Intelligent Design

Further to Lee Spetner’s comments on the (correct) wiring of the vertebrate eye* (sometimes used as a claim for “poor design”), over at Creation-Evolution Headlines, there are some recent articles on the subject, with lots of links: Two Evolutionary Evidences Debunked (7/23/14) This evolutionary argument began to unravel in 2007 when researchers found that Müller cells, penetrating the thicket of blood vessels in the human retina, actually provide near-ideal vision by acting as wave guides to the individual photoreceptors—providing better performance than could be had if the rods and cones were in front of the blood vessels (see 5/02/2007 and subsequent research reported 5/07/2010 about additional vision enhancements provided by the Müller cells) and Backward Wiring of Eye Retina Confirmed Read More ›

So says Jonathan Witt: Historical scientists proceed like a detective at a crime scene. They begin by identifying one or more causes “now in operation” that seem capable of producing the mystery under investigation. Then they accumulate additional clues in order to narrow the field of viable explanations. If all goes well, patient study will narrow the options until only one viable cause is left standing. So, for instance, careful study of a large Arizona crater and various natural processes convinced geologists that an ancient meteor left the crater. Other explanations were ruled out while the crater explanation grew stronger and stronger the longer they studied the scene. A meteor, as it turned out, was the only type of cause Read More ›

Here.

In a prior post RDFish starts off with a promisingly cogent observation: We’re not arguing about “evolutionary adaptation”, but rather about the highly intricate, multi-component mechanisms we observe in organisms. Of course large populations and crossovers can help a bit with local optima, but saying these things will “tend to avoid” them is wishful thinking – there is just so much that can be assembled that way, which is why GAs come up with optimizations and not novel mechanisms. The important point, though, is not to argue about this in the abstract, because there is no way to demonstrate (yet) whether or not the combinatorial resources were sufficient or not. Leading Mapou to respond: Wow. RDFish is moving dangerously close Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Among other findings, a bonobo was observed for the first time making and using spears in a social setting for the purpose of attack and defense. “I believe that the current study will break down our cultural hang-up as humans concerning the inherent capabilities and potential of bonobos and chimpanzees,” says Itai Roffman of the Institute of Evolution at the University of Haifa, who undertook the study … Interestingly, the bonobos are considered less sophisticated than their chimpanzee siblings. Chimpanzees have been observed in nature using branches to dig for tubers in the ground and to break into termite nests and beehives. As part of their cultural diversity, they have also been documented breaking nuts with hammer and Read More ›

Not the comb jellies? From ScienceDaily: Who came first – sponges or comb jellies? A new study reaffirms that sponges are the oldest animal phylum – and restores the classical view of early animal evolution, which recent molecular analyses had challenged. Sponges (Porifera), comb jellies (Ctenophora), the true jellyfish and corals (Cnidaria) and plate animals (Placozoa) together make up the so-called non-bilaterian animals. All four phyla are evolutionarily ancient, and were already in existence more than 600 million years ago. However, unraveling the interrelationships between them — and how they relate to the Bilateria, to which all other animals, including humans, belong — has turned out to be one of the most challenging problems in evolutionary biology. “If we are Read More ›

So whose dictation is it taking? From ScienceDaily: Looking Back 3.8 Billion Years Into the Root of the ‘Tree of Life’ … NASA-funded researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are tapping information found in the cells of all life on Earth, and using it to trace life’s evolution. They have learned that life is a master stenographer — writing, rewriting and recording its history in elaborate biological structures. Nw her is an interesting admission: “The ribosome recorded its history,” said Williams. “It accreted and got bigger and bigger over time. But the older parts were continually frozen after they accreted, just like the rings of a tree. As long as that tree lives, the inner rings will not change. Read More ›

