Eric Holloway shows that, far from demonstrating evolution, Dawkins’ weasel program shows that natural selection prevents evolution from happening.
Natural selection
Devolution in a flower is remarketed as “sudden evolutionary change”
If a lineage of peacocks lost the showy tails due to a transmissible genetic defect — but was thus better able to flee predators — that could also be marketed as “sudden evolutionary change.” But what question about the origin of complex life would such terminology engineering really answer?
The Galapagos finches as fractured icons of Darwinian evolution
Wells: When the drought ended and the rains returned, however, food was plentiful, and the average beak size returned to normal. No net evolution had occurred. Nevertheless, “Darwin’s finches” found their way into most biology textbooks as evidence for evolution by natural selection.
Paper: “anatomical novelty precedes ecological success”
A friend points out that the researchers would seem to be implying that natural selection does not play a major role in the origins of anatomical novelty.
Everything is Coming Up “Non-Random”!
On January 12, 2022, Phys.Org had a PR on an article documenting “non-random” mutations found in wild tobacco plants, published by a team from UC Davis. Now, three weeks later (Feb 1, 2022), we have another paper, working with human populations in Africa, and which, according to a team from the University of Haifa, “surprisingly” Read More…
Are humans changing evolution? Like tuskless elephants…
In a human-dominated world, things happen faster, for better or worse. Should we still call it “evolution” if we did it?
At Evolution News and Science Today: Why C. S. Lewis doubted the creative power of natural selection
West: “according to Lewis, Darwin’s theory explains how a species can change over time by losing functional features it already has. Suffice to say, this is not the key thing the modern biological theory of evolution purports to explain.”
New Video Presentation on YouTube: Intelligent Design & Scientific Conservatism
I have recently posted a new video on my Intelligent Design YouTube channel. In this video I discuss several areas in the philosophy of science and modern evolutionary biology, and their relationship to ID. These thoughts were prompted initially by an interesting paper by philosopher of science Jeffrey Koperski ‘Two Bad Ways to Attack Intelligent Read More…
At New Scientist: Ancient comb jelly more complex than its modern relatives?
Well, it’s a good thing for “evolutionary theory” that it doesn’t “preclude” life forms becoming “simpler over geological time.” That’s called devolution and it is in fact very common.
At Oscillations: Michael Ruse’s attempted takedown of evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin (but read the story!)
Ruse appears to have been a relentless enforcer of Darwinian orthodoxy behind the scenes, including a blistering attack on philosopher Jerry Fodor, who questioned it.
Science journalist Suzan Mazur remembers Richard Lewontin
She remembers him as “opposing the establishment on Darwinian dogma.”
Misleading claims about a long running evolution experiment
Hey. The Darwinians are marketing magic and it is really difficult to refute magic.
Has a plant evolved a camouflage color to avoid humans?
If humans stopped picking them, would the green ones just start becoming more numerous again?
How much computing power would we need to evolve computer via Darwinian evolution that can program itself ?
But read the fine print: We would need to run many trials of planets in parallel in order to simulate the real conditions in the universe. Yampolskiy concludes, ‘In fact, depending on some assumptions we make regarding multiverse, quantum aspects of biology, and probabilistic nature of Darwinian algorithm such compute may never be available.’”
Asked at Oscillations: Why is the Khan Academy so stuck on “natural selection” in evolution?
Suzan Mazur notes that the Khan Academy has tended to promote natural selection as “evolution” generally.