20Jan 2023 by Post

Fossil Friday: Fossil Sea Cows and the Abrupt Origin of Sirenia and Desmostylia

Afrotheria, Calvert Marine Museum, common descent, Darwinism, Desmostylia, dugongids, dugongs, elephants, Embrithopoda, Eocene, Evolution, Fossil Friday, fossil record, Ishatherium subathuensis, Jamaica, Lincoln Creek Formation, mammals, manatees, Paleocene, PaleoDB, paleontology, Pezosiren, Proboscidea, protosirenids, science, sea cows, Sirenia, sirenians, Steller’s sea cow, synapomorphies, Tethytheria, Washington State, whales
So, is every thing OK with Darwinism after all? No so fast. Actually, there are some problems that do not square well with a Darwinian scenario. Source
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09Dec 2022 by Post

MicroRNAs: A New Clue About Octopus Intelligence?

apes, biology, brain, central brain, cognitive abilities, Cris Niell, crows, cuttlefish, Dogs, dolphins, elephants, Grygoriy Zolotarov, intelligence, MicroRNAs, miRNAs, nervous system, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, neurotransmitters, Nikolaus Rajewsky, octopus, Oregon, RNA, science, squid, vertebrates, whales, William Rainey Harper
While octopus brains are very different from vertebrate brains, they share with vertebrates, a huge number of microRNAs. Source
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27Aug 2021 by Post

Why Systems Biologists Now Assume Life Is Optimally Designed

"poor design", bioinformatics, biological structures, biologists, biosphere, Dan Graur, ENCODE, engineers, Eva Balsa-Canto, Evolution, fitness landscape, human body, Human Errors, human genome, Intelligent Design, Julio R. Banga, Junk DNA, knee, Living with Darwin, Nathan Lents, Nikolaos Tsiantis, optimality, pelvis, Philip Kitcher, scientific materialism, teleology, whales, Wikipedia
Purported examples of poor design usually represent opinions resulting from armchair critics’ limited understanding of the technical literature. Source
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05Aug 2020 by Post

Whales — Time to Put Evolution’s Exhausted “Poster Child” to Rest

biology, Bioscience, critics, Darwinists, deformity, disease, Ellen Coombs, Evolution, filmmaker, fossil record, Jackson Wheat, Jerry Coyne, Long Story Short, milk carton kid, Neo-Darwinism, population genetics, poster child, scientists, The Conversation, The Rocks Were There, whales, Wikipedia, YouTube videos
The argument about whales turns on two points: “Population genetics calculations say no,” and “New fossil find throws the series into disarray.” Source
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13Apr 2020 by Post

Zoom Webinar with Wells, Sternberg on Whale Evolution; Join Us on April 23!

bears, Binghamton University, biologists, Center for Science & Culture, Charles Darwin, Darwinism, Discovery Institute, Evolution, Florida International University, Intelligent Design, Is Homology Evidence for Evolution?, Jonathan Wells, Richard Sternberg, scientists, The Origin of Species, U.C. Berkeley, webinar, Whale of an Evolution Tale, whales, Yale University, Zoom
Darwinists often point to the whale fossil record as one of the best examples of an evolutionary transition. But is it? Charles Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species: “I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale.” Bears turning into whales? Scientists today disagree, instead claiming that other land animals were the real precursors to today’s whales. “Just think of all the parameters that would have to be modified,” says biologist and Center for Science & Culture Senior Fellow Richard Sternberg, “and then multiply that by, I don’t know — a thousandfold, or more than that. That’s the scale of…
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04Dec 2019 by Post

No Harm, No Foul — What If Darwinism Were Excised from Biology?

Adam C. Soloff, Amir Marcovitz, appendectomy, bacteria, bats, behavior, cephalectomy, Daphne Major island, Darwin Devolves, Darwin's Finches, Darwinism, Darwinspeak, dolphins, echolocation, Evolution, Galápagos Islands, Hippocratic Oath, homeostasis, Illustra Media, Immune System, introgressive hybridization, Jerry Coyne, Marcos Eberlin, Michael Behe, Michael T. Lotze, Peter and Rosemary Grant, pharynx, Philip Skell, phylogeny, PNAS, primum non nocere, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Richard Dawkins, sound generation, tonsillectomy, turtles, whales
Some biologists might shudder at the thought of eliminating Darwinism from their scientific work. A “Darwin-ectomy” sounds more painful than a tonsillectomy or appendectomy. To hard-core evolutionists, it might sound like a cephalectomy (removal of the head)! If Darwinism is as essential to biology as Richard Dawkins or Jerry Coyne argues, then removing evolutionary words and concepts should make research incomprehensible.  If, on the other hand, Darwinism is more of a “narrative gloss” applied to the conclusions after the scientific work is done, as the late Philip Skell observed, then biology would survive the operation just fine. It might even be healthier, slimmed down after disposing of unnecessary philosophical baggage. Here are some recent scientific papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) to use as test…
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