Archives
Selection and Speciation: Why Darwinism Is False
Note: This is Part 7 in a series reviewing Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True. Read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, and Part 6 here. Coyne writes that Darwin “had little direct evidence for selection acting in natural populations.” Actually, Darwin had no direct evidence for natural selection; the best he could do in The Origin of Species was “give one or two imaginary illustrations.” It wasn’t until a century later that Bernard Kettlewell provided what he called “Darwin’s missing evidence” for natural selection — a shift in the proportion of light- and dark-colored peppered moths that Kettlewell attributed to camouflage and bird predation.40 Since then, biologists have found lots Read More ›
Guy Walks Into a Bar and Thinks He’s a Chimpanzee: The Unbearable Lightness of Chimp-Human Genome Similarity
I am often struck by how the topic of evolution in general, and chimp/human ancestry in particular, can be an immediate conversation opener that just as quickly becomes a conversation closer. Mind you, I don’t go around buttonholing people at, say, my favorite lounge (this music will conjure up the atmosphere) about some phylogenetic arcana — at least, I try not to do so. But for some strange reason, there exist individuals of good will who apparently feel called upon to “raise my consciousness” about some Darwinian facts that I’ve presumably gotten wrong. Not just a bit wrong, but astoundingly wrong. You see, to their way of thinking, I am in dire need of reeducation and they are there to Read More ›
Dr. Jeffery Shallit on Eugenic Morality: “Why, exactly, would the world be better off with more Down’s syndrome children?”
Dr. Jeffery Shallit has a post on his blog Recursivity that really caught my eye. He comments derisively on an essay by McGill University ethicist Margaret Somerville titled, “Facing up to the dangers of the intolerant university: Bird on an ethics wire.” Somerville argues that universities are increasingly becoming intolerant of viewpoints that fall outside of a narrow leftist-atheist ideology. She notes that healthy democracies depend on respectful sharing of opinions, and university censorship and exclusion of competing opinions — especially opinions on ethical issues that derive from religious traditions — leaves our public discourse dangerously impoverished. Dr. Shallit agrees with some of her criticism of suppression of speech on campus, but he finds her essay “very shoddily argued.” He Read More ›
Upcoming Event: Grill the ID Scientist, 9 June 2009, University of Pittsburgh
An announcement from Professor David Snoke: “Grill the ID Scientist” Tuesday, June 9 7 PM, University of Pittsburgh Campus (room TBA) A network of scientists known as the Intelligent Design (ID) community continues to question basic tenets of Darwinism and origin-of-life scenarios. Not only are their views controversial in scientific circles — many in the evangelical world, who might be expected to embrace ID, are also not sold on the value of the ID program. This event brings together a panel of scientists associated with the ID movement. After a short presentation, the bulk of the evening will be given to questions from the audience. This event is aimed primarily at researchers, graduate students and advanced undergrad students in the Read More ›
A Primer on the Tree of Life (Part 5): Molecules Contradict Morphology
Note: This is Part 5 in a 5-part series titled “A Primer on the Tree of Life.” Read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, and Part 4 here. The full article can be found, here. Molecules Contradict Morphology A final way that evolutionists overstate the evidence for common descent is by claiming that molecular phylogenies have confirmed or buttressed phylogenies based upon morphology. For example, in his book Galileo’s Finger, Oxford University scientist Peter Atkins discusses evolution and boldly states, “The effective prediction is that the details of molecular evolution must be consistent with those of macroscopic evolution,” further claiming, “That is found to be the case: there is not a single instance of the molecular traces Read More ›