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Darwin and Evolution

“Synthetic Evolution” – Is it Really Intelligent Design?
March 18, 2010
Some Cambridge scientists engineered a four-character genetic code and made some proteins with it.  They guided the process at every step, but claim that they “evolved” this code.  Is that a fair use of language?  This strange admixture of concepts is found in today’s issue of Nature.1  The confusion began right in the title: “Encoding […]
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Amazing Facts

Fruit Flies: From Darwin to Design
March 13, 2010
The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is an icon of evolution.  Since the 1930s these poor little bugs have been mutated endlessly and watched for signs of Darwinian change.  So far, though, only useless mutants, unable to survive in the wild, have been produced.  Recently, scientists seem more enamored with their design.  Two recent articles had […]
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Bible and Theology

Who’s In Control: Your Brain or You?
March 12, 2010
Do you have a self that controls your brain, or is thought a secretion of the brain, as Darwin claimed?  Do you use your brain, or does your brain operate you?  Who is in charge?  These are deep philosophical questions with a long history, that some people prefer to avoid, as in the common joke: […]
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Astronomy

Divining Violent gods as Natural Cosmic Creators
March 10, 2010
Ancient stargazers imagined the violent actions of gods in the heavens giving rise to the stars, earth and man.  Today’s secular astronomers engage in a similar kind of lore.  While not naming their gods after mythical heroes, they describe them as forces of nature whose violent clashes give rise to order and design.  Sometimes they […]
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Cell Biology

What Good Is Natural Selection without Progress?
March 8, 2010
Three papers recently claim to have seen natural selection.  None of them, however, identified a functional advantage that would have tied changes to novel benefits that could improve a species.  Yeast:  “New Type of Genetic Variation Could Strengthen Natural Selection,” trumpeted a headline in Science Daily.  It was about a study of two varieties of […]
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Cell Biology

Life Crams Stuff on the Long Road
March 7, 2010
This quote from UC Berkeley wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week: In the long evolutionary road from bacteria to humans, a major milestone occurred some 1.5 billion years ago when microbes started building closets for all their stuff, storing DNA inside a nucleus, for example, or cramming all the energy machinery inside mitochondria. Any […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Dinosaur Evolution Is Relative
March 5, 2010
The science news media are all reporting that the “oldest known dinosaur relative” has been found.  The artist reconstructions of Asilisaurus kongwe, found in middle Triassic layers in Tanzania, make the creature look quite dinosaurian; at least it was dog-sized and walked on thick legs under its body like its famous brethren did.  Its early […]
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Bible and Theology

Atheism in a Test Tube
March 4, 2010
Conflicting views on atheism by scientists show that deducing the intellectual status of atheism is not an exact science.  Are such questions even approachable by the scientific method?  What conclusions could be drawn?     National Geographic reported Kanazawa’s theory that liberals and atheists are smarter (02/27/2010) without much criticism.  Reporter Maggie Koerth-Baker only said […]
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Amazing Facts

Flight Design: Flies and Birds Get it Wright
March 3, 2010
Parse the following sentence for logical consistency: “Just as the Wright brothers implemented controls to achieve stable airplane flight, flying insects have evolved behavioral strategies that ensure recovery from flight disturbances.”  That is the first sentence from a paper in PNAS yesterday about the stabilizers in fly wings.1  Ristroph et al just compared design principles […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Ida Not a Human Ancestor
March 3, 2010
If Ida known then what I know now: the media-frenzied presentation of Ida (Darwinius masillae) as a distant relative of human beings last year has been debunked.  “Many lines of evidence indicate that Darwinius has nothing at all to do with human evolution,” said Chris Kirk (U of Texas) in an article on Science Daily.  […]
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Origin of Life

Origin of Life: Claiming Something for Almost Nothing
March 2, 2010
Getting life to emerge from nonliving chemicals is either a cinch or the most impossible thing in the universe, depending on whom you ask.  Let’s look at a couple of recent papers that suggest the origin of life was no big deal.     A press release from the University of Colorado advertised a paper […]
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Darwin and Evolution

How to Call Your Opponent Stupid Using Evolution
February 27, 2010
It may be that Professor Kanazawa was intending to be compassionate by couching his assessment in the language of evolutionary theory, but he essentially made a categorical judgment that conservatives and Christians are stupid, and atheists and the sexually promiscuous are smart.  How could he say such a thing?  He could dodge the charge of […]
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Biomimetics

Life Leads the Way to Invention
February 26, 2010
Here’s a factoid for the party: a cell is 10,000 times more energy-efficient than a transistor.  PhysOrg tells us that “ In one second, a cell performs about 10 million energy-consuming chemical reactions, which altogether require about one picowatt (one millionth millionth of a watt) of power.”  This and other amazing facts lead to an […]
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Amazing Facts

Making Evolution Simple
February 25, 2010
Getting the vast diversity of highly complex creatures seems an impossible task for evolutionary theory, but some recent stories claim it’s not so hard.  Beak of the finch:  Darwin’s finches keep pecking their way into the media.  A new study claims that the wide diversity of beak shapes that have evolved can be explained by […]
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Darwin and Evolution

Hopeful Monsters and Other Tales: Evolutionists Challenge Darwin
February 24, 2010
Two recent articles show that Darwin is not invincible.  On one side he is being attacked by hopeful monsters.  On the other, he is being attacked by an atheist truth-seeker.  Neither of these attacks are coming from creationists. Return of the hopeful monster:  Tanguy Chouard raised eyebrows in Nature News with a headline that sounds […]
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