Category: Evolution
Icons of Evolution 10th Anniversary: Dr. Jonathan Wells on Homology in Vertebrate Limbs
Michael Behe’s Quarterly Review of Biology Paper Critiques Richard Lenski’s E. Coli Evolution Experiments
In a previous post, I discussed Michael Behe’s recent paper in Quarterly Review of Biology, “Experimental Evolution, Loss-of-Function Mutations and ‘The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution’,” which reviews much recent work in the field of bacterial evolution. He devotes particular space, however, to the research of Richard Lenski, who has now grown over 50,000 generations of E coli in the lab to study its evolution. Lenski’s work was cited by Richard Dawkins most recent book (The Greatest Show on Earth) as the ultimate refutation of irreducible complexity. Dawkins’ book, however, made a straw man argument by discussing a misguided attack on Lenski’s work by Conservapedia editor Andrew Schalfly, completely ignoring critiques of Lenski’s research by Behe in The Edge of Read More ›
Icons of Evolution 10th Anniversary: Casey Luskin on the Impact of Jonathan Wells’ Classic Book
About That Arsenic-Gobbling Microbe…Bad News for Darwinists?
NASA’s discovery of an arsenic-ingesting microbe in California’s forbidding Mono Lake looks, on the surface, like bad news for Darwinists hopeful to show what a no-big-deal it is for a planet to bring forth life unguided. The bacterium evidently uses arsenic for purposes that all other known organisms would use phosphorus, including incorporating it in DNA. A reporter for Nature News cites UC Santa Barbara geomicrobiologist David Valentine as observing that the discovery may mean “you can potentially cross phosphorus off the list of elements required for life.” That’s interesting. Under Darwinian assumptions, the observation that such an alternative life chemistry is possible means that some planets previously assumed to be inhospitable to life, due to being poor in phosphorus, Read More ›
The Centennial of Alfred Russel Wallace’s The World of Life: The Co-Discoverer of Natural Selection Proposes Intelligent Evolution!
Everyone seems to remember that Alfred Russel Wallace co-discovered the engine of modern evolutionary theory, natural selection, with his famous Ternate letter sent to Charles Darwin in early March of 1858. The receipt of that letter prompted an astonished Darwin into action to finally unveil his own theory and the rest is history. Or is it? Forgotten in the glare of Darwin’s preeminence is that Wallace went on to craft his own theory, a theory imbued with intelligent design. First announced in April of 1869, Wallace would go on to develop a theory of directed, detectably designed, and purposeful common descent best described as intelligent evolution.