Evolution

The media is abuzz about a suggestion made by a Church of England spokesman that it should apologize for initially opposing Darwinian evolution back in Darwin’s day. An Associated Press article in the International Herald Tribune says that “[t]he church did not take an official stand against Darwin’s theories, but many senior Anglicans reacted with hostility to his ideas, arguing against them at public debates.” The example given is the account of Bishop Wilberforce: “At a University of Oxford debate in 1860, the bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, famously asked scientist Thomas Huxley whether it was through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed to be descended from a monkey.” According to the legend, Huxley reportedly replied that he Read More ›

Over the coming months, the Texas State Board of Education will be deciding whether to remove or bolster its requirement that students learn the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories, “using scientific evidence and information.” The pro-Darwin lobby group National Center for Science Education (NCSE) does not want that standard to be applied specifically to evolution. In fact, Texas Darwinists want that language completely removed from the Texas Science Standards. To reasonable people, it is apparent that investigating the “strengths and weaknesses [of scientific theories] using scientific evidence and information” is exactly what scientists do all the time. Discovery Institute believes that if scientists can dispute the core claims of neo-Darwinism (as these scientists do), then students can learn about Read More ›

[Update 6/16/09: Quote in paragraph 4 clarified to make it clear that the quote did not come from Dr. Catherine A. Boisvert but was rather stated by the journal The Scientist. Any prior lack of clarity on the author of that quote was completely unintentional.] Over the past couple years, Tiktaalik, a fish-fossil touted as documenting key aspects of the transition from fish to 4-legged tetrapods, has become a new celebrated icon of evolution: Clearly, Darwin’s public relations team has invested much rhetorical capital into this fossil. If past experience is to be our guide, the only event that might cause Darwinists to criticize Tiktaalik would be the publishing of a fossil that was claimed to better document evolution. In Read More ›

In 2004, cognitive scientist Keith E. Stanovich took the position that junk DNA “is essentially a parasite,” and that “junk DNA is a puzzle only if we are clinging to the assumption that our genes are there to do something for us.”1 In 2006, Michael Shermer asserted, “Rather than being intelligently designed, the human genome looks more and more like a mosaic of mutations, fragment copies, borrowed sequences, and discarded strings of DNA that were jerry-built over millions of years of evolution.”2 The following year, a human physiology textbook stated that “junk DNA” is “considered defective” and comprises “inherited sequences [that] perform no currently known ‘genetically useful’ purpose, yet they remain part of the chromosomes.”3 These sources promoting the classic Read More ›

Late last night I posted my final rebuttals to the NCSE on OpposingViews.com. This makes 12 total rebuttals for the pro-ID side and zero for the anti-ID side (though Americans United did post a sur-rebuttal tellingly titled “You Lost the Case — Get Over It“). Here are my links to my latest rebuttals: (Note: The OpposingViews.com website has had a nasty habit of losing footnotes, so some footnotes may be missing. I’m told they will be fixing this problem soon.) In my second rebuttal to the NCSE, I refute a Darwinist YouTube video that the NCSE cites to attack the Scientific Dissent from Darwinism list. I periodically get e-mails from people asking about this video. A closer look easily shows Read More ›

Earlier this summer we highlighted Susan Mazur’s reporting about the Altenberg 16 conference, in which Mazur wrote that there are “hundreds of other evolutionary scientists (non-Creationists) who contend that natural selection is politics, not science, and that we are in a quagmire because of staggering commercial investment in a Darwinian industry built on an inadequate theory.” Many Darwinists, needless to say, did not like Mazur’s reporting, and they attacked her harshly. They probably are also not going to like Mazur’s latest article, where she interviews University of California, Santa Cruz origin of life researcher David Deamer. When asking Deamer about the “origin of the gene,” he replied, “I think genetic information more or less came out of nowhere by chance Read More ›

I have thus far refrained from blogging about the new video game Spore that is being widely discussed in the media for one reason: anyone can see that Spore is not really about evolution by the Darwinian mechanism; it’s about evolution by intelligent design (ID). Even in his recent September 2 New York Times article, “Gaming Evolves,” Carl Zimmer reports that “Spore was strongly influenced by science, and in particular by evolutionary biology” but admits that “[t]he step-by-step process by which Spore’s creatures change does not have much to do with real evolution.” One biologist was quoted saying, “The mechanism is severely messed up.” And just what is that “severely messed up” mechanism? The answer is obvious: as an article Read More ›

Last Sunday morning, MSNBC’s “Meet the Press” (hosted by Tom Brokaw) interviewed Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty about whether “creationism vs. evolution … should be taught side by side in public schools.” Pawlenty observed that Brokaw should be talking about intelligent design (ID), not creationism: “In the scientific community, it seems like intelligent design is dismissed. Not entirely, there are a lot of scientists who would make the case that it is appropriate to be taught and appropriate to be demonstrated.” Pawlenty said that the decision should be left to local districts. Discovery Institute, of course, has long-opposed mandating ID in public schools. Continuing to call the issue “creationism vs. evolution” and failing to acknowledge intelligent design, Brokaw then asked political Read More ›

In his Autobiography, Charles Darwin stated, “There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course the wind blows.” It is thus quite odd that a ScienceDaily.com article earlier this year with the headline “New Findings Confirm Darwin’s Theory” should go on to say “Evolution Not Random.” This study may be confirming some theory, but it isn’t Darwin’s theory. This tactic to push evolution to the public as “non-random” appears to be part of an ongoing campaign on the part of Darwinists to make neo-Darwinism appear more appealing to the public (which tends to be religious). While there are non-random components to natural selection, evolutionary biology Read More ›