Evolution

Here. A reader writes to draw our attention to the Third Way of evolution: The vast majority of people believe that there are only two alternative ways to explain the origins of biological diversity. One way is Creationism that depends upon intervention by a divine Creator. That is clearly unscientific because it brings an arbitrary supernatural force into the evolution process. The commonly accepted alternative is Neo-Darwinism, which is clearly naturalistic science but ignores much contemporary molecular evidence and invokes a set of unsupported assumptions about the accidental nature of hereditary variation. Neo-Darwinism ignores important rapid evolutionary processes such as symbiogenesis, horizontal DNA transfer, action of mobile DNA and epigenetic modifications. Moreover, some Neo-Darwinists have elevated Natural Selection into a Read More ›

In response to a commenter on the post “Suzan Mazur’s new book: The Paradigm Shifters” (When you see who is listed on the cover, you will definitely want this book), a reader writes, Science, like living things, changes over time. Who’da thunk it? The “paradigm” is still not shifting towards Christian or any other kind of creationism, though. Well, first, the changes anticipated were toward ever more Darwinism, Darwinizing everything. See evolutionary psychology and cosmic Darwinism. Darwinism was the single greatest idea anyone ever had, remember? And so now … I have no idea what will happen, only that a long-awaited change is underway. Nature permitted a dismissive review of Dawkins’ second instalment on himself, when they might have permitted Read More ›

Readers will remember Suzan Mazur, author of Altenberg 16 and The Origin of Life Circus. Her latest is The Paradigm Shifters: Overthrowing “the Hegemony of the Culture of Darwin”: Major scientists from a dozen countries present evidence that a paradigm shift is underway or has already taken place, replacing neo-Darwinism (the standard model of evolution based on natural selection following the accumulation of random genetic mutations) with a vastly richer evolutionary synthesis than previously thought possible. The subtitle is owed to the late Carl Woese. See Carl Woese, discoverer of a whole domain of life, regretted not overthrowing Darwin regretted not overthrowing Darwin When you see who is listed on the cover, you will definitely want this book. Follow UD Read More ›

Further to What’s happened since Icons of Evolution (2002)? Well, for one thing, Darwin’s textbook finches took a beating (no speciation) From The Evolution Revolution by physicist Lee Spetner: The proximate biochemical signal evoking the change in beak shape [of Galapagos finches] has been discovered to be a protein growth factor Bmp4. The more Bmp4 that is made, the broader and deeper is the bird’s beak. This protein acts as a signal to the development of the craniofacial bones which determines the beak’s shape. If my suggestion is correct that the hormones triggered by environmental inputs affect embryonic development, then those hormones induce these growth factors to form the finch beak….The built-in mechanism of the NREH [Non Random Evolutionary Hypothesis] enables the bird Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Ancient alga knew how to survive on land before it left water and evolved into the first plant Up until now it had been assumed that the alga evolved the capability to source essential nutrients for its survival after it arrived on land by forming a close association with a beneficial fungi called arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM), which still exists today and which helps plant roots obtain nutrients and water from soil in exchange for carbon. The previous discovery of 450 million year old fossilised spores similar to the spores of the AM fungi suggests this fungi would have been present in the environment encountered by the first land plants. Remnants of prehistoric fungi have also been found inside Read More ›

THE DESIGN OF LIFE COLLECTION is a spectacular journey to uncover stunning evidence for intelligent design in the animal kingdom. It includes three feature length documentariesIncluding Metamorphosis: the Beauty and Design of Butterflies, FLIGHT: The Genius of Birds, and LIVING WATERS: Intelligent design in the Oceans of the Earth. For more information visit: www.DesignOfLife.org From Illustra Media Note: Back to blogging shortly.

No subject apart from religion has vexed Darwin’s followers more than why people sacrifice themselves for others. They have embraced the ambiguous term “altruism” because it does not clearly mean “compassion” or “heroism.” Rather, it is to be seen as the same natural force that causes worker ants to pass on their genes by serving their queen, who lays lots of eggs, instead of reproducing themselves (kin selection). Maybe this force creates the change we are looking for. A champion of this proposed mechanism was evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson. But then Wilson dramatically abandoned kin selection in 2010 in a Nature paper, “The evolution of eusociality,” co-authored with mathematicians. He argued that strict Darwinism (natural selection) “provides an exact Read More ›

