Category: Evolution
Ken Miller Confuses Weak Assertions of Common Ancestry With Darwinian Evolution of Blood Clotting Cascade (Updated)
Update 8/7/13: Since this response to Ken Miller was posted, even stronger evidence of function for the beta-globin pseudogene has been reported in the scientific literature, further refuting Miller’s argument. See Dover Revisited: With Beta-Globin Pseudogene Now Found to Be Functional, an Icon of the “Junk DNA” Argument Bites the Dust. In his book Only a Theory, one of Dr. Kenneth Miller’s main response to Michael Behe’s arguments for the irreducible complexity of the blood clotting cascade is that sequence similarities between various blood clotting factors demonstrates that they share a common ancestry. Indeed, in his response to me on the irreducible complexity of the blood clotting cascade, Miller again conflates evidence for common ancestry with evidence for Darwinian evolution. Read More ›
Jonathan Wells Hits an Evolutionary Nerve
When intelligent design (ID) proponents press neo-Darwinian evolutionists on the inability of Darwinian evolution to produce new functional genetic information, a common response from evolutionists is that they get angry and engage in name calling. That’s what happened when Michael Egnor asked How does evolution produce new functional genetic information?, and it again seems to be the case now after Jonathan Wells bravely observed that “duplicating a gene doesn’t increase information content any more than photocopying a paper increases its information content.” Mathematician and ID-critic Jeffrey Shallit responded by calling Wells a “buffoon.” Dr. Shallit then proceeded to offer an irrelevant definition of information which supposedly showed that Wells was wrong. William Dembski has responded to Shallit here, but Shallit’s Read More ›
Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth Shies Away from Intelligent Design but Unwittingly Vindicates Michael Behe
Richard Dawkins’ new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, is being touted as a scathing rebuttal to intelligent design (ID), yet an actual response to mainstream ID thinking can hardly be found in the book. Though the book makes passing mention of “irreducible complexity” in a couple places, there are zero mentions of leading ID proponents like Michael Behe, William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, Phillip Johnson, Stephen Meyer, or any other well-known ID proponent. Instead, Dawkins refers extensively to “creationists,” repeatedly attacking young earth creationism, while also making heavy use of fallacious (and dubious) “poor design” examples that rebut no argument made by a leading advocate of design since perhaps the 19th century. It seems that Dawkins didn’t have the stomach Read More ›
No Joke: Richard Dawkins Still Peddling Haeckel’s Fraudulent Embryo Diagrams!
I thought Richard Dawkins’ science was outdated, but I didn’t realize just how badly outdated until I watched this amazing You Tube clip from “The Genius of Charles Darwin,” a science documentary Dawkins hosted last year. If you watch until 7 minutes and 30 seconds into the clip, you will see Ernst Haeckel’s bogus embryo diagrams magically appear onscreen right before your very eyes: That’s right, Richard Dawkins circa 2008 was still peddling fraudulent “evidence” for evolution that no self-respecting embryologist would defend, and that most biology textbooks dropped years ago due in large part to biologist Jonathan Wells’ masterful book Icons of Evolution, which shamed Darwinists into cleaning up their act. Randy Olson, call home. Armed with retro science Read More ›
Artificially Reconstructed “Ardi” Overturns Prevailing Evolutionary Hypotheses of Human Evolution
The missing link presently being touted in the media, Ardipithecus ramidus, has had more reconstructive surgery than Michael Jackson. Assuming that their “extensive digital reconstruction” of its “badly crushed and distorted bones” is accurate, what does A. ramidus (or “Ardi” as the fawning media is affectionately calling it) really show us that we didn’t already know? We already knew of upright walking / tree-climbing, small-brained hominids–that’s what Lucy, an australopithecine, was. We already knew that there were australopithecine fossils dating back to before 4 million years, and this fossil is only a little bit older. So what does this fossil teach us? Assuming all the reconstructions of Ardi’s crushed bones are objective and accurate, this fossil teaches us at least Read More ›