These are a pair of videos from the AM-Nat Biology conference. I have had lots of other things going on so I’ve been slow getting these up, but Salvador’s talks became more relevant as Dan Graur doubles down to try to prove that the genome is mostly junk. You can get the rest of the talks from the AM-Nat Biology conference (that have been uploaded so far) from here.
Down Graur, a critic of the ENCODE project, has doubled down on his statement that the genome is mostly non-functional. Graur has gone further to state that not only does he think that most of the genome is non-functional, he thinks that he has proven it to be a mathematical certainty.
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Does anyone remember the Altenberg 16, a group of dissenting evolution theorists who met so nervously at the Konrad Lorenz institute in Austria that they locked a journalist out of the meeting?* They seem to be continuing to write papers, according to Massimo Pigliucci, I have just spent three delightful days at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for theoretical biology in Vienna, participating to a workshop of philosophers and biologists on the question of how to think about causality, especially within the context of the so-called Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, the currently unfolding update to the standard model in evolutionary theory. Here’s one: Susan Foster, Incorporating the environmentally sensitive phenotype into evolutionary thinking: phenotypic plasticity mediates the relationship between selection and genotype Read More ›
This week’s article at Design Disquisitions is about Perry Marshall’s ‘Evolution 2.0’ thesis and his criticisms of intelligent design. This article responds to some of his recent writings on his blog and his interaction with Stephen Meyer a few weeks back. Bottom line is, his philosophy of science has significant problems and he has some grave misconceptions about what ID is: A few days ago I was listening to an episode of Unbelieveable?, the fantastic radio debate show and podcast at Premier Christian Radio. The episode was a fairly recent one between Stephen Meyer and Perry Marshall. Marshall is the author of Evolution 2.0 and writes at his blog Cosmic Fingerprints. I’ve read some of his work and he makes some Read More ›
Here is the next video from the AM-Nat conference. In this video, Paul Nelson talks about genes that are both taxonomically-restricted (ORFan genes) and essential to the function of organisms. Then he describes the impact of these findings on common descent.
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There has been quite a controversy over the past few years over whether the extended evolutionary synthesis is a replacement of the modern synthesis or a refinement of it.
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The last couple of days I have spent too much time trying to rescue a hard drive. This drive was intended for a Windows 10 system, but it would not appear anywhere in utilities. BIOS could recognize it was plugged in, but that was it. Nothing in Explorer, nothing in Disk Management, not even in the command-line diskpart partitioning utility. In fact, just plugging the drive in would cause all of these to hang until terminated. I went through the whole litany of troubleshooting procedures: BIOS check, memory diagnostics, different slots, direct plug, external connections, a special cloning hardware connection. Nothing. Finally, after painstaking effort on multiple different machines I was able to get a Linux command-line terminal on one Read More ›
Finally, I’ve managed to publish my first blog article! It’s been a rocky start as I had some technical difficulties. Nevertheless, it feels good to get the ball rolling. In this first article, I’ve chosen to take a step back and reflect upon whether or not intelligent design is an important problem to consider in the first place. I outline what I consider to be five strong reasons why this is a matter of great significance. In the foreword to the intelligent design text, The Design of Life, biochemist William S. Harris notes: The scientific community continues to wrestle with the deep and fundamental questions: Where did the universe come from? How did life originate? How did a coded language (i.e., DNA) Read More ›
In response to our Steampunk Darwin, David Klinghoffer observes, at Evolution News & Views, a classic example of the way in which mediocrities know they are right: Because they can attract a consensus of, mainly, themselves to end discussions of problematic new information: Shutting Down the Evolution Debate, the “Mainstream Science” Way We noted the other day our biologist colleague Cornelius Hunter’s online adventure, parachuting into a discussion with theistic evolutionists over at the BioLogos website. The debate in a thread at their Open Forum, “What is Universal Common Descent?,” is long and discursive. It runs to 212 entries so far. I can’t claim to have read every word, but this struck me as telling. At comment #203, Washington University’s Joshua Read More ›
I was sad to recently realize that Hubert Yockey passed earlier (in January) this year. Hubert Yockey, though he personally was against Intelligent Design, made many contributions to science that many of us within the ID community view as pro-ID work. I wanted to take a moment to appreciate and reflect on his contributions as they relate to ID.
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The question of whether methodological naturalism is an idea worth holding onto in science has been one that the ID camp, as a whole, is not unified on. Some think that methodological naturalism is a perfectly valid way to define science, and that ID fits nicely within that scope. Others think that methodological naturalism is just philosophical baggage hitching a free ride and should be discarded.
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The claim that British moths “evolved” because of industrial pollution (microevolution) in recent centuries became an unquestionable truth of Darwin lobby textbooks in recent decades. But there are serious problems with that example (the peppered myth). From Waynesburg University (Pennsylvania) biology prof Wayne Rossiter, author of In the Shadow of Oz, a note: Note that I do not deny that there are examples of microevolution in action (in fact, I affirm the existence of such examples). I simply point out that this “prized horse” in the evolutionist’s stable—an example that ranks with Darwin’s finches—has serious shortcomings that go unmentioned in the public or in the classroom. In [Darwin defender] JB’s attempt to rescue the sacred cow, he/she completely misses the Read More ›
We have been talking a bit about Rope Kojonen this last week, with his presentation at the AM-Nat conference and his recent paper on methodological naturalism in the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. Now he has a new book out covering a philosophical perspective on the Intelligent Design debate.
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In connection with a sale on The Design of Life (Dembski and Wells), an excerpt from Evolution News and Views: The giraffe is an integrated adaptational package whose parts are carefully coordinated with one another. To fit successfully into its environmental niche, the giraffe presumably needed long legs. But in possessing long legs, it also needed a long neck. And to use its long neck, further adaptations were necessary. When a giraffe stands in its normal upright posture, the blood pressure in the neck arteries will be highest at the base of the neck and lowest in the head. The blood pressure generated by the heart must be extremely high to pump blood to the head. This, in turn, requires Read More ›