02Jan 2020 by Post

Care for Appetizers? Electric Proteins, Spidey Sense, and More

anatomy, appetizers, Arizona State University, Barry Scott, Biomimetics, centipedes, cilia, electricity, electron transport, gene repression, genes, genomes, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, Joubert syndrome, Junk DNA, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Massey University, materials science, metabolism, Michael Behe, miRNA, orb webs, photosynthesis, physiology, Siam News, sliders, spiders, Stuart Lindsey, swimming, Tohoku University, University of North Carolina, University of Otago, X-ray crystallography, Zheng-Yi Chen
Welcome to the second day of the New Year! Like tasty sliders, these short news stories should get the juices flowing for big developments in 2020. Electric Proteins Dr. Stuart Lindsey at Arizona State University is an expert in single-molecule dynamics in biomolecules. Older methods of observing protein structure, such as X-ray crystallography, only gave single snapshots of the highly dynamic world, he says, where proteins rapidly change conformations and interact in complex ways. Electron transport has been well known in the cases of photosynthesis and metabolism. But a few years ago, his team was astonished to find that a run-of-the-mill protein conducted electricity. The protein was acting like a wire! Further observations revealed that all proteins conduct electricity — even the ones that had “weren’t designed to do this”—…
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01Jan 2020 by Post

#1 of Our Top Stories of 2019: Informed by Discovery Authors, Yale’s David Gelernter Rejects Darwinism

Ben Shapiro, Charles Darwin, Darwin's Doubt, David Berlinski, David Gelernter, Debating Darwin's Doubt, Discovery Institute Press, Douglas Axe, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Marcos Eberlin, Michael Behe, National Academy of Sciences, Paul Nelson, Richard Lenski, Stephen Meyer, The Claremont Review of Books, The Deniable Darwin, Thomas Nagel, Tom Wolfe, Yale University
Editor’s note: The staff of Evolution News wish you a Happy New Year! We are counting down our top ten stories of 2019. If you haven’t done so yet, please take a moment now to contribute to our work in bringing you news and analysis about evolution, intelligent design, and more every day of the year. There is no other voice, no other source of information, like ours. Thank you for your friendship and your support! The following article was originally published here on October 21, 2019. This is important. Yale University computer scientist David Gelernter is a polymath, a brilliant writer, artist, and thinker. Famed both for his specific scientific expertise, and for his cultural, political, and historical reflections, he’s also now a confessed Darwin skeptic. More than a…
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26Dec 2019 by Post

Is ID the Best Kept Secret? No Longer

Ben Shapiro Show, Center for Science & Culture, David Berlinski, Discovery Institute, Evolution News, ID The Future, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design the Future, materialism, Media & Communications initiative, Michael Behe, Prager University, Science Uprising, Stephen Meyer, The Return of the God Hypothesis, Uncommon Knowledge
When I started working for Discovery in 2006, I would mention the name of Discovery Institute to my friends or acquaintances and would get a blank stare. Few people had heard of intelligent design (ID) or Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture. But all that has changed this year, thanks to generous donors who have supported us. ID is no longer the best-kept secret on the planet. This year alone, our videos on YouTube have had over 3.2 million views, Evolution News and Science Today articles have reached over 1.7 million users, and our Intelligent Design the Future podcasts have been downloaded well over 600,000 times. Our donors made it possible for Stephen Meyer, Michael Behe, David Berlinski, and others to be featured on the Ben Shapiro Show, Uncommon…
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25Dec 2019 by Post

#8 of Our Top Stories of 2019: Remembering Phillip E. Johnson (1940-2019)

ancient Greeks, Boalt Hall School of Law, Casey Luskin, censorship, Center for Science & Culture, Christians, creationism, Darwin on Trial, Darwin's Nemesis, Darwinism, Discovery Institute, Evolution, Genesis, Intelligent Design, Intelligent Design 101, John Mark Reynolds, Kansas State Board of Education, materialism, naturalism, objective education, Phillip E. Johnson, scholars, Science (journal), scientists, Sunday School, Supreme Court, The Wedge of Truth, UC Berkeley
Editor’s note: The staff of Evolution News wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We are counting down our top ten stories of 2019. If you haven’t done so yet, please take a moment now to contribute to our work in bringing you news and analysis about evolution, intelligent design, and more every day of the year. There is no other voice, no other source of information, like ours. Thank you for your friendship and your support! The following article was originally published here on November 3, 2019. Author’s note: With great regret, we recognize the passing of Phillip Johnson, a key guiding spirit of the intelligent design movement. He died peacefully overnight this weekend, at age 79, at his home in Berkeley, California. I am publishing below…
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24Dec 2019 by Post

#9 of Our Top Stories of 2019: Ben Shapiro May Have Done the Best Interview with Stephen Meyer

academia, Ben Shapiro, Big Bang, biology, cosmic fine-tuning, cosmology, Education, education policy, Evolution, Intelligent Design, interview, journalists, materialism, media, multiverse, quantum cosmology, scientists, Stephen Meyer, strengths and weaknesses, The Daily Wire, The Return of the God Hypothesis, young people
Editor’s note: The staff of Evolution News wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We are counting down our top ten stories of 2019. If you haven’t done so yet, please take a moment now to contribute to our work in bringing you news and analysis about evolution, intelligent design, and more every day of the year. There is no other voice, no other source of information, like ours. Thank you for your friendship and your support! The following article was originally published here on March 25, 2019. Ben Shapiro’s Sunday Special interview with Stephen Meyer is up and viewable now at YouTube. This might be the best interview with Meyer that I’ve ever seen. Check it out: Why might it be the best? Partly because of the…
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23Dec 2019 by Post

