Intelligent Design

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/war.shtml (Yes, that’s me.)

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/2624/1/147/

And now for another amazing example of what natural selection can accomplish (or not):

Press Release
Heidelberg, 22 January 2006
http://www.embl.org/aboutus/news/press/2006/press22jan06.html

The closest look ever at the cell’s machines: The first genome-wide screen for protein complexes is completed

“To carry out their tasks, most proteins work in dynamic complexes that may contain dozens of molecules,” says Giulio Superti-Furga, who launched the large-scale project at Cellzome four years ago. “If you think of the cell as a factory floor, up to now, we’ve known some of the components of a fraction of the machines. That has seriously limited what we know about how cells work. This study gives us a nearly complete parts list of all the machines, and it goes beyond that to tell us how they populate the cell and partition tasks among themselves.” The study combined a method of extracting complete protein complexes from cells [tandem affinity purification, developed in 2001 by Bertrand Séraphin at EMBL], mass spectrometry and bioinformatics to investigate the entire protein household of yeast, turning up 257 machines that had never been observed. It also revealed new components of nearly every complex already known. Read More ›

Richard Dawkins should be very pleased that his efforts at educating the British public have met with such overwhelming success. He has much to look forward to in his retirement:

Britons unconvinced on evolution
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4648598.stm

Over 55s were less likely to opt for evolution than other groups

More than half the British population does not accept the theory of evolution, according to a survey.
Furthermore, more than 40% of those questioned believe that creationism or intelligent design should be taught in school science lessons. Read More ›

Here’s the transcript of the NPR interview with Vonnegut that I mentioned yesterday on this blog: Read More ›

Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA
by William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse (Editors)
Cambridge University Press, 2004

Review by Gal Kober on Jan 22nd 2006
http://mentalhelp.net/books/books.php?type=de&id=2982

The anatomy of man is a key to the anatomy of ape.” Karl Marx (Introd. to a Contrib. to a Critique of Polit. Economy, 1957)

Intelligent Design and the war waged by its proponents against evolutionary biology and the naturalistic practices of science are more a matter of public affairs than they are philosophical or scientific issues. Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, a volume recently published by Cambridge University Press, aims at providing “a comprehensive and even-handed overview of the debate concerning biological origins,” and specifically, the more vocal aspects of this ‘debate’, namely, the conflict between evolutionary biology and supporters of intelligent design. Although it succeeds in doing that, it also has a seriously negative side. Read More ›

Science and the Church: What it means to question Darwinism
by Herbert London

http://www.cruxproject.org/ScienceChurch.htm

Christoph Cardinal Schonborn, the Catholic archbishop of Vienna, recently
caused a firestorm in intellectual circles when he made the rather obvious
argument that Darwinism has many unexplained characteristics. The New York
Times responded reflexively by suggesting that the Church was turning away
from “modern science.” Read More ›

MOST of the small satellite galaxies around the Andromeda galaxy are lined up in a single plane that slices through its spiral disc, an alignment that suggests the satellites are floating on a river of dark matter.

Read More ›

Go here for a surprise: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5165342 (the surprise comes at about 4:30 into the NPR story).

Bob Reeves of Lincoln’s Journal Star had this to say regarding Creationism, Evolution, and Intelligent Design today. What Mr. Reeves and others don’t seem to get is that the locus of the issue which is generating so much controversy these days is not the progress of science vs. the authority of the Bible; rather, it’s the reluctance of mainstream science and academia to accept the validity of a concept which keeps a valid scientific theory like evolution from becomming an unscientific ideology. Mr. Reeves entitled his piece “When science and religion converge”. We do, in fact, seem to be witnessing a convergence of science and religion–just not in the way Reeves sees it.

The Utah Senate passed a bill yesterday requiring teachers to tell students that there are several theories on the origin of life. Read all about it.

Bob Murphy, PhD Economist, does a nice job of deconstructing a slew of anti-ID arguments at that Libertarian den of capitalist inequity Lew Rockwell.com.

Plus I get another article up just by changing a few words! Thanks Bob!
Read More ›

Bob Murphy, PhD Economist, does a nice job of deconstructing Massimo Pigliucci’s Denying Evolution at that Libertarian den of capitalist inequity Lew Rockwell.com.

In an unsurprising act of cowardice, not a single Darwimpian defender of the faith scientist had the balls fiber to stand up to our fearless leader in Kansas yesterday.
Read More ›