Part of O’Leary for News ongoing series here. Then there is Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, with its famous exemplar: the peacock’s tail. An illustration may help us see why reasonable persons continue to doubt. Picture a triplex: Tom, a world class cribbage addict in Apartment A, does no work and has no money (apart from social assistance and charity). Dick, in Apartment B, works eight shifts a week in trucking, so has no trouble paying his bills. Harry, formerly in Apartment C, went off and became a multimillionaire (legally) in packaging and shipping for the software industry. Does work alone explain Harry’s success? Did he work a thousand times harder and more often than Dick? Is that even possible? Read More ›

From The Scientist:: The form and function of the ears of modern land vertebrates cannot be understood without knowing how they evolved. Excuse me, excuse me, we can know everything there is to know about hearing today simply from examining life forms today. Darwinism forces on people the belief that they must know about the “evolution” of such a function – somewhat like thinking you have to know a lot about Henry Ford in order to drive or fix a car. Hey! Who pays for this stuff anyway? Meanwhile: Although fish can hear, only amphibians and true land vertebrates—including the aquatic species that descended from them, such as whales and pinnipeds—have dedicated hearing organs. In land vertebrates belonging to the Read More ›

From 365 Million-Year-Old Fossil Catches Trilobite in the Act of Molting: In shedding it’s armored exoskeleton, the fossilized creature was molting. Molting is without a doubt one of nature’s most incredible acts. Every so often, certain creatures cast off parts of their bodies in a process of biological renewal. Cats and dogs do it with their fur (often shedding hair all over your sofa). Chickens do it with their feathers. Snakes do it with their skin. Most remarkably, many arthropods, including spiders, crabs, and insects, discard their entire exoskeleton! Ripping themselves out of their bodies in an unnerving and alien manner, they emerge revitalized and renewed, leaving behind a near-complete husk of their former selves. This happened 365 million years Read More ›

Interesting new approach to evolution studies: Rolling the Dice Twice: Evolving Reconstructed Ancient Proteins in Extant Organisms (Betul Kacar) Scientists have access to artifacts of evolutionary history (namely, the fossil record and genomic sequences of living organisms) but they have limited means with which to infer the exact evolutionary events that occurred to produce today s living world. An intriguing question to arise from this historical limitation is whether the evolutionary paths of organisms are dominated by internal or external controlled processes (i.e., Life as a factory) or whether they are inherently random and subject to completely different outcomes if repeated under identical conditions (i.e., Life as a casino parlor). Two experimental approaches, ancestral sequence reconstruction and experimental evolution with microorganisms, Read More ›

From the Guardian: Ideas of social evolution pass over the exercise of power – if it is mentioned at all, it’s only as an inconsequential detail in a vast process of evolutionary change. But what is it that supposedly drives evolution in society? The observation that “things do not stay the same” is scarcely a theory. Darwinian natural selection identified a mechanism and – once genes had been discovered, unknown to Darwin, by a Moravian monk called Gregor Mendel – a unit of selection. Theorists of social evolution in the past have never succeeded in specifying either of these. Despite a great deal of waffle about mutational and combinatorial processes and the like, neither does Ridley. There is no general Read More ›

  Further to: Life continues to ignore what evolution experts say, where we discovered that big (plausible) changes can be produced through hybridization, we also learn, from ScienceDaily: Ancient hybridization key to domestic dog’s origin, wolf conservation efforts There are four to five wild species of Canis in North America, according to the overview. In addition to the well-known grey wolf and coyote, there is a secondary wild population of the domestic dog known as the Carolina dog, plus a few populations of hybrid origin with different proportions of wolf and coyote genes. Two of these hybrid populations, the red wolf of the eastern U.S. and the Algonquin wolf–also known as the Eastern or timber wolf–of southeastern Canada, have already Read More ›

Further to: Life continues to ignore what evolution experts say (Hmm. Maybe the experts should just fire all the current life forms and get themselves different ones?): The other week, I was buying a sack of dry cat food at the feed mill. At the checkout, I noticed a really, really big cat sitting on the counter. He was about three times as big as a typical Ottawa kitty. Could stand up to a police dog. A helpful individual explained to me that he is the only registered Savannah cat in the area. The Savannah is a hybrid of the African serval and the European shorthair— our local rescue kitties). I was also told not to worry about him: He Read More ›

Evidence here: — Hybridization We’ve already seen that cross-breeding blind cavefish from different caves can restore devolved sight in at least some offspring (because the mutations that result in loss of sight differ from group to group, and some hybrids end up with all the necessary equipment). But natural hybridization can produce such changes too. Characteristics that are not evidenced in a given generation may remain as potentials. Ferns separated 60 million years have interbred. The wolf and dog populations of North America are so heavily hybridized that it is a challenge to make sense of them at all in the face of “all the contradictory claims.” Researchers have also identified at least three potential hybridization events (interspecific mating) in Read More ›