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devolution

Devolution: The “surprising” gene costs of the carnivorous lifestyle to plants

Researchers: "To their surprise, the researchers discovered that the plants do not need a particularly large number of genes for carnivory. Instead, the three species studied are actually among the most gene-poor plants known. " Yes, because - as Mike Behe says - Darwin Devolves. Read More ›

Michael Behe on how the new Lenski paper demonstrates a key problem with Darwinism

Behe: Let me emphasize: the only result from the decades-long, 50,000-plus generation E. coli evolution experiment that even seemed at first blush like it had a bit of potential to yield a novel pathway in the bacterium has resulted instead in spectacular devolution. Read More ›

A striking admission that Michael Behe was right

What he is saying is precisely Behe’s point in Darwin Devolves. Cell evolution is mostly about destroying complex equipment that hinders immediate survival. (The question of how the equipment came to be so complex beforehand is separate from the question of what life forms actually do when they evolve.) Read More ›

Michael Behe: New paper supports my “Darwin Devolves” thesis

The trouble with Darwin Devolves is that it is likely to be both quite right and a big problem for schoolbook Darwinism. Just as it is much easier to—without thinking much—throw something out than fix or adapt it, life forms will far more likely randomly mutate by dumping complex equipment than by reengineering it. It’s not that life forms can’t develop complex new equipment. But such changes probably aren’t an instance of natural selection acting on random mutation. And in these times, that’s the controversial part: design in nature. Read More ›

First known animal that doesn’t breathe

That’s called devolution, when life forms simply junk complex equipment they never use. One wonders if there is any characteristic of live that some life form or other has not devolved to get rid of. But they will, of course, likely be parasites like salminicola. Read More ›

Bird “goes extinct” twice

Note that loss of the ability to fly is treated in this story as a form of evolution, as if the loss resulted in greater complexity rather than less. As if it wasn't fatal when the island was inundated. But it enables evolutionary biologists to say that "evolution happened." Read More ›

Eric Metaxas interviews Michael Behe

Media personality and author Eric Metaxas talked to him in his university’s home town in Pennsylvania: Eric Metaxas interviews biochemist Michael Behe on “the new science about DNA that challenges evolution” as told in Behe’s book, Darwin Devolves Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,561 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) 9:50 am EST #1 in Developmental Biology (Books) #5 in Creationism #7 in Science & Religion See also: Michael Behe’s response to Lehigh colleagues’ criticism If Behe’s critics were right, new life forms would be popping into existence all the time. But increasingly, political correctness matters so much more than truth to nature that we will be hearing stranger things yet about the Darwinian magic they espouse. Also, Response, Part 2 and Part 3 and Michael Behe: Read More ›

Michael Behe responds to the critics at his university, Parts 2 and 3

Contra Lang and Rice, it’s preposterous to say that the data “are more than sufficient to convince any open minded skeptic that unguided evolution is capable of generating complex systems.” Unless one defines a skeptic of Darwin’s theory (the most prominent proposed “unguided” explanation) as closed-minded, a quick visit to the library will disabuse one of that notion. Read More ›

Darwin vs the polar bear ;)

Michael Behe, author of Darwin Devolves, responds to claims that he has misunderstood the polar bear: This is the first in a series of posts responding to the extended critique of Darwin Devolves by Richard Lenski at his blog, Telliamed Revisited. Professor Lenski is perhaps the most qualified scientist in the world to analyze the arguments of the book… The question Behe is addressing is whether a genetic adaptation in polar bears that enables them to live on a high-fat diet is actually a convenient loss rather than a gain. In much the same way, a broken side window might help you get into a house if you forget the key code. In extremely cold weather, that may save your Read More ›

A review of Behe’s Darwin Devolves that looks at what Behe actually says

In a review, one reviewer has decided to talk about what Michael Behe actually says in Darwin Devolves. For example, In a section called “The Blind Metaphor,” Behe notes: “The primary way by which natural selection makes evolution self-limiting is by promoting poison-pill mutations. Whatever genetic alterations that help an organism survive and reproduce better than its competitors will be fodder for natural selection—even if the alterations make a species less able to adapt in the future (200). In hindsight, that is what we should have expected. Despite the boost in plausibility it receives from its metaphorical name, over multiple rounds natural selection is clearly nothing like the opposite of chance, no more than, say, gravity is the opposite of Read More ›