The resolution of the debate about the creative powers of natural selection is dead simple and utterly trivial to figure out. 1) Natural selection throws stuff out. Throwing stuff out has no creative power. 2) Existing biological information, mixed and matched, can be filtered by natural selection, as in sexual reproduction, but nothing inherently new is created. 3) Random errors can produce survivability quotients, but only in circumstances in which overall functional degradation supports survival in a pathological environment (e.g., bacterial antibiotic resistance), and only given massive probabilistic resources and a few trivial mutational events capable of producing the survival advantage. 4) Random errors are inherently entropic, and the more complex a functionally-integrated system becomes, the more destructive random errors Read More ›

A friend of mine pointed me to a new, free ebook on viruses from University of Chicago Press. Looks interesting! A Planet of Viruses Enjoy!

Cells   Imagine miniature cities Aswarm with bustling centers of activity, factories, powerhouses, post offices, libraries, trash collection and recycling, quality control, railroads and architecture, import/export centers, communication networks, and transport vehicles.   These cities organize themselves from seed cities, according to a complex negotiation process that assigns them their duties and location. Some cities specialize in manufacture and export, some in signal processing, some in reclamation or storage, some in warfare, and some preserve the heritage of the whole nation and pass it on.   Each city has no mayor or aldermen or police. Its multitudinous minions are self-directed, self-replicating wonders and each city cooperates with its neighbors to maintain balance, order, and peaceful exchange for the good of Read More ›

Gregory Chaitin has a new book out, Proving Darwin: Making Biology Mathematical. I have always appreciated Chaitin, and consider him a friendly critic. He is one of the few Darwinists who can (a) appreciate the weaknesses of his own argument, (b) takes the time to examine the other hypothesis, and (c) disagree without trying to kick you out of the conversation. In fact, this book comes on the heals of his recognition of critical flaws in the Darwinian idea. He began his quest to develop a mathematical model of Darwinism because he thought that the idea that there wasn’t one was a major flaw for such a sweeping theory. He has in the mean time written much on metabiology (modeling Read More ›

As we saw in the previous post, the consensus position among evolutionists is that evolution is a fact, every bit as much as gravity, the round Earth and heliocentrism are facts. But the scientific evidence does not show evolution to be a fact, so what’s going on? For example, evolutionists refer to the fossil record, but the fossils reveal what species existed in the past, not how they got there. Minor adaptations in lineages are suggested in the fossils, but large-scale evolutionary change must be inferred to occur between different fossil species. In fact, the fossil record shows bursts of diversity and new forms appearing abruptly.  Read more

The argument against Behe’s characterization of the bacterial flagella as demonstrating “irreducible complexity” has been attacked by Nick Matzke and others on the grounds that the flagellar proteins have simply been “coopted” from already existing flagellar proteins. A recently discovered organism found in “a little lake 30 kilometer south of Oslo in Norway” has caused a stir. An analysis of its genome has found that it has almost, if not completely, nothing in common with any known organisms. It is seen as a new ‘branch’ on the putative “Tree of Life.” Quoting from the article: When researchers from the University of Oslo, Norway compared its genes with all other known species in the world, they saw that the protozoan did Read More ›

In the course of the exchanges on Dr Matzke’s clip on what “science” says can and cannot be so regarding miracles, he has made an interesting comment, here at 15: . . . I still haven’t seen anyone present a good argument as to why we can’t just say that science is the study of the usual course of events . . . Of course, he — sadly, misleadingly — failed to inform us that this highlighted phrase was taken from my own remarks in the original post (and which were followed up in the thread): It goes without needing emphasis that those who experienced the sequence A –> B –> C . . .  here [–> A, the last Read More ›