When Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution in 1859 there were many scientific problems with the idea. Today, a century and a half later, we know of a great many more empirical challenges to the idea that the species arose spontaneously. The latest falsified expectation is that microRNAs, discovered only a few decades ago, when compared between different species do not align with the evolutionary tree. Evolutionist Kevin Peterson and colleagues are pursuing this research. “I’ve looked at thousands of microRNA genes,” explains Peterson, “and I can’t find a single example that would support the traditional tree.”  Read more

If you thought that Harold Zakon’sblunder in the very first sentence of his new PNAS paper, on the evolution of voltage-gated sodium channels, was merely the obligatory secret handshake and that thereafter Zakon would get down to business with some real science, well, think again. After his rather shaky start you’ll find that the second sentence is even worse than the first:  Read more

Some months back I was invited to speak at this summer’s Portsmouth Institute, which took place last weekend (June 22-24). The title of this summer’s symposium was “Modern Science/Ancient Faith.” See here for the schedule of talks. The speakers included Michael Ruse of Florida State University (keynote), Kenneth Miller of Brown University, John Haught of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, Abbot James Wiseman of St. Anselm’s Abbey and the Catholic University, Joe Semmes of the True North Medical Clinic, the Reverend Nicanor G. P. Austriaco of Providence College, and me, representing Discovery Institute. Anyone who knows anything about the science-religion dialogue will realize, simply from scanning these names, that I was the odd man out. When I was Read More ›

Nearly a decade ago, Darwin’s thinking on sexual selection was considered by numerous scientists to be overdue for revision. At the 169th annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, researchers took “dead aim at one of Charles Darwin’s pet evolutionary theories – the theory of sexual selection, which says that males should compete among themselves for access to mates, or compete for the favours of choosy females.” Two leading voices were those of Joan Roughgarden (“There are too many exceptions for the theory to hold”) and Patricia Adair Gowaty, who said that the theory may still hold, but researchers have been accepting it without good evidence (“What’s wrong is our failure to test the theory adequately”). Read More ›

You won’t believe Harold Zakon’s fallacy in the very first sentence of his new PNAS paper on sodium channel evolution. The University of Texas evolutionist writes:  Read more