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Univeristy of Texas, El Paso mathematician Granville Sewell has written a book of essays spanning a wide variety of issues related to the debate over evolution. Besides biological evolution, it also deals with the Big Bang, the fine-tuning of the laws of physics, quantum mechanics, and even design in mathematics. Here he talks a bit about some of his views from In The Beginning And Other Essays on Intelligent Design 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

In their critique of William Dembski, Wesley Elsberry and Jeffrey Shallit write, “there is abundant circumstantial evidence that Darwinian processes can account for complexity in nature, but Dembski excludes this evidence because it does not pass his video-camera certainty test.” This badly misrepresents Dembski’s argument. Looking at all the theoretical work Dembski is doing to test the ability of Darwinian processes to generate specified complexity (see his papers at www.evoinfo.org) it should be clear that Dembski is NOT demanding “video-camera certainty” but rather is willing to test the ability of present-day causes to generate high CSI empirically, and theoretically, and then apply his findings to make inferences from the historical record. That’s exactly how historical scientists ought to study these Read More ›

What we know about the complexity of the cellular information storage, processing and retrieval mechanisms continues to increase exponentially, and at an unprecedented rate. Almost on a daily basis, new papers are published revealing the ingenuity of the elaborate mechanisms by which the cell processes information — processes and mechanisms that bespeak design and continue to elude explanation by Darwinian means. For how exactly could such a system – apparently, an irreducibly complex one – be accounted for in terms of traditional Darwinian selective pressure?

A new paper has just been published in Molecular Cell, in which the researchers, Karginov et al. reported their discovery that messenger RNA (mRNA) can be targeted for destruction by several different molecules.

According to the paper’s summary,

The life span of a mammalian mRNA is determined, in part, by the binding of regulatory proteins and small RNA-guided complexes. The conserved endonuclease activity of Argonaute2 requires extensive complementarity between a small RNA and its target and is not used by animal microRNAs, which pair with their targets imperfectly. Here we investigate the endonucleolytic function of Ago2 and other nucleases by transcriptome-wide profiling of mRNA cleavage products retaining 5′ phosphate groups in mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs). We detect a prominent signature of Ago2-dependent cleavage events and validate several such targets. Unexpectedly, a broader class of Ago2-independent cleavage sites is also observed, indicating participation of additional nucleases in site-specific mRNA cleavage. Within this class, we identify a cohort of Drosha-dependent mRNA cleavage events that functionally regulate mRNA levels in mESCs, including one in the Dgcr8 mRNA. Together, these results highlight the underappreciated role of endonucleolytic cleavage in controlling mRNA fates in mammals.

Translated into English, the paper makes the following points:

• RNA interference (RNAi) refers to a cellular pathway that helps to regulate the activity of genes within the cell. Fundamental to the process of RNA interference are small interfering RNAs (siRNA) and microRNAs (MiRNA).
• Small RNAs can prevent the translation of a target messenger RNA into protein, thereby reducing the activity of the RNAs to which it binds.
• MicroRNAs also act as regulators, binding to their complementary sequences on a target messenger RNA to result in gene silencing. MiRNAs also serve as guides to a family of proteins called Artonautes. When a miRNA-Artonaute complex binds to its complementary mRNA target, it triggers its destruction.
• The researchers surveyed a population of cleaved mRNAs in mammalian embryonic stem cells, discovering that mRNAs had been sliced or cleaved by the enzyme Ago2 and other enzymes.
• It was previously thought that the destruction was due to the destabilization of mRNA by initiation of cellular pathways. In contrast, Karginov et al. have discovered a host of ways that mRNA may be destroyed by enzymatic cleavage.

A few years back Dr. Wesley Elsberry and Dr. Jeffrey Shallit co-wrote an article, “Information Theory, Evolutionary Computation, and Dembski’s ‘Complex Specified Information’,” in response to William Dembski’s 2001 book No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence. No Free Lunch was something of a sequel to Dembski’s first major book, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities (Cambridge University Press, 1998), but Dembski’s work has come a long way since that time. In this regard–and it’s not Elsberry or Shallit’s fault per se, this is just how things go–their critique is now somewhat out-dated. The computational research of Dembski and Robert Marks at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab (as well as the Biologic Institute) has preempted Read More ›

Definitions of intelligent design used in the mainstream media are either so superficial as to be meaningless, or completely wrong in stating that ID is creationism and anti-evolutionary. One of the best basic definitions is from www.intelligentdesign.org: The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. In his groundbreaking book, Signature in the Cell, Stephen Meyer expands on this definition and builds a strong, scientific case for the theory of intelligent design. Here is a short video of Meyer explaining his definition of ID as he used it in his book.

