Blue: Intelligent Design; Red: Darwinian Evolution; Orange: Scientific Creationism; Green: Theological Evolution Any questions? Source: Google Trends Update: Due to whiny protesters who say Darwinian evolution isn’t fair, I shortened it to evolution. And just to be fair I shortened intelligent design to design.
In case you missed it in the news or in SciAm: Mystery of the Montauk Monster is making the headlines. Arthur Spiderwick’s Spitting Gargoyle Man Bear Pig Chimera (art) You decide. 🙂
This time on ID the Future, Casey Luskin — changing things up a little — sits down to talk with videogame artist Dennis DeMercer about his recent work on the Nintendo DS version of the forthcoming game Spore. Working with Amaze Entertainment, DeMercer was responsible for animating 3-D creatures ranging from single-celled organisms to advanced intergalactic civilizations in a game that centers around players evolving creatures from one species into another in order to climb the evolutionary ladder.
But is this highly anticipated game as much an example of the cultural pervasiveness of Darwinian evolution as it seems? Ironically, no. Luskin and DeMercer discuss their discovery that, despite the obviously evolutionary theme, Spore’s game-play actually hinges on intelligent design theory, because success depends entirely on the ability of the player — i.e. intelligent agent — to fashion a creature ready to take on the growing challenges of its environment.
Win the popular culture and you’ve won everything. See, they can’t really Expell DeMercer.
Also, just up at The Mindful Hack
Neural Buddhists, Christians, and the Mud that failed Read More ›
I saw this yesterday on ESPN and couldn’t stop laughing. It’s all over YouTube. Way to go Michigan women’s basketball coach Kevin Borseth:
The lesson is this: The myth of invincibility is just that — a myth. Also bear in mind that Darwinism’s record isn’t nearly as good as the New England Patriots’ going into Super Bowl XLII.
“The temperature in Harbin reaches forty below zero, both Fahrenheit and Celsius, and stays below freezing nearly half the year. The city is actually further north than notoriously cold Vladivostok, Russia, just 300 miles away. So what does one do here every winter? Hold an outdoor festival, of course! Rather than suffer the cold, the residents of Harbin celebrate it, with an annual festival of snow and ice sculptures and competitions.” So says a news report. But of course the images below from this so-called Harbin “snow festival” depict merely the detritus of a snow storm. Snow festival indeed! When are people going to get over their teleocentrism and stop trying to see everything as designed?
Yet another ancestor to modern whales is hypothesized. It’s hard to believe people get paid to produce stuff like this. Whales may be related to deer-like beast By SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science Writer Wed Dec 19, 6:55 PM ET WASHINGTON – The gigantic ocean-dwelling whale may have evolved from a land animal the size of a small raccoon, new research suggests. What might be the missing evolutionary link between whales and land animals is an odd animal that looks like a long-tailed deer without antlers or an overgrown long-legged rat, fossils indicate. The creature is called Indohyus, and recently unearthed fossils reveal some crucial evolutionary similarities between it and water-dwelling cetaceans, such as whales, dolphins and porpoises. For years, the Read More ›
I never quite believed in the evolution of flying squirrels from regular squirrels (i.e., by increasing skin folds that allowed for better and better gliding) until I watched this video:
RC Motorcycles Technical Discussion
In the most commented entry in this blog’s history (go here), I referred to Kevin Padian as “the Archie Bunker Professor of Paleobiology at Cal Berkeley.” On further reflection, it seems that standard evolutionary reasoning allows us to say that Kevin Padian actually is Archie Bunker: One of the beauties of evolutionary theory is that it eliminates essentialism from the biological world. There’s nothing that makes humans human and fundamentally distinguishes them from their putative apelike ancestors. Darwin himself made this point in THE DESCENT OF MAN: “The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind. We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various Read More ›
For brevity the amino acids in the newly discovered protein are alphanumerically coded as follows. alanine – 0 arginine – 1 asparagine – 2 aspartic acid – 3 cysteine – 4 glutamine – 5 glutamic acid – 6 glycine – 7 histidine – 8 isoleucine – 9 leucine – A lysine – B methionine – C phenylalanine – D proline – E serine – F The newly discovered protein is a total of 32 monomers in the following sequence: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 Its function is not known in its entirety but so far has been directly connected with causing stomach ulcers in entertainment industry executives.
A rare glimpse of natural selection in action was captured today. Look at the bright side: At least the poor creature didn’t suffer, and the lions got an easy meal.
If the direct approach of withholding Christmas presents doesn’t work, here’s a more reasoned approach along the lines of classical natural theology (not to be confused with ID proper):
Who knows where Richard Dawkins would be if he had a mother like this: