Intelligent Design

June 23 is the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist, whose father Zacharias, a priest, may have been the first theistic evolutionist, somewhere around 4 BC.. As Luke tells the story, 10And the whole multitude of the people were in prayer outside at the hour of the incense offering. 11And an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the altar of incense. 12Zacharias was troubled when he saw the angel, and fear gripped him. 13But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your petition has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will give him the name John. 14“You will have joy and Read More ›

john_a_designer writes: After his famous 1948 BBC debate with skeptic Bertrand Russell, Jesuit priest Fr. Frederick Copleston expressed some frustration. He said that he felt that Russell had come unwilling to really engage him in any of his arguments. However, during the debate the two men had this brief exchange: “You say,” Copleston said to Russell, “I think that the universe — or my existence if you prefer, or any other existence — is unintelligible?” “I shouldn’t say unintelligible,” Russell replied, “I think it is without explanation.” I would say that was a major concession on Russell’s part. It’s true. Non-theists don’t really have a good explanation for the existence of the universe, theists do. For example, scientists believe that Read More ›

Yes, it sounds weird. By the way, sell your stock in Dawkins’ selfish gene. Anyway, listen: From Science Alert: Hundreds of genes spring to life up to 4 days after death, scientists find A pair of papers published this week discuss evidence that certain parts of the body are still firing even days the rest have stopped functioning, and it could change the way we think about organ transplants and time of death. Led by microbiologist Peter Noble, a team from the University of Washington has been investigating the gene activity in deceased mice and zebrafish, prompted by previous research that identified a handful of genes in human cadavers that were active more than 12 hours after death. The researchers Read More ›

In the We Won thread someone who calls themselves rvb8 wrote:  “We do not accept the supernatural because we can’t test for that.” Well.  Consider the following two statements: Supernatural phenomena exist. Natural phenomena are all that exist. The two statements are mirror images are of one another.  If one is true the other is necessarily false.  They are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. And neither can be confirmed by test. Notice the double standard here.  rvb8 rejects statement 1 on the sole ground that it cannot be tested.  But he affirms statement 2 (it is necessarily entailed by his statement) even though it cannot be tested either.  The incoherence of scientism is obvious.  Yet many cling to it in Read More ›

From Eurekalert: Research in mutant mice has shown that these two mammalian features are controlled by the same gene, MSX2, which also controls the development of the mammary glands and the maintenance of body hairs. “This is the gene that makes us mammals” Benoit says. Based on the CT based anatomical observations in probainognathians, it appears that the MSX2 gene underwent a significant change in its expression 240-246 million years ago and triggered the evolution of many typical mammalian traits including hair and whiskers, an enlarged cerebellum, complete ossification of the skull roof, and more importantly, the mammary glands, that define mammals today. “Our research has shown that these features of mammals were already present in advanced therapsids, prior to Read More ›

From Ohio State University: A study in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides the strongest evidence yet that proteins—the large and complex molecules that fold into particular shapes to enable biological reactions—can’t fold themselves. Rather, the work of folding is done by much smaller water molecules, which surround proteins and push and pull at them to make them fold a certain way in fractions of a second, like scores of tiny origami artists folding a giant sheet of paper at blazingly fast speeds. Dongping Zhong, leader of the research group at The Ohio State University that made the discovery, called the study a “major step forward” in the understanding of water-protein interactions and said it answers Read More ›

From a 2015 journal paper, Engines of creationism? Intelligent design, machine metaphors and visual rhetoric: Machine metaphors are ubiquitous in the molecular sciences. In addition to their use by scientists, educators and popularizers of science, they have been promoted intensively by the Intelligent Design (ID) movement in arguments for the necessity of a god-like designer to account for the complexities of life at the molecular level. We have investigated the visual rhetoric employed in a movie by ID proponents, with particular emphasis on machine metaphors. After presenting examples, we argue that science communicators could reduce the persuasive impact of ID visual rhetoric based on machine metaphors by emphasizing that selfassembly is fundamental to molecular complexes. Paper. (public access) – Gunnar Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Although scientists generally agree that eukaryotes can trace their ancestry to a merger between archaea and bacteria, there’s been considerable disagreement about what the first eukaryote and its immediate ancestors must have looked like. As Thattai and his colleagues Buzz Baum and Gautam Dey of University College London explain in their paper, that uncertainty has stemmed in large part from the lack of known intermediates that bridge the gap in size and complexity between prokaryotic precursors and eukaryotes. As a result, they say, the origin of the first eukaryotic cell has remained “one of the most enduring mysteries in modern biology.” That began to change last year with the discovery of DNA sequences for an organism that no Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Thinking of gene loss as an evolution force is a counterintuitive idea, for it is easier to think that only when we gain something -genes in this case- can we evolve. However the new work by these authors, who are members of the Research Group on Evolution and Development (EVO-DEVO) of the UB, paints the vision of gene loss as a great potential process of genetic change and evolutionary adaption. … According to Professor Ricard Albalat, “it has been shown that the possibility of losing genes is linked to the lifestyle of the species. Parasites, for instance, show a greater tendency of gene loss because since they re-use their host’s resources, lots of their genes become dispensable and Read More ›

