Evolutionary biology

Recently, Larry Moran critiqued ID’s approach to evolutionary biology. Here I will explain how Larry Moran has misunderstood both ID and modern evolutionary theory.
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This is from a new study published in Nature Communications, and talked about at Phys.Org. Oh, how difficult it is these days to be an “intellectually fulfilled” neo-Darwinian: Humans don’t like being alone, and their genes are no different. Together we are stronger, and the two versions of a gene – one from each parent – need each other. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin have analysed the genetic makeup of several hundred people and decoded the genetic information on the two sets of chromosomes separately. In this relatively small group alone they found millions of different gene forms. The results also show that genetic mutations do not occur randomly in the two parental chromosome Read More ›

Keith brought in an argument he claimed to be a “bomb” for ID. It turned out to be a failed suicide mission where the only person that got blown up was Keith. (Please note: I am assuming that life patterns exists in an ONH, as Keith claims, for the sake of this argument only.  Also, there are many other, different take-downs of Keith’s “bomb” argument already on the table.  Indulge me while I present another here.) In my prior OP, I pointed out that Keith had made no case that nature was limited to producing only ONH’s when it comes to biological diversity, while his whole argument depended on it.  He has yet to make that case, and has not Read More ›

In recent exchanges  in and around UD on origins and the tree of life, Theobald’s 29 evidences claims (and by implication the sort of summary presented by Wikipedia in its articles on Abiogenesis and Evolution) have come up. [NB: to carry forward discussions, I suggest here on. I intend to do a for reference in support of discussion here in this FTR post.] That leads me to point out the case of the UD pro-darwinism essay challenge and the strange absence of and reluctance to provide a guest essay here at UD over the course of a full year, Sept/Oct 2012 – Sept/Oct 2013. The big issue seemed to be that in my challenge as explained, I required tackling the Read More ›

Coyne is not an engineer. He’s sort of a glorified fruitfly farmer. He doesn’t have engineering insights and it shows. He’s also one of the most militant ideologues out there ( protesting the appointment of Francis Collins MD,PhD as head of NIH because Collins was a Christian). Jerry Coyne argues the human eyes is poorly designed: The human eye, though eminently functional, is imperfect—certainly not the sort of eye an engineer would create from scratch … the nerves and blood vessels that attach to our photoreceptor cells are on the inside rather than the outside of the eye, running over the surface of the retina. … The whole system is like a car in which all the wires to the Read More ›

One of my favorite biologists is Gunter Wagner. He makes the claim in Genome Biology and Evolution that evolvability and modularity are highly associated. While not proof of a requirement, I think that Wagner is on the right track. In fact, this sort of research can actually bridge the gap between Intelligent Design and Evolutionary biology. The main critique ID has for evolutionary biology is that the haphazard mutation/selection paradigm does not create organisms. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they didn’t evolve in some way, but it does rule out the haphazard mechanisms. As I pointed out in 2008, there is a difference between “parameterized” evolution and “open-ended” evolution. Parameterized evolution requires information about the most likely productive ways to Read More ›

An expert in “frog evolution” has demonstrated that frogs in different continents “evolved” the same sorts of characteristics. Now just ask yourself: what are the odds that “evolution,” which works via random processes, would “evolve” the same kinds of characteristics on different continents? Yet, that is what our evolutionary biologist friends would ask us to believe. Do you believe? Do I hear an ‘Amen’? I guess not. Yes, biogeography might explain some of this, but not in the cases our authors looked at. Now, given that DNA is an information resource (prescribed by, and within, the genome), ID would fully expect that the common genome of the frog family would express itself in similar ways–even across continents–given that “new” information Read More ›

My neo-Darwinian friend, Francis Smallwood, has now written a response to my previous instalment in our dialogue. If you want to read it, go here. Below is a small excerpt of the response by Francis. You can read his full response by going to his blog. Follow the link at the bottom of the page. I think that his latest reply is considerably better than his previous writings. Over the past year or so his critique of ID has become sharper and more substantive, and I think he makes some very good points. I still happen to think he is largely mistaken though. It is well worth engaging with this one, so please do discuss some of his points either Read More ›