Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Teeth appeared earlier than expected, 410 mya

Jaws were also more complex than expected. From ScienceDaily: A tiny tooth plate of the 410 million year old fossil fish Romundina stellina indicates that teeth evolved earlier in the tree of life than recently thought. That is a while back. The tooth plate of just some millimeters in size had been in a box for more than 40 years, without being recognized after the discovery and preparation of the fish it belonged to. Because no one expected to find anything like that. And few had any special desire to Everyone knows evolution is a long, slow process of natural selection acting on random mutation (Darwinian evolution). Every third rate biology teacher teaches that, and so do first raters, because Read More ›

The ocean’s microbiome resembles the human gut’s microbia

From New Scientist: The biome of the ocean resembles that of the human gut We’re a step closer to understanding the microbial community that inhabits the ocean – and it has some striking similarities to the community that lives inside our guts. The microbiome of the world’s biggest ecosystem and one of the smallest appear to function in surprisingly similar ways. … For example, we already knew of about 4350 species of microalgae, 1350 species of protists and 5500 species of tiny animals, based on direct studies of their appearance. But the new genetic evidence suggests that there are probably three to eight times as many distinct species in each group as currently recognised. Shades of issues around claims about Read More ›

Geologist Marcus Ross on the proposed Sixth Great Extinction

  Further to: Is a sixth great extinction in progress? (It would help if a key exponent was anyone but Paul “Population Bomb” Ehrlich, a contender for the heavyweight champ of wrong-headed predictions) and Rob Sheldon on the sixth great extinction, Liberty U geologist Marcus Ross writes to say, For an abbreviated and pictorial list of species driven extinct in the past 400 years, see National Geographic You can mouse over each dot to learn about the species in question. Extinction rates in the fossil record are almost all determined at the family and genus level. In my own work on mosasaur richness during the Cretaceous (mosasaurs are large, mercifully extinct marine lizards), I focused on specimens identified to the Read More ›

Emergence as an Explanation for Living Systems

Yesterday I watched a re-run of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. There. I said it. I love Star Trek. Notwithstanding the many absurd evolution-based plotlines. In this specific episode, Data referred to a particular characteristic of a newly-developing lifeform as an “emergent property.” I’ve looked into the “emergence” ideas in the past, and the related self-organization hypotheses, and have never been too impressed. But it has been a while, so I thought I’d quickly navigate over to the Wikipedia page on the subject to see what it says. Now I’m a big fan of the general concept behind Wikipedia and it is a very useful tool, if used properly. Yet everyone knows that Wikipedia is a questionable source Read More ›

RNA World worst hypothesis but for all the others?

Further to: Biochemist: Is RNA world wrong after all? (As noted before, if we really wanted researchers not to find out how life originated, we would urge that they continue with full-bore Darwinism), from BioMed Central, we learn from biochemist Harold S. Bernhardt: The RNA world hypothesis: the worst theory of the early evolution of life (except for all the others) Abstract:The problems associated with the RNA world hypothesis are well known. In the following I discuss some of these difficulties, some of the alternative hypotheses that have been proposed, and some of the problems with these alternative models. From a biosynthetic – as well as, arguably, evolutionary – perspective, DNA is a modified RNA, and so the chicken-and-egg dilemma of “which Read More ›

Biochemist: Is RNA world wrong after all?

Remember when RNA world just had to be true, in that multiverse/global warming/Darwinism way? Where the observer soon realizes that evidence is superfluous—is even a threat? According to many origin of life researchers, RNA world (RNA preceded DNA and once did its job) has had that status for some time now among science writers. Well… From New Scientist: Why ‘RNA world’ theory on origin of life may be wrong after all Note: We are told, “Registration is required to view the article.” Not only that, but one can’t now even preview the first two graffs from the article before signing up for something. That said, a friend who did sign up offers the salient point: At some point, the idea Read More ›

One year on, Larry Moran attacks UK ban on teaching of non-naturalistic theories of origins in State-funded science classes

I was intrigued to read Professor Larry Moran’s latest post, UK bans teaching of creationism – which, it turns out, is a rehash of old news, which I covered over a year ago. However, I was deeply heartened to read that Professor Moran regards the British government’s decision to ban the teaching of “any doctrine or theory which holds that natural biological processes cannot account for the history, diversity, and complexity of life on earth and therefore rejects the scientific theory of evolution” as a scientifically valid theory at schools receiving public funding (including academies and free schools) as morally indefensible. In his own words: This is ridiculous. I’m opposed to American politicians who meddle in science teaching and I’m Read More ›

Could we build a really HUGE Earth?

