We tend to think that life only got complex when it moved to land but look at this…
Evolution
Can octopuses really feel pain?
The brainy cephalopods behaved about the same as lab rats under similar conditions, raising both neuroscience and ethical issues.
Ten (or so) Pro-Intelligent Design Books You Should Read
On the Design Disquisitions YouTube channel, I’ve posted a new video where I recommend several books of interest, specifically pro-ID literature. Most of the suggestions may be familiar to you, but hopefully there are a few that you’ve not read before. I also give a brief summary of the content of each book. I don’t Read More…
Gaps everywhere in the history of life
People who don’t like hearing about that so often resort to abuse because it’s like mentioning that the elephant in the room is not a stuffed toy.
Central Dogma: Reasons for Further Thought
For about a year now, from reading various news items on newly published science articles, I’ve begun to consider not DNA, but RNA, the real driver of life. I think that DNA’s essential role is that of information storage–a hard drive, while RNA is like the BIOS system–it tells the “system” what it should be Read More…
The latest from the journal Nature, of all places: An engineering theory of evolution
How long will it be before people discover?: Engineering without engineers, taken seriously, means — among other things — that the consciousness of engineers is an illusion. Otherwise, there is no design without intelligence.
Fish fins, Christian evolutionism, and the “things that just don’t change, come what may”
At Evolution News and Science Today, we learn that Darrel Falk is still around? Why do people care about Christian evolutionism when even the big Darwin guys like Kevin Laland are looking for non-Darwin answers?
Cells compared across species — expected to be similar — prove strikingly different
At SciTechDaily: “I was struck by how stark the differences are between them,” said Tarashansky, who was lead author of the paper and is a Stanford Bio-X Interdisciplinary Fellow. “We thought that they should have similar cell types, but when we try analyzing them using standard techniques, the method doesn’t recognize them as being similar.”
New! Speakers/topics for the Linnean Society’s meeting on teleonomy vs. teleology, May 28 and 29 online
Come to think of it, how come every life form avoids or flees predators but life as a whole is not supposed to show any sense of purpose? Um… Can we TALK about this?
Weirder: Dinoflagellate genes all point the same way
So how did all this originate randomly, different from what all the other life forms do — and still work?
Linnean Society is sponsoring a meeting on teleonomy in living systems 28th – 29th June 2021
Linneans: “Although it is now widely accepted that living systems exhibit an internal teleology, or teleonomy, the full implications of this distinctive biological property have yet to be explored.” Are the Linneans trying to come to grips with design in nature within a framework they can handle?
Science historian Michael Flannery offers some thoughts on the drive to deplatform Darwin
Darwin’s racism doesn’t make his theory — either in its original form or any current iteration — right or wrong. The theory must be addressed on the merits of the case. So no deplatforming. Bring on the debate.
Ridiculous science news — before we get started on the real stuff
The worm with 100 butts, essentially, branches, and the butts grow eyes and a brain. But animals are not supposed to branch, as plants and fungi do. Another curious fact is that no trace of food has been found so far, inside the guts.
At Mind Matters News: Why some think emergence is replacing materialism in science
Frank argues that evolution is the creative force that does all this (including evolving new laws?) But it’s not clear that what he means by “evolution” is the garden variety change in life forms over time. To the extent that emergence marches with panpsychism, it probably is catching on. That means we may see ourselves in different kinds of philosophy of science arguments over evolution.
Dinoflagellate genome structure is unique
So, in other words, these plankton evolved (randomly, so we are told) a highly successful genome that’s entirely different from the type that most life forms have. Well, if you are skeptical of Darwinian claims that it all happened randomly but just once, how about (at least) twice? Increasingly, Darwinism – or whatever it is that they want to call that stuff nowadays – is for true believers.