Uncommon Descent

Archive for August, 2008

29 August 2008

Is “Darwinism” a term only used by creationists?

DaveScot

Well, either the people behind the trade journal Genome Research are creationists or the term is used by everyone else too.
Genomics and Darwinism
Genome Research is now accepting submissions for a special issue, entitled Genomics and Darwinism, devoted to comparative and evolutionary genomics, including primary research reporting novel insights in large-scale quantitative and population genetics, genome [...]

29 August 2008

Nerve gene “origin” in sponges =>Frontloading?

DLH

h/t to fBast: “Ooooh, stop the presses! New thread, somebody? See: Origin of Nerves traced to Sponges, it seems that sponges don’t have nerve cells, but they know how to grow ‘em. This smacks very loudly of front-loading.”
———————————–
Abstract:
“We are pretty confident it was after the sponges split from trunk of the tree of life and [...]

29 August 2008

Human evolution: But who had decided that the Neanderthals were dumb in the first place?

O'Leary

“New Evidence Debunks ‘Stupid’ Neanderthal Myth” chirps the ScienceDaily release:
Research by UK and American scientists has struck another blow to the theory that Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) became extinct because they were less intelligent than our ancestors (Homo sapiens). The research team has shown that early stone tool technologies developed by our species, Homo sapiens, were [...]

28 August 2008

The most sophisticated flying device

DLH

Michael Dickinson reports on “a marvelous machine”: ——————-
Flies In Danger Escape With Safety Dance
” . . .Dickinson used superslow-motion video cameras to study how a fly avoids getting swatted.. . .Dickinson says a fly will typically jump off the surface and then begin to fly away from the swatter. But the high-speed cameras revealed something [...]

28 August 2008

Cognitive Dissonance: Save the Bats or Save the Planet?

DaveScot

A tough choice for teh environmentalist whackos if I ever saw one.
Wind Turbines Give Bats the “Bends,” Study Finds
Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
August 25, 2008
Wind turbines can kill bats without touching them by causing a bends-like condition due to rapidly dropping air pressure, new research suggests.
Scientists aren’t sure why, but bats are attracted to the [...]

28 August 2008

PZ Myers Copyright Infringement?

PharyngulaWatch

I saw this article in Nature by Jerry Coyne and Matthew Cobb but did not post it because it was a subscription-only article.
Atheism could be science’s contribution to religion
Now I find it duplicated in full at PZ Myers’ website. If it had been posted here the Darwin lobby would have dropped a dime [...]

28 August 2008

The Production of Variations - a Case Study in Spiders

johnnyb

Last week I posted about issues with the production of variation that Darwinists often overlook. So then, the question becomes, what is the mechanism for variation production? In a recent book, called Eight-Legged Marvels: Beauty and Design in the World of Spiders, Chad Arment invites us to examine that very question. In [...]

27 August 2008

Quote of the Day

BarryA

“The beliefs which we have the most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.”
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (New York: Burt, n.d.), pp. 38-39.

26 August 2008

Preach it, brother! A regular shower of blessings from Saint Charles Darwin

O'Leary

Hiram Caton,  the retired Aussie political science prof who enjoys sending up the currently raging Darwin cult, writes to say that he has now drunk deep from the “clear-thinking oasis” available at Richard Dawkins’s site.
And he sends back this message to the peoples who still sit in darkness and have not yet seen the great [...]

25 August 2008

Antony Flew Reviews Dawkins’ “The God Delusion”

DaveScot

Professor Antony Flew writes:
The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins, is remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this [...]

24 August 2008

Micro RNAs and Design inference.

idnet.com.au

http://www.nature.com/nrm/journal/v9/n9/pdf/nrm2472.pdf
“MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are known to regulate gene expression at the level of translation, but how does this affect what proteins are produced? Two recent papers have shown that individual miRNAs can affect the expression of hundreds of proteins.
One known as miR-223 seems to function as a rheostat to finely adjust protein output.
Another miRNA let-7b is [...]

24 August 2008

Response to Gabriel

DaveScot

I made the following response in the commentary on another thread. Because some people thought it deserved to become an article in its own right… here it is.
Also with an apology to Jonathan Wells for calling him a “Moonie”. I had no idea it was considered by many to be derogatory. I [...]

24 August 2008

Humor: Google Trends

DaveScot

Ever wonder what Science Bloggers do when they’re not science blogging? Wonder no longer.
http://trends.google.com/websites?q=scienceblogs.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
Top Five Things Science Blog Readers Search For:
1. scotch tape mosquito bites
2. kate beckinsale
3. sponge bob
4. bruce lee
5. britney spears
Interesting (if you’re a 12 year old).
Top Five Blogs Science Blog Readers Also Visit
1. richarddawkins.net
2. catholicleague.org
3. rememberthycreator.com
4. dirtgetswet.com
5. politicalirony.com [...]

23 August 2008

If the Darwinists are right and Fuller is wrong, we cannot hope to understand nature

O'Leary

In the post below, where U Warwick sociologist Steve Fuller replies to the attempted hatchet job by third-rate Darwin hack Sahotra Sarkar, I think this point made by Fuller is especially critical:
The overarching sense of scientific progress and its concomitant faith in greater explanatory unity and increased predictive control of nature over time: All of [...]

22 August 2008

In the Face of an Aspiring Baboon

Steve Fuller

In the Face of an Aspiring Baboon: A Response to Sahotra Sarkar’s Review of Science vs. Religion?
Introduction
Some will wonder why I expend such great effort in responding to Sahotra Sarkar’s negative review of my Science vs. Religion? I offer four reasons: (1) The review was published in the leading on-line philosophy reviews journal (which offers [...]