Here is the abstract from a Nature Review: Genetics paper:

The recent increase in genomic data is revealing an unexpected perspective of gene loss as a pervasive source of genetic variation that can cause adaptive phenotypic diversity. This novel perspective of gene loss is raising new fundamental questions. How relevant has gene loss been in the divergence of phyla? How do genes change from being essential to dispensable and finally to being lost? Is gene loss mostly neutral, or can it be an effective way of adaptation? These questions are addressed, and insights are discussed from genomic studies of gene loss in populations and their relevance in evolutionary biology and biomedicine.

Many years ago, I predicted that modern genome sequencing would eventually prove one side of the argument to be right. This review article indicates that ID is the correct side of the argument. What they describe is essentially what ID scientist, Michael Behe, has termed the “First Principle of Adaptation.” (Which says that the organism will basicaly ‘break something’ or remove something in order to adapt) This paper ought to be the death-knell of Darwinism, and, of course, “neo-Darwinism,” but, even the authors who report this new “perspective” have not changed their Darwinian perspective. Somehow, they will find a way to tell us that the Darwinian ‘narrative’ always had room in it for this kind of discovery. As Max Planck said, and I paraphrase, “a theory does not prove itself right; it’s just that the scientists who opposed it eventually die.” Read More ›

From Waynesburg University (Pennsylvania) biology prof Wayne Rossiter, author of In the Shadow of Oz,, offers a new series on theistic evolution, starting with Square Peg for a Round Hole: Robinson admits that Dennett has struck a vital spot in pro-Darwinian theology: “His remarks stung: there is indeed a legitimate question about whether the way in which theology engages with Darwinism amounts to anything more than a set of purely defensive and rather desperate moves.” Indeed. He goes on to broadly suggest that Dennett (and secular scientists in general) might benefit from the metaphysics of Christian theism. But this defensive maneuver seems a limp defense. The best Robinson manages in the chapter is the red herring of reversing the tables, Read More ›

From Sarah Knapton at Telegraph: In January, astronomers Professor Konstantin Batygin and Professor Mike Brown from California Institute of Technology predicted the existence of a ninth planet after discovering that 13 objects in the Kuiper Belt – an area beyond Neptune – were all moving together as if ‘lassooed’ by the gravity of a huge object. Now scientists from Cambridge University and Spain have discovered that the paths of the dwarf planets are not as stable as they thought, meaning they could be falling under the influence of more planets further out.More. See also: Planet better than Earth claimed within reach Follow UD News at Twitter!

The Opossum Files!: On June 6, philosopher Vincent Torley, one of our Uncommon Descent authors, asked us to consider the opossum as evidence for common descent: Consider the opossum (a marsupial mammal): the evidence for common descent (Vincent Torley, June 6, 2016): Remarkably, the recent spate of articles over at Evolution News and Views (see here, here and here) attacking the claim that vitellogenin pseudogenes in humans provide scientific evidence for common descent, all missed the point that Professor Dennis Venema was making, which was not about the existence of pseudogenes, but about the spatial pattern in the genes. The pattern is strikingly clear if we compare chickens with opossums. And since humans belong to the same class as opossums (namely, Read More ›

I’m going to lay out three basic arguments for belief in the supernatural. First, science itself would not be possible were it not for the effects of unseen, higher-order supernatural causes. Second, science and rational debate would not be possible unless we all have faith in the supernatural – unseen spirits not bound to material causes. Third, each of us has direct personal experience of the supernatural every waking second of every day. Let’s first define what “supernatural” means. From Merriam-Webster: of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil. unable to be explained by science or the laws of nature : of, Read More ›

From Globe and Mail: While fertilization is the crucial first step to all human life, it has not been easy for scientists to determine precisely what happens when egg and sperm meet. In addition to the technical challenges, experiments that require human fertilization immediately raise ethical issues. To sidestep these dilemmas, researchers in both groups found ways to separately generate two proteins that are known to be crucial for fertilization and studied their interaction. The teams were then able to deduce the three-dimensional structures of the proteins and show precisely how they fit together, atom to atom. Their complementary findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature. … One intriguing detail is that the Izumo1 protein, which is long and Read More ›