Author: Paul Nelson
Methodological Naturalism: A Rule That No One Needs or Obeys
The only real motivation for holding to MN is to keep the bad guys at bay, as an all-purpose "Press Button in Case of Emergency" defeater for ideas like intelligent design.
Still Awaiting Engagement: A Reply to Robert Bishop on Darwin’s Doubt
What matters is whether any of these theories can explain what needs to be explained: the origin of novel animal body plans and the biological information necessary to produce them.
Still Awaiting Full Engagement: Ralph Stearley’s "Well, Maybe, Who Knows?" Review of Darwin’s Doubt
If real, design is a datum of nature, like it or not. Bad philosophies of science, like materialism, need to get out of the way.
Evolution Used the Same Molecular Toolkit? Common Sense from Jonathan Marks
Marks is an evolutionary biologist/anthropologist at the University of North Carolina, and an uncommonly plain speaker and writer.
On Paul Nelson Day 2014: The Target Problem
Thanks to P.Z. Myers’s annual lampoon of me, I’ve thought more deeply about the relationship between development and evolution than I ever expected to do.
On Neo-Darwinism, Denis Noble Puts It Bluntly (and Accurately)
At Why Evolution Is True, Jerry Coyne sputters with indignation that Oxford physiologist Noble had the effrontery to criticize textbook evolutionary theory.
When Nature Resists: Explaining the Origin of the Animal Phyla
Several years ago, PZ Myers inaugurated what he called “Paul Nelson Day” (April 7), his annual lampooning of me for my failure to articulate the concept of “ontogenetic depth.”
Our Top 10 Evolution-Related Stories: #7, Peer-Reviewed Science Raises Doubts about Darwin
As soon as I read the paper’s abstract, my pulse quickened.
The Humpty-Dumpty Effect: A Revolutionary Paper with Far-Reaching Implications
A highly enriched soup of proteins and nucleic acids will never form a functional cell, even if lipid bilayer membranes were provided to help these materials become organized.
Coyne Disses Shapiro, but Shapiro Inspires Koonin — and Natural Selection Is the Main Issue
Although their offices are located only one block apart on the University of Chicago campus, the biological perspectives of Jerry Coyne and Jim Shapiro might as well be located in different galaxies.