Intelligent Design

For example, Discover: Mosquitoes that colonized the London Underground in 1863 are now so different they can no longer mate with their above-ground relatives. Chinook salmon from Alaska to California needed just a human generation to become smaller and shorter-lived after an increase in commercial fishing in the 1920s. Adaptation is happening right under our noses, in our lifetimes. But all of this can be accounted for within the genome of the species without any new information. Put another way, if it is true that 1863 Tube mosquitos can no longer bred with above-ground mosquitoes, does that not signal a loss rather than a gain in information? Or are we not supposed to ask any more?

Peter M. Waterhouse & Roger P. Hellens, ” Plant biology: Coding in non-coding RNAs,” Nature (March 25, 2025) Dominique Lauressergues, Jean-Malo Couzigou, Hélène San Clemente, Yves Martinez, Christophe Dunand, Guillaume Bécar, & Jean-Philippe Combier, “Primary transcripts of microRNAs encode regulatory peptides,” Nature (March 25, 2015) G C S Kuhn, “‘Satellite DNA transcripts have diverse biological roles in Drosophila’,” Heredity (March 25, 2015) Go here for simple explanation. Nick Matzke? Darwin book burner! Where are you when we need you to dump on all this? You used to come at half o’clock and now you come at noon. Otherwise, Biological Information Follow UD News at Twitter!

So they say: Dark matter’s presence is known only by its interactions with normal matter through gravity. It does not, however, interact via the electromagnetic force, which is why we cannot directly see it — it does not emit, scatter or reflect light — it is more “invisible” than “dark.” In this new research, Harvey and his team realized just how invisible this stuff is, even to itself. As two galactic clusters collide, the stars, gas and dark matter interact in different ways. The clouds of gas suffer drag, slow down and often stop, whereas the stars zip past one another, unless they collide — which is rare. On studying what happens to dark matter during these collisions, the researchers Read More ›

Here: One of the most fascinating sections of the book is “Circus Toy Models” where Mazur interviews those scientists involved with efforts to make life in the lab – from Jack Szostak and Matt Powner to Vincent Noireaux and Albert Libchaber to Steen Rasmussen and Norm Packard. Mazur also chats with James Simons (“Impresario Extraordinaire”) whose Simons Foundation is now seriously bankrolling origins research, including protocell development. In Rethinking the Circus, i.e., the origin and evolution of life, Mazur talks with the late Carl Woese, and also with Nigel Goldenfeld – who calls for a consensus on what life is. Pier Luigi Luisi, who thinks we need all new origin of life “mindstorms.” And astrophysicist Piet Hut, who suggests that Read More ›

Readers, do you remember: What great physicists have said about immateriality and consciousness? And Being as Communion? Here’s a new one: It From Bit or Bit From It?: On Physics and Information (The Frontiers Collection) The essays in this book look at the question of whether physics can be based on information, or – as John Wheeler phrased it – whether we can get “It from Bit”. They are based on the prize-winning essays submitted to the FQXi essay competition of the same name, which drew over 180 entries. The eighteen contributions address topics as diverse as quantum foundations, entropy conservation, nonlinear logic and countable spacetime. Together they provide stimulating reading for all physics aficionados interested in the possible role(s) Read More ›

Possibly in advance of a political victory in 2016 that will provide unlimited public purse power, a Darwin follower muses thus: I can name one large museum (but I won’t) that totally avoids human evolution (but not necessarily evolution in general) because there are private donors who don’t think humans evolved. The aforementioned human evolution exhibit funded by Koch is probably a mild example of bias. I’ve seen a lot of human evolution exhibits, and so far the few that are quite willing to challenge visitors’ religious or other anti-science beliefs were entirely state funded, as far as I know. I think it is appropriate to ask the Smithsonian to dump the Kochs and their ilk as donors and board Read More ›

Granville Sewell and Daniel Styer have a thing in common: both wrote an article with the same title “Entropy and evolution”. But they reach opposite conclusions on a fundamental question: Styer says that the evolutionist “compensation argument” (henceforth “ECA”) is ok, Sewell says it isn’t. Here I briefly explain why I fully agree with Granville. The ECA is an argument that tries to resolve the problems the 2nd law of statistical mechanics (henceforth 2nd_law_SM) posits to unguided evolution. I adopt Styer’s article as ECA archetype because he also offers calculations, which make clearer its failure. The 2nd_law_SM as problem for evolution. The 2nd_law_SM says that a isolated system goes toward its more probable macrostates. In this diagram the arrow represents Read More ›

