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“Junk” DNA: Darwinism’s Last Stand? We are often told that the evidence for evolution is “overwhelming.” If “evolution” is defined as “change over time” or “minor changes within existing species,” this is a truism. But what if “evolution” means Charles Darwin’s theory? According to Darwin, all living things are descendants of a common ancestor that have been modified by unguided processes such as random variation and natural selection. Despite the hype from Darwin’s followers, the evidence for his theory is underwhelming, at best. Natural selection—like artificial selection—can produce minor changes within existing species. But in the 150 years since the...

They're kind of like fairy tales for scientists, except they are usually less coherent than the Brothers Grimm variety: --------------------------------------------------------- Although many scholars have tried to identify a useful function for human hairlessness, they have failed. Indeed Alfred Wallace, the biologist who jointly described evolution with Darwin, concluded that our hairlessness proved the existence of God. Only a supernatural being, unconcerned with natural selection, could have designed it. But Darwin showed that hairlessness was proof of a different type of evolution, not by natural selection but by sexual selection. Under natural selection, individuals survive if they are adapted to their...

June 3, 2009 — Movements since the late 19th century have employed science as justification for tyrannical ideas. Ziauddin Sardar wrote in Nature, “Misplaced faith in science, as rational dogma, as the enemy of pessimism, as a theory of salvation, often serves as the glue that binds modernity and fascism together.”1 Could that happen again? Sardar, the editor of Futures, was reviewing a new book by Christine Poggi, Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism (Princeton, 2009). He began,...

Atheist Ads in Chicago Say Man Created God by Christine Dao* “In the beginning, man created God,” according to recent advertisements posted on 25 Chicago buses. The Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign targeted the country’s third largest city to espouse “the idea that man created God as well as all religions.”[1] The ads were inspired by similar campaigns elsewhere, including...

101 evidences for a young age of the earth...and the universe Can science prove the age of the earth? There are many different categories of evidence that the cosmos and the earth are much younger than is generally asserted today...

In 1996, an international team of scientists led by the University of Zaragoza (UNIZAR) started to carry out a paleontological survey in the cave of El Mirón. Since then they have focused on analysing the fossil remains of the bones and teeth of small vertebrates that lived in the Cantabrian region over the past 41,000 years, at the end of the Quaternary. The richness, great diversity and good conservation status of the fossils have enabled the researchers to carry out a paleoclimatic study, which has been published recently in the Journal of Archaeological Science. "We carried out every kind of...

Central Europe's prehistoric people would likely have been amused by today's hand-sized hamburgers and hot dogs, since archaeologists have just uncovered a 29,000 B.C. well-equipped kitchen where roasted gigantic mammoth was one of the last meals served. The site, called Pavlov VI in the Czech Republic near the Austrian and Slovak Republic borders, provides a homespun look at the rich culture of some of Europe's first anatomically modern humans.

--snip-- Adaptive mutation throws a wrench into the evolution machine...

Charles Darwin’s discovery of evolution is common knowledge but Darwin the person is barely known. Even on his 200th birth anniversary this year — he was born in England on Feb. 12, 1809 — much has been said about his works but little about his inner life of contrasts. Darwin loved the natural world from childhood. He roamed the wilderness to study insects while neglecting Greek and Latin, the essential subjects. He said of his schooling, “I was considered by all my masters and by my Father as a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect.” Sent...

When talking with friendly journalists, theistic evolution proponent Francis Collins typically insists that he wants to initiate a “dialogue” about faith and evolution. But Collins and his colleagues at the Biologos Foundation seem curiously averse to engaging in real dialogue. A case in point is a cranky blog entry posted this week by theistic evolutionist Karl Giberson, Francis Collins’ colleague at Biologos. Giberson, whom I debated at Biola University a few months ago, denounces Discovery Institute’s new Faith and Evolution website as “slick, well-resourced, rhetorically clever, profoundly misleading, and almost completely devoid of any real science.” Whew! Giberson’s own post...

Evolution As Catch-All Explanation June 3, 2009 — If you were taught a precise definition of neo-Darwinism in school, it doesn’t seem to matter to many evolutionists in the media. In practice, the word “Evolution” seems to act as a catch-all category for explaining anything and everything – whether or not random mutation and natural selection were involved. Some purpose and design can even be tossed into the mix as long as Evolution is the hero of the story. Here are some recent examples of how Evolution is employed to explain whatever:...

