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It’s been just over a year since the Kitzmiller ruling, and over a series of 3 posts, I’d like to briefly highlight some scientific discoveries reported since that time: Random mutation and blind selection may have trouble on the horizon. This will become especially clear in the second post of this series which will discuss the difficulty Neo-Darwinism is having constructing robust phylogenetic trees.
Since my post on “junk-DNA” last week, I would like to report a couple interesting discoveries on the topic. Wonderful List of References for Functionality of “Junk-DNA” I discovered a website at http://www.junkdna.com/new_citations.html which has compiled dozens of citations to articles discussing functionality for non-coding junk-DNA. The site also provides two quotations readers should consider: “…a certain amount of hubris was required for anyone to call any part of the genome ‘junk’.” — Francis Collins (2006) “You only believe theories when they make predictions confirmed by scientific evidence.” Star Trek Promotes the “Introns are Evolutionary Junk” Myth Last night I was amused by watching an episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation. The episode, called “Genesis,” featured the Enterprise crew Read More ›
Over the years, many (though not all) Darwinists have stated that non-coding DNA is not worth exploring because it is thought to be mere evolutionary junk. In 2003, Scientific American explained that “the introns within genes and the long stretches of intergenic DNA between genes, Mattick says, ‘were immediately assumed to be evolutionary junk.’” John S. Mattick, director of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia was then quoted saying this might have been “one of the biggest mistakes in the history of molecular biology.” (Wayt T. Gibbs, “The Unseen Genome: Gems Among the Junk,” Scientific American (Nov. 2003), emphasis added) Of course known functionality for non-coding DNA now goes far beyond intronic DNA. Read More ›
I appreciate that John Rennie has posted a response to my response to his original post about Kansas on the Scientific American blog. (And I happily forgive the accidental misspelling of my name.) A common tactic in debate is to condescendingly say, “Thanks for proving my point,” when your debate opponent actually refuted all of your points. Other tactics include name-calling, changing the issue at stake, making false accusations, and appealing to authorities as if they are correct simply because they are “authorities.” John Rennie used all of these tactics in his response. Once again, there will be a major difference between my response to Mr. Rennie and his response to me: I will continue to cite scientific literature without Read More ›
[Editor’s Note: The three individual installments of this series can be seen here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. The final complete article, What’s Up with Ronald Numbers? An Analysis of the Darwinist Metanarrative in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, can be found here.] The noted scholar Ronald Numbers is often cited as an objective authority on the history of the debate over evolution. But when he recently co-authored an article in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, “Defending science education against intelligent design: a call to action,” I was surprised that Numbers used invective language and clearly incorrect claims to discredit the theory of intelligent design. My first two pieces on the article are here and here. Now I want Read More ›