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Dr. Humburg Sets Me and Galen Straight
My recent post here about the irrelevance of Darwinism to the practice of medicine seems to have gotten under the skin of a medical resident at Penn State. Dr. Burt Humburg, blogging at Panda’s Thumb, unleashed a tirade, including a very clever word play on my name in the title of his post (Egnorance: The Egotistical Combination of Ignorance and Arrogance) and his very serious doubts about my competence and integrity. Burt has also been involved in the Kansas evolution struggle. You might say he has a dog in this hunt.
If the Tree of Life falls, will Darwinists hear it?
A recent article entitled “Scientists say Darwin’s ‘Tree of Life’ [TOL] not the theory of everything,” published on Physorg.com, explained that increasingly, “a minority of biologists and evolutionists have questioned the accuracy of the TOL hypothesis.” The basic problem is that similar genes appear in organisms in patterns which do not fit a universal “tree.” As one of the scientists quoted, W. F. Doolittle, elsewhere stated: “Molecular phylogenists will have failed to find the ‘true tree,’ not because their methods are inadequate or because they have chosen the wrong genes, but because the history of life cannot properly be represented as a tree.” Doolittle attributes his observations to gene-swapping among microorganisms at the base of the TOL, and tries to Read More ›
Inconstant Gyri
Daniel Dennett was right, in a way. Scientific naturalism, like Darwinism, is a corrosive acid, eroding every crevice of our society. It’s now seeped into our sulci. Jeffrey Rosen, in a March 11th New York Times Magazine essay “The Brain on the Stand; how neuroscience is transforming the legal system,” tells of the influence of neuroscience on legal concepts of culpability. He quotes Harvard neuroscientist Joshua Greene: “To a neuroscientist, you are your brain; nothing causes your behavior other than the operations of your brain. If that’s right, it radically changes the way we think about the law.” And, of course, it changes the way we think about everything. It isn’t surprising that a leading neuroscientist would cloak a philosophical Read More ›
Evolution by Co-Option: “Just Add Parts”?
Imagine that you purchase a “build it yourself” computer kit, and all the instruction manual said is “Step 1: Collect all necessary parts into a box.” This is essentially as far as evolutionary explanations by co-option get: Darwinists assume that by simply identifying the possible origin-location for one or a few structural components that they have explained how all of the parts became properly assembled to interact and produce the final functional structure. Mike Gene has a funny post where he links to computer assembly instructions which simply tell the user to tape the necessary computer parts inside a box. “Exiled from Groggs” thinks that this shows “The limitations of co-option.” It appears that scientists would agree. As one scientist Read More ›
Michael Egnor, M.D., joins the ENV Team
Some Evolution News & Views (ENV) readers may have noticed that yesterday we posted Michael Egnor’s response to a pro-evolution essay contest for students. Who is Michael Egnor? We recently reported how Egnor has been asking Darwinists how much information can be produced via Darwinian mechanisms, but has not been receiving satisfactory answers (see here and here). Michael Egnor, M.D. is professor of neurosurgery and pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook and an award-winning brain surgeon who has been named one of New York’s best doctors by New York Magazine. He is now an official part of the ENV team, and we’d like to welcome him on board.