Monthly Archives: December 2010
Uncloaking The Factless Guesswork Of Evolution’s Intron-Splicing Magic
| December 25, 2010 | Posted by Robert Deyes under Intelligent Design |
Shattered assumptions, broken rules and overturned beliefs. The science media seems eager these days to emphasize science’s capacity to shift paradigms. And it was such a handful of descriptives that was used to convey the implications of a new study that redefines our view of genome architecture (1). At the heart of such excitement lay… more
Post Synaptic Proteins Intolerant of Change
| December 25, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
Proteins are very unlikely machines but post synaptic proteins are even more unlikely. Read more more
Professor Jerry Coyne on why Intelligent Design should be taught in public schools
| December 24, 2010 | Posted by vjtorley under Intelligent Design |
For anyone who might have choked on their coffee while reading that headline, let me state up-front that Professor Coyne has not undergone an overnight conversion. Instead, what he has done is give the Intelligent Design movement a perfect Christmas gift. Santa Claus himself couldn’t have picked a better one. And here it is: an… more
The selfish gene is NOT to blame for being selfish …
| December 24, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism |
Just wanted to get that straight. In the Wall Street Journal, physicist Lawrence Krauss, director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University, “The Lies of Science Writing” (December 23, 2010) explains, Writing about science poses a fundamental problem right at the outset: You have to lie. I don’t mean lie in the sense of… more
The Miracle of Ribosome Assembly Evolution
| December 24, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
New research is uncovering the details of how the cell’s protein factory—the ribosome—is constructed. The ribosome translates messenger RNA molecules—edited copies of DNA protein-coding genes—into a string of amino acids, according to the genetic code. The ribosome has two major components (one smaller and one larger), each made up of both RNA and protein molecules,… more
Everyone hates the blogosphere and loves peer review, right, but …
| December 24, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Culture, Science |
In Open Data Genomics, paleoanthropologist John Hawks offers I’ve often found that the best reviews of my work come from blogs and readers, not from peer review itself. With a project like this, the most critical readings will come from the most interested community, which may be a broader public than the scientific community. Yes,… more
The Bacterial Flagellum – Truly An Engineering Marvel!
| December 24, 2010 | Posted by Jonathan M under Intelligent Design |
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a lecture by microbiologist Phillip Aldridge, of the University of Newcastle. The topic of his lecture was “The Regulation of Flagellar Assembly”. Being an ID proponent, I had a natural interest in what Aldridge was going to say, and I had been looking forward to… more
A word about Uncommon Descent…
| December 23, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design |
Merry Christmas and Season’s Greetings! May you and all your friends be cheerful. Posting at Uncommon Descent is a pleasure for all of us authors, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank our generous donors. Recent posts explain why we put so many hours into the site: Evidence and honest discussion… more
How much of the body plans of organisms can be explained by laws of form, not Darwinism or design?
| December 22, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism, Evolution |
Quite a bit, say Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, in What Darwin Got Wrong. They offer an interesting example, the ‘fourth dimension’ of living systems, The body masses of living organisms vary between 10^-13 grams (bacteria) to 10^8 grams (whales), that is, by 21 orders of magnitude. It’s interesting to see how other physico-chemical and… more
New Axe paper at BIO-Complexity: The Limits of Complex Adaptation
| December 22, 2010 | Posted by Paul Nelson under Intelligent Design |
Available here. Axe’s analysis was motivated in part by the recent flurry of papers dealing with the problem of the waiting time for multiple independent mutations. Here is Doug’s abstract: To explain life’s current level of complexity, we must first explain genetic innovation. Recognition of this fact has generated interest in the evolutionary feasibility of… more
Entropy and the Distinction Between Operation and Origin
| December 22, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
In the seventeenth century Isaac Newton figured out how the solar system worked. The same gravitational force that makes apples drop to the ground also steers the planets in their orbits about the sun. But the English physicist warned against over estimating the power of his new laws. Though the planets “persevere in their orbits… more
Coffee with the squirrels today: They don’t give their kids mating advice
| December 22, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Biology, Darwinism |
Staff writer Lesley Ciarula Taylor explains for Toronto Star readers “Why female red squirrels aren’t choosy about their mates”: Guelph scientists have solved the puzzling question of why female squirrels are rampantly promiscuous, sleeping with an average of 10 males in one day. It almost entirely depends on how many guys show up. That’s the… more
Jerry Coyne, certainly a man who speaks his mind …
| December 21, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism |
Recently, I’ve been writing about Jerry Coyne’s comments on Mike Behe’s most recent paper. Coyne is billed by his U as “internationally famous defender of evolution against proponents of intelligent design.” Good man on fruit flies too. It occurred to me to pull up my Coyne files, re other things he has said. A most… more
No More Snow in England Say Global Warmists
| December 20, 2010 | Posted by Clive Hayden under Culture, Global Warming, Science |
Please enjoy an article from The Independent titled “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.” Written in the year 2000, global warmists are claiming that snowfall is history in Britain: Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives. Sledges, snowmen, snowballs… more
More on the astronomer passed over as “potentially evangelical” case from the NY Times.
| December 20, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Culture, Darwinism |
The friend who sent me the link notes that the article is “only mildly biased”: Both sides agree that Dr. Gaskell, 57, was invited to the university, in Lexington, for a job interview. In his lawsuit, he says that at the end of the interview, Michael Cavagnero, the chairman of the physics and astronomy department,… more
Access Research Network’s Top 10 Darwin and Design Science Stories of 2010
| December 20, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism, Intelligent Design |
Colorado Springs, CO – December 21, 2010 Access Research Network has just released its annual “Top 10 Darwin and Design Science Stories” for 2010. Gaining top honors on the list was new research that revealed the optimal design of the human eye. Physicists from the Israel Institute of Technology have created a light-guiding model of… more
No satellite hookup needed for this show, if the sky is clear
| December 19, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Science |
NASA Science News for Dec. 17, 2010Northern winter is beginning in a special way. On Dec. 21st, the winter solstice, a lunar eclipse will be visible across all of North America. The luster will be a bit “off” on Dec. 21st, the first day of northern winter, when the full Moon passes almost dead-center through… more
Professor Raymond Tallis on good and bad arguments for atheism
| December 19, 2010 | Posted by vjtorley under Intelligent Design |
I have often found that the best refutations of arguments for atheism are written by atheists. Raymond Tallis is a splendid example of this rule. In an article entitled “Why I am an atheist,” in Philosophy Now, May/June 2009, 73:47-48 (click here or here to read online), he manages to slay no less than three… more
He said it: Should evolutionary theory evolve?
| December 19, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism, Education |
Sure, in any direction consistent with an outmoded materialism. And how sweeping grandeur in that vision of life is entailed? There’s no need to formally revisit the Modern Synthesis, argues Douglas Futuyma, an evolutionary biologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, because evolutionary theory is flexible enough to incorporate well-substantiated new… more
Protein Folding and Evolution
| December 19, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
Proteins consist of hundreds of amino acids attached to each other like train cars, and when they fold up they consistently find the same three dimensional shape. Like a necklace that magically falls into the same shape every time it is dropped onto a table, the consistency of protein folding once seemed like a paradox.… more