Adam Gopnik has written an impertinent piece for the New Yorker (February 19, 2015), arguing that political candidates should be put on the spot and required to affirm their acceptance of evolution before being allowed to take office. Evolution, he writes, is “an inarguable and obvious truth” which is “easy to understand,” and if you oppose “Darwinian biology,” you thereby “announce yourself against the discoveries of science, or so frightened of those who are that you can be swayed from answering honestly.” A politician who fails to publicly embrace evolution “shouldn’t be trusted with power.” As Gopnik puts it: It does seem slightly odd to ask a man running for President — or, for that matter, for dogcatcher — to Read More ›

Recently I have been thinking a lot about one of the most interesting topics: the origin of life. Specifically, the state of research on abiogenesis, the idea that life arose through purely natural processes without any intelligent guidance or intervention. I have also been thinking about the various viewpoints I have encountered over the years regarding abiogenesis. The various viewpoints about abiogenesis can be categorized along something of a spectrum. Although the spectrum is not necessarily symmetrical and there are probably numerous different views, I found it helpful to break them down into seven different categories in a 3-1-3 distribution, with stronger support for abiogenesis at one end of the spectrum and stronger skepticism toward abiogenesis at the other end Read More ›

A frequently made claim in the scientific literature is that protein domains can be readily recombined to form novel folds. In Darwin’s Doubt, Stephen Meyer addresses this subject in detail (see Chapter 11). Over the course of this article, I want to briefly expand on what was said there. Defining Our Terms Before going on, it may be useful for me to define certain key terms and concepts. I will be referring frequently to “exons” and “introns.” Exons are sections of genes that code for proteins; whereas introns are sections of genes that don’t code for proteins. Proteins have multiple structural levels. Primary structure refers to the linear sequence of amino acids comprising the protein chain. When segments within this chain Read More ›