journals.” (his words) Read More ›

Nick Matzke at PT describes a poster waved in protest at the recent Darwin vs. Design conference at Southern Methodist University. The poster read “Why do the ribosomes (protein synthesizing machinery) in our mitochondria match those of bacteria?” The intent behind this question was to suggest that we evolved from bacterial ancestors, whose remnants in us are the mitochondria and, presumably, their ribosomes, which the poster asserts “match” those of bacteria. Since I’m happy for the sake of argument to allow common descent, the more interesting question for me is what causal powers were required to produce ribosomes in the first place. But the poster, even taken on its own terms, is problematic. Eukaryotic, prokaryotic, and mitochondrial ribosomes are all Read More ›

The theme of descent and dissent, which has been a theme on this blog and in my book UNCOMMON DISSENT: INTELLECTUALS WHO FIND DARWINISM UNCONVINCING, has been picked up by Steve Fuller in his new book DISSENT OVER DESCENT: EVOLUTION’S 500-YEAR WAR ON INTELLIGENT DESIGN. AMAZON.UK description: “If you think Intelligent Design Theory (IDT) is merely the respectable face of Christian fundamentalism, and Evolution the only sensible scientific world-view, think again…IDT has driven science for 500 years. It was responsible for the 17th century’s Scientific Revolution and helped build modern histories of physics, mathematics, genetics and social science. IDT’s proponents take literally the Biblical idea that humans have been created in God’s image. This confident, even arrogant, view of humanity Read More ›

It will be interesting to see where this debate is in the Roman Catholic Church by the time we get to Darwin’s bicentennial in 2009.

Pope puts his faith in the Book of Genesis, not Darwin
Richard Owen in Rome
From The Times, April 13, 2007

His predecessor appeared, on balance, to favour the scientists. But the present Pope may have tipped the scales the other way in the argument over which is the truer account of the Creation: On the Origin of Species or the Book of Genesis.

Pope Benedict XVI has stepped into the debate over Darwinism with remarks that will be seen as an endorsement of “intelligent design”.

The Pope did not explicitly back intelligent design or creationism. He praised scientific progress but said that the Darwinian theory of evolution was “not finally provable” because: “We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory.”

Intelligent design (ID) argues that life forms are too complex to have evolved randomly, and must have been created by a higher power. Scientists denounce this as a thinly disguised form of creationism, the view that God created the world literally as described in the Book of Genesis. US courts have ruled that neither should be taught in school science because that would violate the separation of Church and State.

Many of those who back intelligent design will draw encouragement from the Pope’s remarks. Read More ›

I posted a reference the other day to a peer-reviewed paper by two Finnish ID-supporters that I claimed supported ID. The paper highlighted that evolutionary methods work to the degree that they are directed. As is typical with our detractors, whenever a pro-ID paper by pro-ID scientists comes out in a peer-reviewed biology journal, they try their best to show that it doesn’t actually support ID. An example is the following post at PT by Steve Reuland: pandasthumb.org…the_proid_paper In reading Reuland’s critique, try to keep track of “rational design,” “directed evolution,” and “Darwinian methods.” Reuland conflates the last two. In so doing, Reuland completely misses the boat. So let me spell it out: DIRECTED EVOLUTION IS NON-DARWINIAN. DARWINIAN EVOLUTION IS Read More ›

Denyse O’Leary mentioned this review in one of her posts. Here it is. The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism Michael J. Behe. Free Press, $28 (336p) ISBN 978-0-7432-9620-5 http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6430603.html With his first book, Darwin’s Black Box, Behe, a professor of biology at Lehigh University, helped define the controversial intelligent design movement with his concept of “irreducible complexity.” Now he attempts to extend his analysis and define what evolution is capable of doing and what is beyond its scope. Behe strongly asserts, to the likely chagrin of young earth creationists, that the earth is billions of years old and that the concept of common descent is correct. But beginning with a look at malaria and the Read More ›

“Paris – Pope Benedict, elaborating his views on evolution for the first time as Pontiff, says science has narrowed the way life’s origins are understood and Christians should take a broader approach to the question. The Pope also says the Darwinist theory of evolution is not completely provable because mutations over hundreds of thousands of years cannot be reproduced in a laboratory… ” (go to article) You may recall that shortly after Pope Benedict’s inauguration, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna touched off a fire storm (July 2005) with an op-ed piece in the New York Times questioning Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and appearing to endorse the concept of intelligent design. This brought a quick response from Prof. Kenneth Miller, Read More ›