[Editor’s Note: This is slide 9 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” a response to PBS-NOVA’s online materials for their “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary.] PBS asserts that “shared amino acids” in genes common to many types of organisms indicate that all life shares a common ancestor. Intelligent design is not necessarily incompatible with common ancestry, but it must be noted that intelligent agents commonly re-use parts that work in different designs. Thus, similarities in such genetic sequences may also be generated as a result of functional requirements and common design rather than by common descent. In fact, PBS’s statement is highly misleading. Darwin’s tree of life–the notion Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: This is slide 8 in a series of 14 slides available at JudgingPBS.com, a new website featuring “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” a response to PBS-NOVA’s online materials for their “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary.] According to PBS, the male peacock’s beautifully-colored tail is easily explained using sexual selection: females prefer the colorful “eyes” on the tails of males. Has the evolutionary origin of the peacock’s tail been explained? Sexual selection merely pushes the question back: why should female peacocks prefer male peacocks with tails that have “eyes”? Absent a linkage to survival and reproduction, sexual selection is now a circular argument: male peacocks have beautiful tails because females prefer such tails, and females prefer such tails because Read More ›