22 August 2008

AAAS Response to Expelled

DaveScot

I see all these scientists and science teachers in this video proclaiming they see “God’s Hand” in the universe all day long then in the same breath they say design detection is bogus.
So what exactly do they “see” that convinces them that God’s hand is all over the place? Obviously it isn’t rational evidence that [...]

22 August 2008

Expelled’s sampling a song can be fair use

DLH

Expelled wins the next legal step.
———————————–
Sampling a song can be fair use, rules US court
OUT-LAW News, 21/08/2008
The producers of a film defending the anti-evolutionary theories of Intelligent Design probably did not infringe copyright when they used a sample of John Lennon’s song Imagine in the film, a New York court has ruled.
Judge Richard B Lowe [...]

22 August 2008

Ken Miller on the Dennis Prager Show

GilDodgen

For those with a penchant for masochism, check out Ken Miller on the Dennis Prager show discussing his book about how ID is threatening America’s soul. (The Miller segment begins at 11 minutes.) As usual, Ken completely misrepresents ID and ID theorists, and argues that the ID movement threatens to destroy science in America. Miller [...]

22 August 2008

Retroviral promoters in the human genome

DaveScot

The paper whose abstract lies below the fold has been cited as supportive of intelligent design here by my friend Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute . I’m afraid I disagree with Casey’s analysis but I don’t have access to the full paper and would welcome review of my take on it from someone [...]

22 August 2008

Why We Should Not Try to Fathom the Hearts of Policy Makers

BarryA

I’ve been thinking today about the ACLU’s favorite former liquor control board member (i.e., Judge Jones) and his decision in the Dover case.  In my post today I want to focus on only one of Jones’ many errors – his reliance on the subjective motives of the Dover school board members in striking down the [...]

21 August 2008

Universal Genome in the Origin of Metazoa

DaveScot

I blogged on this almost a year ago here:
Front loading passes peer review in Cell Cycle
Cell Cycle has a policy of making articles availabe without subscription after one year passes from initial publication. It’s been just over a year. The full paper is at:
http://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/cc/article/shermanCC6-15.pdf

19 August 2008

Canadian vendor of Darwin’s certainties strikes back against O’Leary

O'Leary

Yes, Calgary Herald columnist Rob Breakenridge has felt the need to respond to my response to his abuse of anyone who does not worship Darwin.
Could anyone here help Breakenridge’s readers understand better why the world in general does not worship Darwin?

17 August 2008

Thoughts on Parameterized vs. Open-Ended Evolution and the Production of Variability

johnnyb

Many of the advocates of neo-Darwinism argue that abilities of evolution is obvious. The idea is that, given variability in a population, selection and/or environmental change will cause a population to move forward in fitness. Basically, the formula is variability + overproduction + selection = evolution. The problem is that the equation hinges on “variability” and its abilities to create the kinds of variations the Darwinists need.

17 August 2008

My op-ed piece in The Calgary Herald - Albertans right to reject Darwinian evolution

O'Leary

My op-ed piece published in The Calgary Herald, Saturday, August 16, 2008, responding to radio host and commentator Rob Breakenridge, with links to sources:
In rebuttal - Theory needs a paramedic, not more cheerleaders
Denyse O’Leary
Re “What is it about evolution theory that Albertans don’t get?” (August 12, 2008), Rob Breakenridge has cobbled together key talking points [...]

17 August 2008

Pharyngula Again

PharyngulaWatch

MAJeff doesn’t quite rise up to the frackin’ cracker author himself but we have to give him credit for trying.
This is my body…
Who is MAJeff?  Anyone?  Bueller?
 

16 August 2008

“You have lost your mind”

Granville Sewell

In a Dec 21, 2005 American Spectator article, Jay Homnick wrote:
It is not enough to say that design is a more likely senario to explain a world full of well-designed things…Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident…you have [...]

15 August 2008

Looking back: Why I think ID is winning, and why it might not look that way yet 2

O'Leary

When I first started covering this beat, about six years ago, it was pretty straightforward. Earnest people were trying to convince me that blind cave fish losing their eyes was just the same thing as creatures developing eyes in the Cambrian. Bacteria junking fancy equipment to survive antibiotic assaults was just the same thing as [...]

15 August 2008

Nick Matzke’s TTSS to Flagellum Evolutionary Narrative Refuted

DaveScot

Nick Matzke’s problematic evolutionary narrative of the Type Three Secretory System (TTSS) into the bacterial flagellum quickly made it into a peer reviewed journal while the response from the ID camp took two years longer. Our position, which I mentioned several times in the past, was that the flagellum preceded the TTSS in nature [...]

15 August 2008

The Design of the Solar System

William Dembski

We’ve come a long way since Laplace’s nebular hypothesis…
Solar System Is Pretty Special, According To New Computer Simulation
ScienceDaily (Aug. 8, 2008) — Prevailing theoretical models attempting to explain the formation of the solar system have assumed it to be average in every way. Now a new study by Northwestern University astronomers, using recent data from [...]

14 August 2008

Deprogram from Darwin legends - free and fun!

O'Leary

I would like to introduce  retired Australian political science prof Hiram Caton’s new Web site on the pious Darwin legends that currently infest popular media. 
Caton, a friend and associate of the late David Stove, author of Darwinian Fairy Tales, has done extensive research on the real story behind Darwin and his Origin of Species - [...]

13 August 2008

Looking back: Why I think ID is winning 1

O'Leary

Having reported news on the ID scene for about five years now, I could give a number of reasons why I think ID is slowly winning the intellectual battle, but let me focus on just one for now: The increasingly preposterous claims made by anti-ID zealots.
At the high end, we have this editorial in New [...]