No. 2 Story of 2024: Darwinists Devolve

Ann Gauger, atheists, Brian Miller, Brown University, Casey Luskin, Charles Darwin, citation bluffing, Darwin Day, Darwin's Black Box, Darwinian materialism, Darwinian theory, Darwinism, Dave Farina, Debating Design, Douglas Axe, Emily Reeves, Ernst Mayr, Evolution, Finding Darwin’s God, Francis Collins, Guillermo Gonzalez, Icons of Evolution, Intelligent Design, Jerry Coyne, Jonathan McLatchie, Junk DNA, Kenneth Miller, Marcos Eberlin, Michael Behe, Nature’s Destiny, No Free Lunch, Oxford University, Oxford University Press, P.Z. Myers, Professor Dave, proteins, Richard Dawkins, Robert Laughlin, Signature in the Cell, Stanford University, Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Meyer, The Design Inference, The Edge of Evolution, The Privileged Planet, Thomas Nagel, University of Chicago, University of Minnesota, What Darwin Didn’t Know
One sign of a robust scientific theory is the quality of its most prominent proponents. But serious advocates of Darwinism have become an endangered species. Source
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Is Vitalism Making a Comeback? 

"God of the gaps", Andrea Roli, argument from ignorance, biology, blacks, élan vital, Ernst Mayr, Evolution, Evolution “On Purpose”, Huffington Post, Intelligent Design, Irish immigrants, Jacques Monod, James Barham, James Shapiro, Kardashian family, Peter Corning, Racism, Samir Okasha, Stuart A. Kauffman, University of Chicago, vital force, vitalism
For proponents of ID, there is a natural temptation to respond to this sort of explanation with derision. I suspect this reaction may be short-sighted. Source
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Ingenious Artistry in the Origin of Hummingbirds

artistry, Aves, Centropogon, contingency, death, Docimastes ensifer, Ensifera ensifera, Ernst Mayr, Eutoxeres, Evolution, females, genetic drift, happenstance, Heliconia, hummingbirds, Intelligent Design, Lophornis gouldii, males, marvelous spatuletail, Michael Behe, Modern Synthesis, mutations, natural selection, Neo-Darwinism, pain, peacock, phenotype, plumage, red-tailed comet, references, Richard Dawkins, Sappho sparganurus, sexual dimorphism, sicklebills, Stephen Meyer, sword-billed hummingbird, Trochilidae, waste
In contrast with neo-Darwinism, I conclude that an absolutely ingenious artist was at work here, transcending all human abilities, ideas, and powers. Source
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Notes on the Mysterious Origin of Hippos

Africa, Anthracotheriidae, biology, brachiopods, bryozoans, cephalopods, Charles Darwin, constancy, corals, Doliochoeridae, Ernst Mayr, Evolution, evolutionary derivations, foraminifers, fossil record, genera, Georges Cuvier, ghost lineages, Hippopotamidae, Hippopotamus amphibius, hippos, Intelligent Design, Louis Agassiz, Martin Pickford, megafauna, National Geographic, ostracods, paleontology, species, stasis, subfamilies, trilobites, ” and waiting around without any function that might explain why natural selection working on random mutations bothered to engineer them
The family Hippopotamidae appears abruptly in the fossil record — like all the other groups that I have so far investigated in detail. Source
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The Big Bang Origin of Homo

Allen Institute for Brain Science, Australopithecines, Australopithecus, biology, brain size, Christof Koch, cranial buttressing, dental function, Ernst Mayr, Eurasia, Evolution, fossil record, Fossils and Human Evolution (series), hominins, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, Homo sapiens, Human Origins, humans, Journal of Molecular Biology and Evolution, paleoanthropologists, Pleistocene, skulls, Southeast Asia
This unbridged gap between the ape-like australopithecines and the abruptly appearing human-like members of our genus challenges evolutionary accounts. Source
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Evolution Is Not Like Physics

Animal Algorithms, asymmetric information flow, biology, Boyle’s Law, Casey Luskin, Darwin's Doubt, E = mc2, Eigen catastrophe, Elliott Sober, Eric Cassell, Ernst Mayr, Erwin Schrödinger, Eugene V. Koonin, Evolution, Granville Sewell, gravitation, Isaac Newton, Kirk Durston, National Academy of Sciences, National Institute for Biotechnology Information, naturalism, neo-Darwinian theory, No Free Lunch, physics, Physics, Earth & Space, PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, punctuated equilibria, Richard Weikart, RNA, Signature in the Cell, Stephen Meyer, thermodynamics, vitalism, Vitaly Vanchurin, William Dembski, Yuri I. Wolf
A new theory of evolution extends Darwinian processes, making them into physical laws based on “learning theory.” Source
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Ignoring the Obvious: Convergent Evolution in Strickberger’s Evolution

adaptive challenges, Benedikt Hallgrimsson, biology, Brian K. Hall, convergence, convergent evolution, Darwinism, engineer, Ernst Mayr, Evolution, flowering plants, Francois Jacob, George Ledyard Stebbins, natural selection, neo-Darwinian theory, parallelism, plant evolution, Simon Conway Morris, St. George Jackson Mivart, Strickberger’s Evolution, textbooks, The Origin of Species, tinkerer, What Evolution Is
Remarkably, even Ernst Mayr was forced to tacitly acknowledge the challenge to Darwinism posed by convergence. Source
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Himmelfarb and Her Haters

10 Books That Screwed Up the World, Adrian Desmond, Alfred Russel Wallace, Andrew Dickson White, Bea Kristol, Benjamin Wiker, Borneo, Bridgewater Treatises, Charles Darwin, Charles Gillispie, Charles Kingsley, City University of New York, Cornell University, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, Darwinists, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, Dyak headhunters, Edward T. Oakes, Encounter (journal), Ernst Mayr, Eugenics Record Office, Evolution, Francis Galton, George Will, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Harry Bruinius, history, Jacques Barzun, James D. Watson, James Moore, Jeffrey Shallit, Jewish Women, John William Draper, Julian Huxley, Leo Strauss, Mein Kampf, P.Z. Myers, Panda's Thumb, Uaupés River Valley, Victorian England
Editor’s note: Historian and Darwin skeptic Gertrude Himmelfarb died on Monday, December 30, 2019. While mourning the passing of this great scholar, we are pleased to republish Professor Flannery’s 2009 essay, below. See also Flannery’s tribute, ‘Farewell to Gertrude Himmelfarb, Brutally Honest Historian of the “Darwinian Revolution.’” “If you have no enemies, it is a sign fortune has forgot you.” — Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732  Noted physician Thomas Fuller was an expert on “eruptive fevers,” and so it seems fitting to open this essay with his wry but telling observation on enemies in public life, for perhaps no contemporary historian has spawned more “eruptive fever” over an analysis of the reigning secular creation myth demigod, Charles Darwin, than has the present subject of this essay. If Fuller is any judge,…
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