Geek Anders Exoself (yes, we think it is a pseud too) dismisses the hope of finding a huge Earth naturally (“We can do better if we abandon the last pretence of the world being able to form naturally (natural metal microlattices, seriously?)”) and considers the issues around just building a giant habitable planet from scratch: Why aim for a large world in the first place? There are three apparent reasons. The first is simply survival, or perhaps Lebensraum: large worlds have more space for more beings, and this may be a good thing in itself. The second is to have more space for stuff of value, whether that is toys, gardens or wilderness. The third is to desire for diversity: Read More ›

Rob Sheldon on the sixth great extinction

and others of note Further to: Is there a sixth great extinction in progress? (It would help if a key exponent was anyone but Paul “Population Bomb” Ehrlich, a contender for the heavyweight champ of wrong-headed predictions), at Evolution News & Views, Rob Sheldon offers While the criteria may sound quantitative, and the increase in extinction rate qualitatively higher, there is a missing factor in this calculation. First, the extinction rate in the past is determined from fossils. Since almost by definition, fossil animals are nearly all extinct today, the extinction rate is close to 100 percent. But the key thing is that not all species are represented in the fossil record. Second, the present extinction rate is determined from Read More ›

Researchers: Island rule of size evolution does apply to rodents

This should be a Fri Nite Frite, but only if you live on an island, so… From Duke U ScienceDaily: Island rodents take on nightmarish proportions Rodents of unusual size are 17 times more likely on islands than elsewhere Whoever wrote that release has a future in frites. Researchers have analyzed size data for rodents worldwide to distinguish the truly massive mice and giant gerbils from the regular-sized rodents. They found that the furry animals with chisel-like teeth are 17 times more likely to evolve to nightmarish proportions on islands than elsewhere. The results are in keeping with an idea called the ‘island rule,’ which previous studies claimed didn’t apply to rodents. … More than half of the rodent populations Read More ›

Frank the Hippie Pope

Further to the more serious critiques of Pope Francis’ recent encyclical, is a more tongue-in-cheek critique of some of his sillier prior pronouncements: HT: Lutheran Satire  

Evaluating the Pope’s encyclical, Part Three: Four internal contradictions in the Pope’s thinking

In my initial post about the Pope’s environmental encyclical, Laudato si’, I highlighted its positive aspects: its affirmation of human uniqueness, its rejection of biocentrism and its firm insistence that each species of living creature was designed by God to play its own special part in the order of Nature. The Pope also rejects population control, but what he fails to realize is that population growth cannot be sustained simply by living in harmony with Nature. If we are to continue growing, we need to redefine our whole relationship with Nature. While we can never be totally independent of Nature, we must use our human intelligence to reduce our dependence on Nature, in order to prevent our ecological footprint from Read More ›

Mathematician and multiverse skeptic on Perimeter conference

Further to The multiverse: Hi, Nonsense, meet Budget (This Perimeter Institute conference could be a party’s over signal; time to sweep up the streamers and bust balloons, and get back to evidence-based science): Columbia mathematician Peter Woit is following the proceedings and notes, You can follow a lot of what is going on at this conference on Twitter, here. For example, I was glad to hear about this comment from Dimopoulos There is no difference that we know right now … between the story of divine intervention and the multiverse. It’s great to see a conference on fundamental physics where the multiverse is coming in for some appropriate skepticism. Nonsense, meet Prayer Beads. He has a wonderful plan for your Read More ›

The multiverse: Hi, Nonsense, meet Budget

Oh and, Budget, meet Rationalization. But you two can talk later. The meeting is starting… From physicsworld.com, we hear that the Perimeter Institute at MIT North (University of Waterloo, Canada) is starting to ask some questions about crackpot cosmology. As Louise Mayor tells us, on site: Right now, top physicists from around the world are arriving in Waterloo, Canada, to attend a unique conference. Christened Convergence, the meeting is the brainchild of Neil Turok, director of thePerimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) in Waterloo, where the event will be based. I spoke to Turok to find out what motivated him to set up this conference, what makes it so special, and what he hopes it will achieve. Turok was fairly Read More ›

Whatever became of Nicholas Wade, and the Troublesome Inheritance?

Further to PBS’s “shocking” revelation about long-ago humans (“we met and mated with other types of human” and “40 kya human bones contain Neanderthal and current genes,” one couldn’t help wondering about last year’s apparent attempt to revive Darwinian racism, in the form of science writer Nicholas Wade’s Troublesome Inheritance. In the increasingly Soviet system that governs the evolution elite today, science writer Ash Jogalekar was supposed to know that he should privately agree with the premise of the “Dark Enlightenment” in which non-racists are “creationists” but—publicly—mildly disparage the book. He made the mistake of actually saying he liked it: That mainly shows us the power that Darwin’s name exercises over a large swatch of the U grad public. Just Read More ›