Evolution

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=697

Behe covers several sections in detail but here is the overall summary at the end:

The Court’s reasoning in section E-4 is premised on: a cramped view of science; the conflation of intelligent design with creationism; the incapacity to distinguish the implications of a theory from the theory itself; a failure to differentiate evolution from Darwinism; and strawman arguments against ID. The Court has accepted the most tendentious and shopworn excuses for Darwinism with great charity and impatiently dismissed arguments for design. Read More ›

As long as I’m on the subject of overwhelming points of similarity vs. underwhelming points of difference, a few points of similarity between man and chimp in no particular order, off the top of my head: Read More ›

http://www.umc.pitt.edu:591/m/FMPro?-db=ma&-lay=a&-format=d.html&id=2297&-Find

Schwartz hearkens back to earlier theories that suggest that the Darwinian model of evolution as continual and gradual adaptation to the environment glosses over gaps in the fossil record by assuming the intervening fossils simply have not been found yet. Rather, Schwartz argues, they have not been found because they don’t exist, since evolution is not necessarily gradual but often sudden, dramatic expressions of change that began on the cellular level because of radical environmental stressors-like extreme heat, cold, or crowding-years earlier. Read More ›

Michael Ruse: Darwinist talks with Points about ID and evolution in the classroom

03:36 PM CST on Sunday, January 29, 2006

Do you think there is anything at all to the intelligent design argument from irreducible complexity?

No. I think it’s “creationism lite” tarted up to look like science to get around the constitutional separation of church and state. Read More ›

I have consistently argued that intelligent design neither rules out the common descent of life on Earth (Darwin’s single Tree of Life) nor restricts the implementation of design to common descent, as if that were the only possible geometry for the large-scale relationships of organisms. Thus, with regard to this forum, the truth or falsity of common descent is an open question worthy of informed discussion. To open up Uncommon Descent in this way reflects not just the ID community’s diversity of views on this topic but also the growing doubts about common descent outside that community. For instance, W. Ford Doolittle rejects a single “Tree of” and argues instead for an intricate network of gene sharing events. Likewise, Carl Read More ›

In browsing the New Mexicans for Science and Reason site and the Oynate Man prank (which I’d seen before but since it’s so hilarious enjoyed reading again) I came across this statement in the April Fool article explaining what would constitute real evidence against evolution: Read More ›

Here’s a revealing quote from Neil Greenspan about the evolution of complexity: In fact, there is no evidence of any kind to indicate that the magnitude of a system’s complexity poses any sort of barrier to an origin through evolution, as opposed to an origin through design by an intelligent agent. (source) Let me suggest that the reason Greenspan can find no evidence for the magnitude of complexity posing a barrier to its evolution is that evolutionists have never provided actual evidence for evolution producing biological complexity. Instead, they’ve only provided handwaving imaginative fairytales — what Franklin Harold and James Shapiro call “wishful speculations.” Since these are enough to settle evolution, how could there be evidence against?

From Table 7 of the Harris Poll

Belief in Evolution doubles from 17% to 35% as education goes from high school to postgrad.

Belief in ID triples from 6% to 17% as education goes from high school to postgrad.

Read More ›

From a colleague: Harris Poll: http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=581 According to Table 7, belief in Intelligent Design increases with increasing education. (Ditto for evolution.) According to Table 8, belief in ID is more common among Democrats than Republicans. (Ditto for evolution.) According to Table 9, belief in ID is more common in the Northeastern and Western USA and less common in the Southern and Midwestern USA. (Ditto for evolution.) Also, taking into account this report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4648598.stm Belief in ID is more common in the UK than in the USA (17% vs 10%). (Ditto for evolution.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/war.shtml (Yes, that’s me.)

http://www.refcm.org/RICDiscussions/Science-Scripture/X%20Evolution/keeping_an_eye_on_evolution.htm

By popular demand…

Julian Huxley’s Confession

by John A. Davison

Read More ›

And now for another amazing example of what natural selection can accomplish (or not):

Press Release
Heidelberg, 22 January 2006
http://www.embl.org/aboutus/news/press/2006/press22jan06.html

The closest look ever at the cell’s machines: The first genome-wide screen for protein complexes is completed

“To carry out their tasks, most proteins work in dynamic complexes that may contain dozens of molecules,” says Giulio Superti-Furga, who launched the large-scale project at Cellzome four years ago. “If you think of the cell as a factory floor, up to now, we’ve known some of the components of a fraction of the machines. That has seriously limited what we know about how cells work. This study gives us a nearly complete parts list of all the machines, and it goes beyond that to tell us how they populate the cell and partition tasks among themselves.” The study combined a method of extracting complete protein complexes from cells [tandem affinity purification, developed in 2001 by Bertrand Séraphin at EMBL], mass spectrometry and bioinformatics to investigate the entire protein household of yeast, turning up 257 machines that had never been observed. It also revealed new components of nearly every complex already known. Read More ›

Richard Dawkins should be very pleased that his efforts at educating the British public have met with such overwhelming success. He has much to look forward to in his retirement:

Britons unconvinced on evolution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4648598.stm

Over 55s were less likely to opt for evolution than other groups

More than half the British population does not accept the theory of evolution, according to a survey.
Furthermore, more than 40% of those questioned believe that creationism or intelligent design should be taught in school science lessons. Read More ›

University of Pittsburgh Professor of Anthropology Jeffrey H. Schwartz has consistently swum against the neo-Darwinian mainstream, and this new 30Jan2006 paper in the New Anatomist with University of Salerno Professor of Biochemistry Bruno Maresca is no exception. The starting point of their argument is clear: Neo-Darwinism has failed and does not fit the evidence. For instance, in the section titled “Molecular and Morphological Contradiction” (pp. 39-40), Maresca and Schwartz write: Read More ›