In a review of Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species, from the Weekly Standard, we read: In this deeply absorbing book, James T. Costa seeks to establish Alfred Russel Wallace as the fully vested co-creator of what he feels we should once again call the “Darwin-Wallace Theory” of evolution by natural selection. That Wallace had a part in the history of evolutionary theory is, of course, well known. While he was collecting in Malaysia, the basic facts of natural selection occurred to him with the kind of beautiful clarity most of us experience only in dreams (and Wallace was indeed suffering from malaria at the time). He sent his account to Charles Darwin, catapulting the more senior naturalist into a Read More ›

From New Scientist: Do neonicotinoid pesticides kill bumblebees? We still don’t know, but the latest research is alarming – and casts doubt on the integrity of science. … “This is a scandal,” said Matt Shardlow of the charity Buglife, which has campaigned on the issue. “The scientific process appears to have been deliberately manipulated to agree with the environment secretary’s views.” A novel development, to be sure. 😉 What is “science” anyway, as opposed to what people choose to do with certain methods of enquiry? Follow UD News at Twitter!

Here, Excerpt. from Nancy Pearcey’s Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes:, When postmodern thought was applied to literary theory, it gave rise to an offshoot called deconstructionism. Recall that for postmodernism, individuals are constituted by their membership within a community. The implication is that individuals do not really have original or creative ideas but merely reflect the ideas of their communities. For example, literary critic Roland Barthes said a piece of writing is merely a “tissue of quotations” absorbed from the surrounding culture. Barthes is best known for his slogan “the death of the author” — by which he means the death of the very concept of individual creativity. In his view, writers are Read More ›

Says there is no boundary between genetics and epigenetics Interviewed by Suzan Mazur: Suzan Mazur: Over the last few decades there have been several movements regarding deficiencies of the Modern Synthesis. “The Osaka Group” was one of them, “theThe Altenberg 16” another, and now “The Third Way of Evolution” — otherwise known as “the Oxford 50.” You were part of Osaka and now Oxford. Why not Altenberg? Were you invited to the 2008 Extended Evolutionary Synthesis symposium? Mae-Wan Ho: No, I wasn’t. I’m not surprised I wasn’t invited because I changed fields quite drastically beginning in 1988. By 1993, I published my book, The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms. In the book I made good my criticism Read More ›

In case you didn’t know it was free, here’s Denis Noble: The ‘Modern Synthesis’ (Neo-Darwinism) is a mid-20th century gene-centric view of evolution, based on random mutations accumulating to produce gradual change through natural selection. Any role of physiological function in influencing genetic inheritance was excluded. The organism became a mere carrier of the real objects of selection, its genes. We now know that genetic change is far from random and often not gradual. Molecular genetics and genome sequencing have deconstructed this unnecessarily restrictive view of evolution in a way that reintroduces physiological function and interactions with the environment as factors influencing the speed and nature of inherited change. Acquired characteristics can be inherited, and in a few but growing Read More ›

From the Guardian: Humans are evolving more rapidly than previously thought, according to the largest ever genetics study of a single population. Scientists reached the conclusion after showing that almost every man alive can trace his origins to one common male ancestor who lived about 250,000 years ago. The discovery that so-called “genetic Adam”, lived about 100,000 years more recently than previously understood suggests that humans must have been genetically diverging at a more rapid rate than thought. Kári Stefánsson, of the company deCODE Genetics and senior author of the study, said: “It means we have evolved faster than we thought.” The study also shows that the most recent common male ancestor was alive at around the same time as Read More ›

Some people say that Stephen Hawking is the smartest man in the world, and doubtless he is a brilliant physicist. But when it comes to metaphysics he has said some silly things. Consider his famous universe-from-nothing quote: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.” Read that statement again. It is gobsmackingly stupid. First, as we have discussed before, the statement “because there is something the universe can create itself from nothing” is self-referentially incoherent. But more importantly consider this. The statement appears to confer causal agency on “gravity.’ But what is gravity? It is a “law” of nature. What is a law of nature? It is an observed regularity that Read More ›

Not much “junk DNA.” From him: Dan Graur has snarled at the authors of a paper defending ENCODE. How could I then resist? I read the offending paper, and I have to say something that will weaken my own reputation as a snarling attack dog myself: it does make a few good points. But it’s mostly using some valid criticisms to defend an indefensible position. The world yawns and marches on. Friends point out that we do not know anywhere near enough to know what is or is not junk in the geonme, but that under those circumstances, it is wise to assume that any given component is doing something useful. One friend kindly writes to say that the term Read More ›