Darwinist Sleight-of-Thumb

If you want a clear example of Darwinist sleight-of-hand, read the Panda’s Thumb tirade about my posts on the relevance of Darwinism to modern medicine (here). My interlocutors, between puns on my name, insults and obscenities, raise off-point topics that evade the central issue: is Darwinism, which is the assertion that all biological complexity has arisen by random heritable variation and natural selection, relevant to the practice of medicine? Several bloggers raised the standard Darwinist trope about bacterial antibiotic resistance. This issue is an important source of misunderstanding about the application of Darwin’s theory to medicine.

Supporting Darwinism Is Protected Free Speech, Voicing Scientific Challenges Is Not

It isn’t just profs in SMU’s Ivory Tower that are afraid of students learning more about the failings of Darwinian evolution. In New Mexico recently an attempt to ensure academic freedom in line with the state’s educational standards has been opposed by local, dogmatic Darwin-only lobbyists. Joe Renick of ID Net New Mexico today has an opinion piece, Fear of Exposure, that shows the intolerance of the Darwinists in regard to any views but their own.

The Debate over Darwin vs. Design Continues at SMU

First Darwinists at SMU demanded that the school keep the debate over Darwin off-campus, arguing for the Darwin vs. Design conference to be cancelled and denied use of campus facilities. Now their attempts at censorship have sparked more controversy than they intended, as evidenced by a response printed in the SMU Daily Campus: I was amused to read that some of the science department faculty at SMU had protested the proposed Intelligent Design Conference.

Dr. Egnor will talk Evolution on Janet Parshall’s America today

Today, ENV contributor Dr. Michael Egnor will be on Janet Parshall’s America to discuss the recent Newsweek article The Evolution Revolution. Dr. Egnor will be on for the second half of the first hour of the three hour program, which is carried nationwide. You can find a local station here. Members can stream the program directly from Parshall’s website.

UV-Ray-Damage-Repairing Protein Evolution Proves Shy

Science Daily reports: Researchers from the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) today announced the publication of several studies from the Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition (GOS) in PLoS Biology detailing the discovery of millions of new genes, thousands of new protein families and specifically the characterization of thousands of new protein kinases from ocean microbes using whole environment shotgun sequencing and new computational tools. This is extraordinary and exciting research, but what does any of this have to do with evolution news?