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Education

Council of Europe Officially Condemns Creationism and I.D.
June 22, 2007
A lengthy and strident policy document was issued by the Council of Europe denouncing creationism.  The summary statement makes it clear there is no compromise possible, because “religious fundamentalists” are behind it, and that creationism and intelligent design must be firmly and unequivocally opposed.  Evolution, by contrast, is given supreme status as the explanation for […]
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Genetics

Genome Complexity Unveiled: No Junk, Only Function
June 15, 2007
Any remaining doubts that the idea of “junk DNA” has itself been junked should vanish under the latest findings about genome complexity.  A number of recent news stories have revealed astonishing levels of regulation and organization in the non-coding regions of DNA.  It turns out that genes are not the only interesting things in the […]
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Intelligent Design

Origin of Life Made Simple: Stochastic Innovation Answers I.D.
June 8, 2007
A press release from UC San Francisco teases, Before life emerged on earth, either a primitive kind of metabolism or an RNA-like duplicating machinery must have set the stage – so experts believe.  But what preceded these pre-life steps?     A pair of UCSF scientists has developed a model explaining how simple chemical and […]
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Amazing Facts

Molecular Motors Move You
May 30, 2007
The realization that cells are filled with molecules that move like machines fascinates many people.  Students who grew up thinking of chemistry as bouncing molecules that did little more than link up and separate have a whole new paradigm to consider: molecules that walk, fold and unfold, spin and operate like ratchets, robots, wrenches and […]
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Biomimetics

Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week:  Design by Darwin
May 24, 2007
Can Darwin get credit for intelligently-planned research?  Apparently John Chaput thinks so.  A press release from the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University states this: Nature, through the trial and error of evolution, has discovered a vast diversity of life from what can only presumed to have been a primordial pool of building blocks.  Inspired […]
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Dumb Ideas

Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week:  Design without a Designer
May 10, 2007
Apparently Francisco Ayala (UC Irvine) thinks that just stating something dogmatically is enough to end all discussion.  The scope of his paper in PNAS is grandiose and sweeping, enough to keep philosophers and theologians from around the world busy for years, but Ayala just put out his opinions without any hint of dispute, and stamped […]
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Amazing Facts

More Optical Design in Eye Retina Than Seen Before
May 2, 2007
For decades, evolutionists have used the vertebrate retina as an example of poor design (dysteleology).  They have mocked how any designer could have been so unintelligent as to get the wiring backwards – with the photoreceptors behind a jumble of light-scattering cells.  Creationists have countered that despite the arrangement, it works well.1  Now, they may […]
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Dumb Ideas

Can the Interior Design Itself?
March 26, 2007
Calling all interior designers: has Darwinism rendered you superfluous?  J. Scott Turner thinks so.  He wrote a book called The Tinkerer’s Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself (Harvard, 2007).  It was reviewed by Claus Wedekind in last week’s Nature with the title, “The interior designer.”  This does not imply that interiors need an exterior […]
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Education

Free Speech?  Not When Darwin Is at Stake
March 25, 2007
Radicals get away with saying or doing almost anything on campuses these days.  There’s one “radical” view, however, that even though believed by a majority of Americans, is sure to be met with outrage: creationism.  It doesn’t even have to be creationism.  Just to suggest that Darwin and his views might not be infallible is […]
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Cosmology

Deconstructing Darwinese:  Delighting in Ignorance
March 8, 2007
When is ignorance a good thing?  When is confidence in one’s answers a bad thing?  One science writer expressed his desire for mystery over explanation – as long as the mysterious allowed room for lucky breaks without design.     Science writer Ben Shaberman got to share his views on the last page of the […]
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Amazing Facts

Watch a Ribosome in Action
February 21, 2007
A remarkable article about a remarkable machine: that’s what Chemical and Engineering News has published about the ribosome, a molecular machine vital to everything alive in the world.  Stu Borman’s article lavishes praise on the details of this assembly-line factory that translates RNA into proteins.  He surveys the history of investigation into the ribosome’s secrets.  […]
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Intelligent Design

Article: Phillip Johnson Still Wields the Wedge
February 19, 2007
The standard-bearer of the Intelligent Design Movement (IDM) since 1991, Berkeley Law Professor Dr. Phillip E. Johnson, still wields his pen like a wedge against Darwinism.  His latest article for Think magazine (The Royal Institute of Philosophy) is reproduced on the Discovery Institute website.  He shares the current status of the movement, his disappointments with […]
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Amazing Facts

Cells Perform Nanomagic
February 13, 2007
The cell is quicker than the eye of our best scientific instruments.  Biochemists and biophysicists are nearing closer to watching cellular magic tricks in real time but aren’t quite there yet.  They know it’s just a trick of the eye, but it sure is baffling how cellular machines pull off their most amazing feats.  Think, […]
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Intelligent Design

Dodo Prey Fights Back
February 7, 2007
Irked at falsehoods promulgated by Randy Olsen’s film Flock of Dodos, the intelligent design (ID) think tank Discovery Institute (DI) is fighting back.  The film presents a viewpoint that what ID lacks in science it makes up for in public relations.  The DI is convinced the reverse is true.  In an attempt to rebut what […]
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Cell Biology

Contingency and the Structure of Life’s Building Blocks
February 6, 2007
Some Yale scientists found they could construct protein-like molecules using amino acids of a type not found in living things.  They found that beta-amino acids can fold into shapes similar to the proteins made of alpha-amino acids used in living things.  Beta-amino acids have an extra carbon on the backbone.  “Yale chemists show that nature […]
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