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Category

Evolution

Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 11, 2021
Categorized
Evolution, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life
Tagged
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At BiorXiv: LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor) more complex than supposed

Denyse O'Leary
October 11, 2021
Evolution, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life
Note that last sentence: “Our results depict LUCA as likely to be a far more complex cell than has previously been proposed, challenging the evolutionary model of increased complexity through time in prokaryotes. Given current estimates for the emergence of LUCA we suggest that early life very rapidly evolved considerable cellular complexity.” Just an accident. Nothing to see here. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 9, 2021
Categorized
Evolution, extinction, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Can the fallout from mass extinctions enable prediction of patterns in evolution?

Denyse O'Leary
October 9, 2021
Evolution, extinction, Intelligent Design
The description of the research makes clear that evolution is seen as an intelligent agent, like a coach deploying players. "Think of this as the biosphere's version of choosing starters and benchwarmers based on height and weight more than skill after losing a big match. There may well be a logic to this game plan in the arc of evolution." But can evolution be both mindless and a strategic coach? Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 9, 2021
Categorized
Convergent evolution, Evolution, Intelligent Design, stasis
Tagged
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Claim: Modern crocodiles are evolving rapidly

Denyse O'Leary
October 9, 2021
Convergent evolution, Evolution, Intelligent Design, stasis
Into what? Crocobirds? Smithsonian Magazine is anxious for us to know that they are NOT "living fossils." They have evolved a lot, we are told, though admittedly they are evolving around in a circle. It would be interesting to know why stasis became such a threatening concept in some quarters. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 9, 2021
Categorized
Books of interest, Evolution, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Douglas Axe chapter excerpt: Can proteins evolve?

Denyse O'Leary
October 9, 2021
Books of interest, Evolution, Intelligent Design
Axe: A random gene would specify a random sequence of amino acids, which would flop around without folding. Chains like that are rapidly broken back down into amino acids to keep them from interfering with cellular processes. Very special amino acid sequences are needed for protein chains to fold into stable structures. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 3, 2021
Categorized
Evolution, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life, Plants
Tagged
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Another issue re the origin of plants between 3.4 and 2.9 billion years ago…

Denyse O'Leary
October 3, 2021
Evolution, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life, Plants
Timothy Standish: I couldn’t help but notice that the time photosynthesis is supposed to have evolved doesn’t line up with either the time when oxygen is supposed to have become an important element in the atmosphere, half a billion years later, or the time that fixed carbon begins showing up in the fossil record, which is much earlier, possibly over half a billion years. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 1, 2021
Categorized
Evolution, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Michael Behe on extreme devolution: “Gnawing off a leg”

Denyse O'Leary
October 1, 2021
Evolution, Intelligent Design
Behe: Like tusks to elephants, the proteins are presumably useful to the parasite, other things being equal. But when the environment changes and the proteins become a net drawback, the quickest evolutionary solution is to get rid of them. That’s an interesting fact of biology and can be medically important. However, it’s important to note that it’s just one more example of devolution — the beneficial loss of genetic information. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 30, 2021
Categorized
Books of interest, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Book from Cambridge defends ID. So readers write to say…

Denyse O'Leary
September 30, 2021
Books of interest, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design
Of course Darwinism is nonsense. But it is profitable nonsense and easy to spout in an uncritical environment. The question of the day is, how do we get probing critiques to travel from the ivied walls to the pop science mag rack — where, it is fair to say, most writers and readers are unaware of any of the problems identified. So far as they know, Darwin brilliantly explained why men golf and women cheat and some people go to church… Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 29, 2021
Categorized
Engineering, Evolution, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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At Evolution News: Nearly All of Evolution Is Best Explained by Engineering

Denyse O'Leary
September 29, 2021
Engineering, Evolution, Intelligent Design
Question: If someone proposed Darwinism for the first time today, now that we know all that we know about the hard-to-fathom complexity of life, would people as readily accept it? Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 23, 2021
Categorized
Evolution, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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How animals survive without sexual reproduction

Denyse O'Leary
September 23, 2021
Evolution, Intelligent Design
Researchers: “The existence of ancient asexual animal species like O. nova are difficult for evolutionary biologists to explain because asexual reproduction seems to be very disadvantageous in the long run.” But they were able to show it was true. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 18, 2021
Categorized
Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Laszlo Bencze: Just another gratuitous use of the word “evolution” in the WSJ

Denyse O'Leary
September 18, 2021
Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design
Bencze: Did the arterial network sprout long before the giraffe's long neck evolved? Sadly evolution can’t look ahead to provide things that will be useful in the future, so no go. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 17, 2021
Categorized
Evolution, Intelligent Design
Tagged
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Researchers: Cichlids are causing a rethink of the “fundamentals of evolution”

Denyse O'Leary
September 17, 2021
Evolution, Intelligent Design
Researcher: Remarkably, this constraint seems to be the key to cichlid's success by promoting rapid shifts in jaw shapes and feeding ecology, all of which is likely to be an advantage in a dynamic and fluctuating environment, like the East African Rift Valley, where Lake Malawi is located. "The constraint is actually facilitating cichlid evolution, rather than impeding it," says Conith. Read More ›
Type
post
Date
September 16, 2021
Categorized
Darwinism, Evolution, Evolutionary biology, Genetics, Intelligent Design

Another Truism Dies

September 16, 2021
Darwinism, Evolution, Evolutionary biology, Genetics, Intelligent Design

A new paper can be found at Phys.Org undermining the idea that what drives evolution is the “decoupling” of DNA with phylogenic structures. This idea is implicit in the twin ideas of pseudogenes and gene duplication: both allow the DNA to become “uncoupled” from the structures they code for and so RM becomes permissible. Well, this paper shuts down this idea. Given the success of cichlids, understanding the evolution of these two jaws has become an important line of inquiry for biologists. “We’re trying to gain a better understanding of the origins and maintenance of biodiversity,” says Albertson. Researchers have long thought that the two sets of jaws are evolutionarily decoupled and can evolve independently of one another, pushing the Read More ›