Alles Klar? Jerry Coyne on an “Argument from Incredulity”

Alex Kacelnik, archerfish, argument from incredulity, Evolution, guesses, inferences, Intelligent Design, Jerry Coyne, larval wasp, Life Sciences, nature video, Popular Science Monthly, Stefan Schuster, University of Oxford, Why Evolution Is True
If you look at Jerry Coyne’s blog Why Evolution Is True from over the past weekend, you will find his rebuttal to what Coyne calls an argument from incredulity. He comments, “You will recognize this argument as the basis for Intelligent Design.” We have taken Coyne’s rebuttal, deleted the inessentials, and placed in bold all of the inferential steps, credulous guesses, and other leaps of imagination. It is astonishing that anyone would think the result a scientific argument, or, even, an argument at all. From “A creationist writes in espousing the Argument from Incredulity,” suitably modified: Let’s take the larval wasp…The way to address the incredulity argument is to postulate a plausible step-by-step process in which each step is adaptive…. In the case of the wasp, all that is required is that…
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21Dec 2019 by Post

Historian and Nature’s Prophet Author Michael Flannery Reviews the Reviewers

Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Darwin, Christianity, Evolution, Harvard University, ID The Future, Intelligent Design, Michael Keas, natural selection, natural theology, Nature's Prophet, Podcast, random variation, ruling intelligence, scientism, The World of Life
On a new episode of ID the Future, Michael Flannery speaks again with host Mike Keas about his book Nature’s Prophet: Alfred Russel Wallace, and His Evolution from Natural Selection to Natural Theology. Wallace was the co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection along with Charles Darwin, but in 1869 he broke with Darwin, disagreeing with him on the origin of special human attributes like art, music, and abstract thought. Download the podcast or listen to it here. Seeing how distinctive humans are from other animals, and after determining that the mechanism of random variation and natural selection was inadequate to explain the origin of those distinctive qualities, Wallace concluded that the origin of our species required a special ruling intelligence to explain our appearance. He dissented from his day’s version…
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20Dec 2019 by Post

Molybdenum Is Stored in Cells by a Powered Piercing Machine

anhydride hydrolysis, armor, armor-piercing bullets, ATP, ATP-binding groove, bacteria, Biochemistry (journal), biomineralization, carbon, chemical energy, Chile, China, diet, DNA replication, Earth’s crust, Energy, energy metabolism, entropy, Evolution, genetic information, gun, human body, industry, Intelligent Design, kinetic energy, Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, melting point, metal, molecular machines, molybdate, molybdenum, MoSto system, motility, nitrogen, PNAS, protein, steel, Steffen Brünle, sulfur, United States
Molybdenum comprises the second smallest percentage of mass in a normal human body, but that trace amount serves a vital function in several key enzymes. Chemical element molybdenum, affectionately called “moly” by manufacturers, is classified as a refractory metal (i.e., able to retain its shape when heated), bearing similarities to lead. It was only declared a chemical element in 1790 with the abbreviation Mo. Because of its very high melting point, it is prized in industry for its ability to toughen steel and armor. Molybdenum’s abundance in Earth’s crust is estimated at 1.2 ppm, mined mostly in China, the United States, and Chile (molybdenum.com). An Essential Element Why would soft, squishy biology need such a hard substance? The answer is that without it, life would not be possible. A 2009…
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18Dec 2019 by Post

Advance the Tipping Point: End-of-Year Video Message from Stephen Meyer

Bruce Chapman, bullies, censors, Center for Science & Culture, Darwinists, David Gelernter, ID Education Day, Intelligent Design, John West, origin of life, Scientific Dissent from Darwin, Stephen Meyer, Steve Buri, Summer Seminar on ID
The other day Steve Meyer and I sat down to review the year’s accomplishments by Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture. It’s pretty amazing. As our Discovery colleague Rob Crowther pointed out, there were things Meyer talked about that neither Rob nor I had heard about before. Take a look at this: How Discovery’s scientists and scholars manage to do it all is a wonder. I’m not going to try to name any portion of them, lest I forget someone. But surely our leadership at DI should be singled out: Steve Buri, Bruce Chapman, Steve Meyer, and John West. We are going to be enjoying a staff appreciation lunch today, and at these events I always feel it’s our leaders who get shortchanged on the appreciation. So let me…
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16Dec 2019 by Post

The Ultimate Recycler

ADP, ATP, ATP synthase, biochemistry, body weight, cell membrane, cell's, cities, citrate, cytoplasm, electron transport chain, Energy, Genome Biology, glucose, hydroelectric plant, Intelligent Design, Life Sciences, machines, metabolism, mitochondria, NADH, protein complexes, pyruvate, recycling, succinate
When a city starts out with a major energy deficit, there are two changes that should be made: to be really, and I mean really efficient at recycling the critical resource, or to buy more energy. What about in biology? Cells are like cities, right? Out of Balance We already know from a previous post (“The Mystery of Energy Metabolism”) that the cell has an energy budget that is out of balance based solely on biosynthesis and use of ATP. It is in a predicament. It has an extreme shortfall in ATP in its balance sheet, needing six ATP just to make one. ATP is a high energy molecule. All that energy has to be loaded into the molecule during its synthesis by using up other ATP molecules. If chemical A is…
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