The author of Darwin Devolves, Edge of Evolution, and Darwin’s Black Box and The Edge of Evolution talks about the case for design in biology.
Irreducible Complexity
This amazing Rube Goldberg device happened just by accident in a mindless universe, you know
Sean Pitman: After all, anyone who has watched cartoons as a child knows what a Rube Goldberg machine is and that this machine will not work if any one part is removed. So, how can something evolve in a stepwise way where each step is functionally beneficial if there is no function until all the parts are in place?
Larry Moran’s thoughts on Michael Behe’s A Mousetrap for Darwin
Moran: he completely misses the point and fails to understand that what is being challenged is his misinterpretation of the mechanisms of evolution and his understanding of mutations.
We are the “irreducible complexity” community, they now say
Now at last, courtesy a science preprint, we have a name that makes sense to us. The “irreducible complexity community” — the ICs.
Not-yet-specialized cells seem to know where to go
Researchers: Tohoku University scientists have, for the first time, provided experimental evidence that cell stickiness helps them stay sorted within correct compartments during development. How tightly cells clump together, known as cell adhesion, appears to be enabled by a protein better known for its role in the immune system.
Film clip on the probability of a protein forming by chance passes 500k views
xcerpt: Putting the probabilities together means adding the exponents. The probability of getting a properly folded chain of one-handed amino acids, joined by peptide bonds, is one chance in 10^74+45+45, or one in 10^164 (Meyer, p. 212). This means that, on average, you would need to construct 10^164 chains of amino acids 150 units long to expect to find one that is useful.
Webinar with Michael Behe on his new Mousetrap book, November 21
The book is currently #2 in Biochemistry Science, #6 in Biochemistry (Books), and
#13 in Evolution (Kindle Store) at Amazon
Karsten Pultz on the recent Behe-Swamidass debate
Pultz: In my view, Swamidass excels as an expert in smokescreens; he can talk endlessly without nailing down tangible and memorable points. Although pressured more than once by Behe to deliver at least a single counter argument to IC, he did not come up with anything containing even a whiff of substance.
Because nature is full of intelligence, the more we learn, even about a worm, the less we “know”
Gilder on a researcher friend: “the more he learned about the brain of a nematode, the less he felt he knew… And the oceans of reality lay still far beyond his reach and beyond his ken.”
What? An honest admission about the bacterial flagellum from Darwin-driven biology?
Researchers: “To build the machinery that enables bacteria to swim, over 50 proteins have to be assembled according to a logic and well-defined order to form the flagellum, the cellular equivalent of an offshore engine of a boat.” They ADMIT this? It sounds like a Recovery Meeting.
New Michael Behe book: A Mousetrap for Darwin – free webinar
Guaranteed to be fun unless you are an imploding New Atheist. If so, please implode in an eco-friendly way and pick up after yourself.
Karsten Pultz offers some thoughts on the flap over the now-famous Thorvaldsen and Hössjer paper
It should also be considered that in his book Der Teil und das Ganze, Werner Heisenberg expresses his own and also Niels Bohrs’ doubt that random mutations could have produced any of the complex biological systems… Bohr adds that while natural selection obviously occurs it is the idea that new species come about by random changes, which is very hard to imagine, even if this is the only way science can explain it.
Irreducible complexity in the Krebs cycle convinces a biologist of design in nature
At the University of Copenhagen, Jørn Dyerberg is considered a Living Legend. One wonder if, after this, he’ll be Best Not Mentioned.
Karsten Pultz on the limits of gradualism in evolution
Whether proteins can evolve or not will not in the least influence the argument for irreducible complexity. Function cannot evolve gradually.
The bacterial flagellar hook as a universal joint
A friend points out that the paper just describes the intricate machinery of the hook, adding to what we know, without any resort to Darwinspeak. It seems to be getting safer all the time to just not talk that way any more.