When and Why Anti-Darwinism First Arose I'm a big fan of Rod Dreher. His Crunchy Con blog rarely fails to enlighten me, so I've been looking forward to his reflections on faith and science, generated by his current visit to Cambridge University as a Cambridge-Templeton fellow. Rod blogged today in response to a lecture and discussion in which evolution came up. He writes that "Darwinism wasn't initially opposed by Christians" and credits William Jennings Bryan with rallying the faithful against evolution. This is worth some further elaboration. How soon did opposition to Darwinism develop? Among whom, and why?...

DNA Fence Posts Hold Back Cancer. . . and Evolution by Brian Thomas, M.S.* New research has uncovered a tiny protein that, when it breaks down, leads to cancer. This useful protein attaches to DNA in certain places and serves as a marker or “fence post.” These fence posts keep certain zones of DNA accessible to the cell regulatory mechanisms that activate gene expression to produce other proteins. If the protein posts are knocked down, these regions of DNA become inaccessible and the cells become cancerous. But how could cells have evolved if the necessary restructuring of their DNA, and...

A THREE-TOED dinosaur which once roamed the Isle of Skye may have been the same species as one whose prints have been found in the Red Gulch mountains in Wyoming, paleontologists said yesterday. The 170 million-year-old tracks are so similar that Glasgow paleontologist Neil Clark believes the Wyoming dinosaurs may have swum or waded over to Skye – which at that time was part of an island off the east coast of America. US scientists now plan to put his theories to the test, using 3D mapping technology to compare both sets of footprints. Dr Clark, Curator of Paleontology at...

Those who say that the creation/evolution debate is really only of academic interest, with little relevance to our daily lives (or to anything else), must surely have been confronted by swine flu’s continuing domination of worldwide news headlines. And of course, the secularists couldn’t resist linking these tragedies with evolutionary propaganda...

In a world full of death and suffering, some creatures are known to be fierce carnivores (meat eaters). In fact, the perception of animals eating other animals is seen as normal in today’s secular, evolution-influenced society. But was it always like that?...

Hello Evolution, Nice to Meet You I believe it was Philip Johnson who once said that if you replaced the word "evolution" in biology textbooks with the word "design," almost nothing of substance would change. I think he was right. We wonder at nature, not because we are so ignorant, as some people think, but rather because it is so amazing. As Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt explained in A Meaningful World, nature displays true genius. And it is this plain fact that drives design-deniers to deify, or at least personify, Evolution. Take as just one example this extremely fascinating...

June 2, 2009 — A claim has often been made by geologists that the rock sediments record cyclical changes in Earth’s orbit. Milankovitch cycles, named for the man who analyzed them, are a set of regular periodic changes to the orbital eccentricy, obliquity, and axial precession. Such subtle changes, it is alleged, produce climate change and sea level elevations. The climate forcing, in turn, produces periodic differences in thickness of sedimentary layers. The search for Milankovitch signatures in rock records has been used as a method of dating sediments. Geologists at Virginia State and Virginia Polytechnic tested this hypothesis with...

The Galapagos giant tortoise and other iconic wildlife are facing a new threat from disease, as some of the islands' mosquitoes develop a taste for reptile blood. Scientists from the University of Leeds, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Galapagos National Park have discovered that while its mainland ancestors prefer the blood of mammals and the occasional bird, the Galapagos form of the black salt marsh mosquito (Aedes taeniorhynchus) has shifted its behaviour to feed mainly on reptiles – primarily Galapagos giant tortoises and marine iguanas. The findings raise fears that these changes could devastate the islands' unique...

Physicists Finding Perfection...in Biology June 1, 2009 Biologic Staff When we think of simple, elegant, unifying principles in science, we think of physics.  It’s not surprising then that physicists who examine living systems are looking for principles of this kind.And it seems they have found one.  Simply stated, it is that biological processes tend to be optimal in cases where this can be tested.  Life’s complexity can make it hard to pinpoint what “optimal” means, but sometimes physical limits provide a crisp definition.  Because these limits cannot possibly be exceeded, they serve as an objective standard of perfection.  Interestingly, in...