Genetics

Superficially, the phrase “survival of the fittest” seems undeniably true, but in the proximal and ultimate sense it is false. If this claim is false then Darwinism is also false. The notion of “survival of the fittest” is an illusion in the general sense though seemingly true in the Darwinian sense. Critical oversights in Darwin’s Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection and in Dennett’s algorithm can be demonstrated. Finally, population genetics can be used to critique Dawkins Weasel, Avida and various other fallacious computer simulations that are used in promoting the falsehoods of Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism. To demonstrate that “survival of the fittest is false” it is sufficient but not necessary to demonstrate “death of the fittest is Read More ›

Joe Felsenstein is an evolutionist that has a unique distinction of having his work favorably cited by creationists and bible scholars (except where he disagrees). For example, religious scholars are using Joe’s work to find descendants of the line of priests from the time of the Bible’s King David. See: Y-Chromosomal Aaron. Joe is also widely credited with coining the phrase “Muller’s ratchet”, a concept articulated in a paper 40 years ago! He must have written that when he was really young, 1973 was a while back. The wiki entry on Muller’s ratchet: In evolutionary genetics, Muller’s ratchet (named after Hermann Joseph Muller, by analogy with a ratchet mechanism) is the process by which the genomes of an asexual population Read More ›

Over on The Panda’s Thumb blog, Darwinian apologist P.Z. Myers recently posted a pejorative laden critique of a review article by Casey Luskin. Luskin was responding to a recent New York Times article on a study purporting to show how certain genes in fish might hold an important clue on how fins turned to feet. I won’t rehearse the articles here, you can read them in the links. Rather, I want to look a bit more closely at Myer’s critique of Luskin’s article and the supposedly “scientific” problems he has with Luskin. He begins by highlighting a quote from Luskin’s article where Luskin writes, “Hox genes are known to be widely conserved among vertebrates, so the fact that homology was Read More ›

Here’s what we read in this PhysOrg blurb: It may seem logical, but the surprising part of this finding is how universal it is. “It is almost expected that the frequency of usage of any component is correlated with how many other components depend on it,” said Maslov. “But we found that we can determine the number of crucial components – those without which other components couldn’t function – by a simple calculation that holds true both in biological systems and computer systems.” For both the bacteria and the computing systems, take the square root of the interdependent components and you can find the number of key components that are so important that not a single other piece can get Read More ›

Geneticist Gerald R. Crabtree reviews evidence showing genomic mutations are degrading the 2000 to 5000 genes needed for our intellectual and emotional function:

New developments in genetics, anthropology, and neurobiology predict that a very large number of genes underlie our intellectual and emotional abilities, making these abilities genetically surprisingly fragile. . . . Read More ›

‘Quadruple helix’ DNA seen in human cells Balasubramanian’s group has been pursuing a four-stranded version of the molecule (DNA) that scientists have produced in the test tube now for a number of years. It is called the G-quadruplex. The “G” refers to guanine, one of the four chemical groups, or “bases”, that hold DNA together and which encode our genetic information (the others being adenine, cytosine, and thymine). The G-quadruplex seems to form in DNA where guanine exists in substantial quantities. . . . This revealed the four-stranded DNA arose most frequently during the so-called “s-phase” when a cell copies its DNA just prior to dividing. . . . If the G-quadruplex could be implicated in the development of some Read More ›