Trust our stalwart physics color commentator Rob Sheldon to draw the logical conclusion about horizontal gene transfer between plants and insects: If plants and insects can exchange genes (and who knows what else can?), what are we to make of dogmatic claims about universal common descent?
Tag: Universal Common Descent
What? A virus with no recognizable genes?
From what they’re saying, viruses don’t necessarily share any characteristics of common descent. Let alone universal common descent. Jury’s still out but this is big.
Biologist Wayne Rossiter on non-religious doubts about universal common ancestry
Wayne Rossiter, author of Shadow of Oz: Theistic Evolution and the Absent God, talks about predictable claims from theistic evolution: To catch people up to speed, in a facebook conversation, [Jim] Stump made the statements, “Common ancestry [here he means Universal Common Ancestry] is a multiply confirmed theory that explains the observable data in detail. Read More…
Does intelligent design oppose common descent?
Not in principle, according to Ann Gauger, of the Biologic Institute. A reader wrote to ask, “I was just wondering why some fellows at Discovery believe in ID but still hold to common descent. Science knows that the genetic code is not universal.” From her reply: I first need to make clear that living things Read More…
Miller: The evidence shows that Lucy is an ape species, not a human ancestor
From The Case for Lucy as Ape: Part 5 of 6 by J. R. Miller at More than Cake: Lucy was the nickname for an incomplete Ethiopian skeleton found by the American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson in 1974. Named for the 1967 Beatles song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”. Despite being only 20% complete—missing hands, Read More…