Professor Michael Egnor is not only an accomplished neurosurgeon, but also an articulate exponent of Aristotelian philosophy. In his latest article, however, he makes a fantastic claim which is foreign to Aristotle’s thinking: he asserts that whenever you perceive a distant object, your perception of that object occurs outside your body, rather than inside it. In Egnor’s own words: When you perceive music from your radio, your perception of the music occurs at your radio. When you perceive a tree in your yard, your perception of the tree occurs at the tree. When you perceive the moon, your perception of the moon occurs at the moon. Perceptions occur at the object perceived, regardless of distance, regardless of location. It seems Read More ›

Over the Thanksgiving holiday LK and I visited my sister in New York.  While we were there we did all of the touristy things one might expect, including an obligatory ferry ride over to check out the Statue of Liberty, and I can assure you it is just as beautiful and majestic as ever. Meanwhile, over at The Skeptical Zone Tom English has posted an article entitled The Law of Conservation of Information is defunct.  Apparently they are mighty proud of English’s article, because they have had it glued to the top of their homepage for nearly a month. Anyone who has been following the ID debate for any length of time knows that reports of ID’s demise are issued by Read More ›

So reports Ethan Siegel at Forbes: Yesterday, results were released from an international team led by Alexandre Santerne from Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, where they measured 129 objects-of-interest identified by Kepler for a period of five years. They did spectroscopic analysis, which means they studied the individual wavelengths of light coming from the star, and expected a false positive rate of about 10-to-20%, which is what most scientists estimated. But they found, instead, that over half (52%) of the planetary candidates were, in fact, eclipsing binaries, with another three candidates turning out to be brown dwarfs. … But perhaps the biggest surprise is that the majority of these thought-to-be planets aren’t planets at all, but are massive Read More ›

Six new kind of brain cells discovered, maybe don’t form until later in life From Popular Mechanics: “Just asking ‘what types of cells make up the brain’ is such a basic question… that establishing a complete census of all neuron cell types is of great importance in moving the field of neuroscience forward,” says Tolias, at Baylor College of Medicine. Most previous studies investigating the odd menagerie of brain cells have used juvenile mice, mostly because it’s easier to get high-resolution pictures of their brains. But there’s a problem: Brains keep maturing and complicating as they get older, and Jiang’s team believes that their new-found neurons might not form until adulthood. More. But stop, wait, the brain is a machine, Read More ›

Stimulated by the nth discussion with Zachriel on this point, I would like to offer here some thoughts about the difference between Natural Selection and Artificial Selection. First of all, the dramatic limitation of NS is the following: it works on one functional specification, and one functional specification only: reproductive advantage. In a sense, that specification is the byproduct of the system: biological beings that reproduce, that use limited resources to do that, and that compete for those resources. So, NS is a selection made possible by the existence of a complex functional system, and it selects for improvement in a function critically predefined in that system: reproductive success. So, it is a byproduct of the functional complexity already existing in the Read More ›

Here.

U Tech’s Granville Sewell recalls: Author’s note: To paraphrase Barbara Mandrell, I was ID when ID wasn’t cool. What, intelligent design still isn’t cool, you say? Oh…well, compared to 1985 it is. I offer for your interest the Postscript to my 1985 Springer book, Analysis of a Finite Element Method: PDE/PROTRAN. This Postscript draws an analogy between the evolution of the software described in the book (now calledPDE2D) and the evolution of life, and it is primarily about irreducible complexity, although Michael Behe would not coin that term until 11 years later. It is also clear that I was an intelligent design proponent then, though I had never heard of that term either at the time. In fact, as far Read More ›

So says some new research. First, remember “vestigial organs”? We learned in high school that  vestigial organs, including the appendix, show that there is no design in nature. Being teens, we never considered the implications of the fact that the proposition is never supposed to work the other way. That is, now that almost all such organs have been found to be functional (so far), the no-design PR lobby just moved to other claims. For example, junk DNA! Oh wait, let’s check our notes here on junk DNA… whoops… Okay, and now the humble appendix has the floor: Immune cells make appendix ‘silent hero’ of digestive health “Popular belief tells us the appendix is a liability,” she said. “Its removal is one Read More ›