Survival of the Fittest or Altruistic Suicide?

Petrushka, That's due to their prior commitment to materialism. There must have been a multiverse or their philosophy is incomplete. There is no empirical evidence of the existence of the any matter "before" time began. Anyway, I love this article. There seems to be no ready defense from a Darwinian stand-point. I wouldn't call it a death blow, but it is definitely a strike against darwinism. Collin

How about the fine tuning of the laws of physics?

How about it? It does nothing for me, but I see no reason to argue against it. As for the big bang being inaccessible to empirical research: we'll see. I don't think anyone in physics thinks the big bang was the beginning of nature. The beginning of our universe, yes, but not the beginning of existence. Petrushka

Petrushka, How about the fine tuning of the laws of physics? The only two explanations on the table---God and the multiverse---are both "not accessible to empirical research." The cause of the big bang itself is not accessible to empirical research, since there were no natural causes before Nature came into being. Granville Sewell

I can’t help it if the authors are incapable of drawing the obvious conclusions.

But you can help it. You could study and learn. You could join in the research. Think back on the history of science -- think of Kelvin's calculations of the age of the earth. When has a seemingly impossible puzzle ever been resolved in favor of a cause not accessible to empirical research? Just give me an example from the history of science. Petrushka

Petrushka, This article is from Nature. The one I quoted re: frontloading a few posts ago was from Science. PaV (next post) is referencing another article in Nature. I can't help it if the authors are incapable of drawing the obvious conclusions. The fact that these authors can talk about unicellular organisms "evolving mechanisms to kill themselves" or talk about genes which appear to have evolved long before they were useful only "raising questions about why they evolved," only shows how unfalsifiable Darwinism. Granville Sewell

But then there appear to be so many discoveries recently that are completely fatal to Darwinism...

And yet these stunning discoveries never seem to get published. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/issue/view/24 Petrushka

Cornelius, Was this suicide mechanism irreducibly complex, or might it be explained through a gradual development, where each mutation conferred a slight improvement in the unicellular organism's ability to kill itself? :-) Granville Sewell

Exactly how do the proper cells know when to commit suicide at the proper time in this following video at the 7:45 min. mark?: Fearfully and Wonderfully Made - Glimpses At Development In The Womb http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4249713 And just where is the observational evidence of all the failed experiments of evolution trying the myriad of other unsuccessful patterns of cell suicide for beneficial body-plan morphogenesis? bornagain77

"This suggests that the single-celled colonial organisms that gave rise to our ancenstors had already evolved mechanisms to kill themselves.." says the Nature article. When I commented recently that the evolution of genes which appear to only have uses millions of years later ("evolution before adaptation," as David Tyler called it in his post) "is completely fatal to Darwinism", one of our resident Darwinists dismissed my comment saying "is there some selective advantage for ignorance of biology 101 on this website?" and another commentor's similar observation, saying "this nearly sets a record for dumb and ignorant." But then there appear to be so many discoveries recently that are completely fatal to Darwinism; and yet Darwinism never dies. I can't wait to hear his explanation for how suicide mechanisms confer a selective advantage. Granville Sewell