Science and Culture Today | Page 1215 | Discovering Design in Nature

Another school year is set to begin at high schools and colleges where the next round of biology students will be filled with evolutionary misinformation. At the center of this propaganda campaign are the many biology textbooks used to indoctrinate young minds with old dogma. These textbooks contain the latest evolutionary newspeak, but the underlying lies are no different.

In their text The Living World (Fifth Edition, McGraw Hill, 2008) evolutionary apologists George Johnson and Jonathan Lobos rehearse the usual lies. Students are told that “Microevolution Leads to Macroevolution” with the giraffe’s neck serving as the example of how small change is supposed to accumulate to the large-scale change evolution needs.

Of course this is a long-standing, well-known problem for evolution. Mechanisms for large-scale change are speculative for it does not appear merely to be the result of repeated rounds of microevolution. Johnson and Lobos, of course, inform the student of none of this.

Recently, Nick Lane, a biochemist and Provost’s Venture Research Fellow in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London, published a new book, Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution.

Nick Lane lays out ten biological phenomena for which he seeks to propose plausible evolutionary explanations. Among the phenomena discussed by Lane are the origin of life, DNA, photosynthesis, the complex cell, sex, movement, sight, hot blood, consciousness, and death. But does Darwinism have the goods? Or does Nick Lane offer us only a series of wishful speculations?

New Scientist offered the following praise for Lane’s work:

What makes this such a great read is that Lane, a biochemist by training, does not simply rehash the standard evolutionary tales – unlike many books published recently. Instead, he is familiar with all the latest research and has made up his own mind about who is right. The result is an original and awe-inspiring account. The first two chapters are the most coherent and convincing summaries of the dawn of life and of DNA that I have ever read.

The literature continues to flood in demonstrating that so-called ‘junk’ regions of the genome are not junk after all, but serve significant and important functions. One such recent paper reports evidence that retrotransposons may play significant roles in the cell. According to the abstract,

Retrotransposons including endogenous retroviruses and their solitary long terminal repeats (LTRs) compose >40% of the human genome. Many of them are located in intergenic regions far from genes. Whether these intergenic retrotransposons serve beneficial host functions is not known. Here we show that an LTR retrotransposon of ERV-9 human endogenous retrovirus located 40–70 kb upstream of the human fetal γ- and adult β-globin genes serves a long-range, host function. The ERV-9 LTR contains multiple CCAAT and GATA motifs and competitively recruits a high concentration of NF-Y and GATA-2 present in low abundance in adult erythroid cells to assemble an LTR/RNA polymerase II complex. The LTR complex transcribes intergenic RNAs unidirectionally through the intervening DNA to loop with and modulate transcription factor occupancies at the far downstream globin promoters, thereby modulating globin gene switching by a competitive mechanism.

Retrotransposons include the long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs), short interspersed nuclear elements (SINEs), endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), and the solitary long terminal repeats (LTRs) of ERVs, and compose over 40% of the human genome. Retrotransposons possess enhancers and promoters which promote the expression of downstream polycistronic gene sequences. The cited paper seeks to determine whether the retrotransposons which are located in the intergenic (regions which intersperse genes, also known as ‘introns’) of the genome – which are often several hundred kilobases removed from the promoters – serve any beneficial function.

A May, 2010 editorial in Nature Immunology makes it clear that they don’t trust religious persons–even those who are neo-Darwinian evolutionists like Francis Collins–in positions of scientific authority. The editorial (written by the journal’s editors) states: “The openly religious stance of the NIH director [Francis Collins] could have undesirable effects on science education in the United States. … In the introduction and in interviews surrounding [Collins’] book release, he describes his belief in a non-natural, non-measurable, improvable deity that created the universe and its laws with humans as the ultimate aim of its creation. Some might worry that describing scientists as workers toiling to understand the laws and intricacies of this divine creation will create opportunities for creationism adepts.” “Of Read More ›

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is drafting a “Conceptual Framework for New Science Education Standards” which contains guidelines and standards on how to teach evolution. As we’ve noted before here on ENV, science education authorities often laud the importance of using critical thinking when teaching science, but then they completely ignore or eschew such educational approaches when it comes to teaching evolution. They single out evolution as the topic where scientific critique or critical analysis is carefully avoided. The NAS’s public preliminary draft “Framework for Science Education” (warning: large 6.8 Mb PDF file) uses exactly this approach. Having perused the proposed draft framework and found some dogmatic statements about evolution, a few noteworthy points emerge. While some of the Read More ›

A peer-reviewed paper, “Information and Entropy — Top-Down or Bottom-Up Development in Living Systems?,” by University of Leeds professor Andy McIntosh in the International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics expressly endorses intelligent design (ID) via an exploration of a key question in ID thinking: The ultimate question in origins must be: Can information increase in a purely materialistic or naturalistic way? It is not satisfactory to simply assume that information has to have arisen in this way. The alternative of original design must be allowed and all options examined carefully. A professor of thermodynamics and combustion theory, McIntosh is well acquainted with the workings of machinery. His argument is essentially twofold: (1) First, he defines the term “machine” Read More ›

Evolutionists sometimes tell us that islands are amazing laboratories where evolution is free to do anything. In his National Academy of Sciences booklet Evolution in Hawaii, Steve Olson repeats the tired old line that “evolution is supported by overwhelming evidence” (p. vii) and says “Islands are especially good places to see evolution in action.” (p. vii) He goes even further, suggesting that islands like Hawaii are “the best places in the world to study evolution.” (p. 1) But is it true that islands necessarily provide laboratories where diversity evolves en masse? An article on ScienceDaily about a new study in Global Ecology and Biogeography on island biogeography examines the question. The author states, “research that shows there’s nothing extraordinary about Read More ›

Yesterday’s contest awarded five winners a free copy of Signature in the Cell; today we’re announcing a contest (ending July 20th) to win a brand new iPod Nano loaded with intelligent design podcasts, interviews, debates, videos, and more! For your chance to win, just go here and sign up to one of our email lists (Nota Bene, Academic Freedom Update, or Faith and Science Update). Your subscription is free, and if you’re already a subscriber, you can enter the contest as well. For contest rules and details, visit here.

While Chris Comer’s lawsuit made a bogus case for discrimination, there are cases documenting genuine discrimination–against scientists who support intelligent design (ID). One of those incidents took place at George Mason University (GMU), where Caroline Crocker was ousted from teaching biology because she challenged to neo-Darwinian evolution and favorably mentioned ID in the classroom. Dr. Crocker later appeared in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, but now many more details about Caroline Crocker’s story are revealed in her new autobiographical book, Free to Think: Why Scientific Integrity Matters. Free to Think tells the story of a biology professor who cares deeply about students, received glowing student reviews, wouldn’t compromise her integrity when challenged to disregard anti-cheating rules, and produced high quality curricular Read More ›

Dr. Stephen Meyer explains the importance of biological information in origin of life research, as discussed in his groundbreaking intelligent design book Signature in the Cell. Display content from YouTube Click here to display content from YouTube. Learn more in YouTube’s privacy policy. Always display content from YouTube Open video directly Watch here in high resolution.