Category: Natural selection
“So what is bad for the next generation may be good for our species in general.”
| August 23, 2012 | Posted by David Anderson under Natural selection |
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19336438 In the above story, the combination of an empirical investigation of the here-and-now – what creationists like myself like to call “operational science” – together with speculative Darwinian faith, leads to this final take-home quote: ”The high rate of mutations is dangerous for the next generation but is generating diversity from which nature can… more
Paul McBride’s natural selection: A perfect nested functional hierarchy?
| July 22, 2012 | Posted by News under Natural selection, News |
” … the sub-functions at any level cannot serve their parent function, because it doesn’t yet exist. Only top-down design can create a NFH, by creating at any level first the parent, then its sub-functions.” more
Darwinist Jerry Coyne doesn’t like Darwinized pop music
| June 20, 2012 | Posted by News under Natural selection, News |
For good reasons. more
Is this study of salamander evolution a spoof? You decide.
| February 2, 2012 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Natural selection, News |
It’s not clear what advantages deformity and mortality due to excess salt provide, or why we should regard them as evidence for evolution? more
Strictly Darwinian natural selection advocates end up psychoanalyzing voles
| November 20, 2011 | Posted by News under Genetics, Intelligent Design, Natural selection, News |
What if females are attracted to this type of male, or maybe that? more
Eugene V. Koonin’s Darwin-free book free on Kindle! – No. 1 in Biology
| September 6, 2011 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Natural selection, Self-Org. Theory |
UD News staff are booting up the Kindle now. more
From our friends at Telic Thoughts: An Open Letter to Professors Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins
| September 5, 2011 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Natural selection, News |
On defining natural selection, they are both all over the map. more
Genetics paper retracted: “Some other mechanism” is responsible for genetic mutations
| September 3, 2011 | Posted by News under Evolution, Genetics, Intelligent Design, Natural selection, News |
In “Genetics Paper Retracted: Due to statistical errors, a Science paper claiming that mutation is responsible for genetic variation is retracted” (The Scientist September 2, 2011), Jessica P. Johnson reports, A May 2010 Science paper showing that the most genetically fit cow-pea weevils have fewer deleterious genetic mutations in their genomes than their less fit… more
One reason why the “fittest” don’t necessarily survive
| June 28, 2011 | Posted by News under Ecology, Natural selection |
At ScienceDaily we learn, “Scientists Uncover an Unhealthy Herds Hypothesis” (June 24, 2011), Biologists worldwide subscribe to the healthy herds hypothesis, the idea that predators can keep packs of prey healthy by removing the weak and the sick. This reduces the chance disease will wipe out the whole herd, but could it be that predators… more
Barry, here’s one reason why natural selection can fail …
| June 9, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Animal minds, Darwinism, Natural selection |
A reason captured in photos: Here, Barry Arrington notes, “Natural Selection Defies the Odds,” As in Recently the management of a casino hired Professor Hannum to investigate a roulette player whom they suspected might be cheating. The house has a huge mathematical advantage in roulette, which is why the casino suspected something other than random… more
No evidence that there is enough time for evolution
| May 29, 2011 | Posted by Lee Spetner under Darwinism, Evolution, Evolutionary biology, Natural selection |
No evidence that there is enough time for evolution[*] Lee M Spetner Redoxia Israel, Ltd. 27 Hakablan St., Jerusalem, Israel Abstract: A recent attempt was made to resolve the heretofore unaddressed issue of the estimated time for evolution, concluding that there was plenty of time. This would have been a very significant result had it… more
The Nature of Nature — sticky
| April 2, 2011 | Posted by William Dembski under Biology, Culture, Darwinism, Design inference, Evolution, Evolutionary biology, Evolutionary psychology, Informatics, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Mind, Multiverse, Natural selection, Neuroscience, Origin Of Life, Philosophy, Physics, Science |
THE NATURE OF NATURE is now finally out and widely available. If you haven’t bought it yet, let me suggest Amazon.com, which is selling it for $17.94, which is an incredible deal for a 7″x10″ 1000-page book with, for most of us, no tax and no shipping charge (it costs over $10 to ship this… more
Natural Selection Redux
| March 23, 2011 | Posted by DonaldM under Biology, Darwinism, Evolution, Evolutionary biology, Natural selection, Science |
PaV’s recent post Darwinn Step Aside – Survival of the ‘Quickest’ got me thinking again about natural selection and the role it supposedly played in evolution. The conventional wisdom among Darwinists, including Darwin himself, is that NS is a mechanism. The very title of Darwin’s famous tome suggests as much – On The Origin of… more
Lenski – “Mr. E. Coli” – thinks evolution has a purpose?
| March 19, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism, Evolution, Natural selection |
Lenski’s the guy who studied all those generations of E. Coli bacteria, and discovered that over many thousands of generations, there were very few beneficial mutations. (Darwinism depends, not on mutations as such but on mutations that benefit the organism.) Recently, his work was the subject of an item, “Evolvability, observed” by Jef Akst (The… more
Human evolution: Natural selection less important force, researchers say
| February 19, 2011 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism, Natural selection |
From Tina Hesman Saey, “Helpful Mutations Didn’t Sweep Through Early Humans”, Wired Science (February 18, 2011) we learn Humans probably didn’t get swept up in evolution.Scientists have favored a model of evolution in which beneficial gene mutations quickly and dramatically sweep through a population due to the evolutionary advantages they confer. Such mutations would become… more
The Limits of Self Organisation
| October 13, 2010 | Posted by Richard Johns under Biology, Darwinism, Informatics, Mathematics, Natural selection, Self-Org. Theory |
I’m writing to tell people about a paper of mine that was published in Synthese last month, titled: “Self-organisation in dynamical systems: a limiting result”. While the paper doesn’t address intelligent design as such, it indirectly establishes strict limits to what such evolutionary mechanisms as natural selection can accomplish. In particular, it shows that physical… more
Dinosaurs from birds?
| February 13, 2010 | Posted by DLH under Biology, Cambrian explosion, Darwinism, Evolutionary biology, extinction, Natural selection |
How well neoDarwinian evolution is established and the universal “consensus” over it is demonstrated by: Bird-from-Dinosaur Theory of Evolution Challenged: Was It the Other Way Around? ScienceDaily (Feb. 10, 2010) — A new study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides yet more evidence that birds did not descend from… more
Editing the Tape of Evolutionary History Yet Again
| January 8, 2010 | Posted by DonaldM under Biology, Cambrian explosion, Darwinism, Evolution, Evolutionary biology, Natural selection, Science, The Design of Life |
The late Stephen J. Gould once wrote “Replay the tape [of evolution] a million times from a Burgess [the Burgess Shale fossils]beginning, and I doubt that anything like Homo sapiens would ever evolve again. It is, indeed, a wonderful life.” (Gould, Stephen J. [Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University], “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale… more
The End of Natural Selection
| December 11, 2009 | Posted by PaV under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Natural selection |
Playing off the title of Dr. Dembski’s new book, I’m going to cite three articles that are summarized at PhysOrg.com just this past week. I don’t have access to any of them, but let’s just take a look at what these summaries report. I think it’s quite interesting. First, there is this article, DNA study… more
Is nature really a struggle in which natural selection is the key factor?
| November 19, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Natural selection |
British physicist David Tyler comments: In a perceptive essay, Daniel Todes focuses attention on the reactions of Russian biologists to Darwin’s writings. Many of these naturalists “were evolutionists before 1859″, so they did not dissent from common ancestry. However, their experiences of the living world were quite different from Darwin and Wallace, who drew their… more
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