In May, I wrote an article on Evolution News & Views commenting on Darwinian Atheists Lecturing Religious People on Proper Belief in God. Chris Mooney then wrote a response, and I then tried to submit a comment in reply. For some reason, perhaps innocent, perhaps not–I don’t really know–Chris Mooney’s Discover Magazine Blog refused to publish the following comment from me: Chris, you make hay that my blog post is apparently posted on some “BibleProphecyUpdate” website. You then say “Wow.” For the record, I’ve no idea what “BibleProphecyUpdate” is, nor do I know anything about them. I originally posted my blog at Evolution News & Views (ENV) — just follow the link from my name. From your post here today, Read More ›

Casey Luskin recently posted two blogs showing that textbooks still misuse Haeckel’s long-discredited embryo drawings when attempting to provide evidence for Darwinian evolution (see here and here). Luskin provided ample documentation to demonstrate that these drawings are still printed in some recent textbooks.

Over at The Panda’s Thumb blog, apologists for Darwinian theory have defended (see here and here) Ernst Haeckel from the charge of fraud and have argued, albeit unconvincingly, that, in principle, the concept of recapitulation is a valid one.
According to Nick Matzke:

Haeckel didn’t ignore the differences in embryos in the earliest period just after fertilization (differences which are visually significant but mostly fairly trivial, due to the different amounts of yolk in different vertebrate eggs).

In the latest ID the Future Podcast, I interview Mario Lopez, founder of the Organización Internacional para el Avance Científico del Diseño Inteligente (OIACDI), a group dedicated to promoting awareness about intelligent design (ID) to the Spanish speaking community. The group’s website, OIACDI.org, contains a variety of online resources in Spanish, including articles, news updates, and an ID FAQ in Spanish. OIACDI also recently published a book, Diseño Inteligente: Hacia Un Nuevo Paradigma Científico, which contains articles by leading ID thinkers like William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, Michael Behe, and Stephen Meyer translated into Spanish. As discussed in the podcast interview with Mr. Lopez, a large part of OIACDI’s goal is to network with Spanish-speaking scientists, assisting them in making contributions Read More ›

Gene Mills of the Louisiana Family Forum recently published an op-ed in the Shreveport Times defending the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), passed in 2008. Titled “Law provides framework to handle controversial scientific issues,” his article explains that criticisms of the LSEA made by an ACLU-affiliated lawyer are logically and legally baseless.

Charles Kincade’s op-ed June 19 in The Times shamelessly belies that contempt, demanding censorship over academic freedom! Anyone who repeats Kincade’s tired old line that the LSEA will “permit the teaching of religious creationism” needs to be administered either a literacy test or a lie detector test: the statute expressly prohibits, at Louisiana Family Forum’s (LFF) insistence, “discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion.”

Besides, who would oppose providing science teachers with a framework to address controversial scientific issues such as fossil fuel-induced global climate change, the origin of life or human cloning? Science is filled with controversy, which can excite and inspire young minds to listen, learn and engage.

Kincade claims Louisiana ranked “47th in the nation for education in 2008”; but he confuses cause with effect. Rules for implementing the LSEA were not even promulgated by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education until February. Louisiana’s low education rankings are the problem the LSEA seeks to remedy, not the effect of this beneficial law.

Scott F. Gilbert’s “Developmental Biology” (eighth edition) provides a stunning overview of the elegant biochemical mechanisms controlling the development of organismal form during ontogeny. The final section of the book, chapter 23 (“Developmental Mechanisms Of Evolutionary Change”) is devoted to a discussion of the new evolutionary synthesis, encompassing the new science of ‘evo devo’ (short hand for ‘evolutionary developmental biology’). The book even contains a short rebuttal directed at proponents of intelligent design and, in particular, Michael Behe.