Month: January 2011
Even More From Jerry Coyne
In my last post I reported that University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, who had critiqued my recent Quarterly Review of Biology article concerning laboratory evolution studies of the last four decades and what they show us about evolution, had asked several other prominent scientists for comments. I replied to those of experimental evolutionary biologist John Bull. In a subsequent post Coyne discussed a recent paper by the group of fellow University of Chicago biologist Manyuan Long on gene duplication in fruitflies. After a bit of delay due to the holidays, I will comment on that here. Try as one might to keep Darwinists focused on the data, some can’t help reverting to their favorite trope: questioning Darwinism simply Read More ›
Icons of Evolution 10th Anniversary: Jay Richards
Peer-Reviewed Pro-Intelligent Design Paper Suggests “Agents” and “Choice Contingency” Needed to Explain Life’s Programming
A 2009 peer-reviewed scientific paper by David Abel in International Journal of Molecular Sciences titled “The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity” asks, “If all known life depends upon genetic instructions, how was the first linear digital prescriptive genetic information generated by natural process?” The author does not consider himself per se a proponent of intelligent design, and warns materialists that there is an easy solution to the challenges posed by intelligent design: “To stem the growing swell of Intelligent Design intrusions, it is imperative that we provide stand-alone natural process evidence of non trivial self-organization at the edge of chaos. We must demonstrate on sound scientific grounds the formal capabilities of naturally-occurring physicodynamic complexity.” However, while the author notes that Read More ›
“Conservative” Scientists Take on Climate Change Deniers?
Whenever the old stream media report on someone who is supposedly “conservative” but who nevertheless agrees with them, you can be pretty sure a snow job is coming. On January 6, Neela Banerjee reported (in the Seattle Times and elsewhere) about conservative scientists who nevertheless . . . wait for it . . . believe in climate change. Wow! (Of course, “believe in climate change” is the confusing euphemism for believing that we are catastrophically altering the natural climate — which always changes — and that the only solutions involve increasing the power of the federal government and the UN. But never mind that for now.) Banerjee tells us about scientists, such as “politically conservative” Kerry Emanuel, from MIT, and Read More ›
Of Birds and Men
Proponents of evolutionary theory assume that human beings as well as every other living creature evolved through natural selection. They theorize that humans evolved from an ape-like ancestor and cite various archeological examples of possible pre-homo sapiens in hopes of filling in the missing links leading up to today’s version of human. Evolutionary biologists, therefore, tend to look towards the past to find confirming evidence of what they presume to be true, humans evolved. Transhumanists, on the other hand, tend to look forward to a day when, though the assistance of technology, a new species of human will evolve. As Nick Bostrom, one of the major spokespersons for the transhumanism movement, writes, “After the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species Read More ›