Fantastic Four and a Walk-On for Darwin

adaptation, Andrew McDiarmid, arts, Ben Grimm, bonus scene, Charles Darwin, Culture, Doctor Doom, drama, Evolution, family, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four: First Steps, Grok, H.E.R.B.I.E, Intelligent Design, Johnny Storm, Marvel Cinematic Universe, multiverse, natural selection, On the Origin of Species, paywall, principles, scientific materialism, Social media, subscription, tension, The Daily Wire, The Hungry Caterpillar, universe
Great tensions fuel engaging drama, always. If there’s a conflict, it has to be stark and serious, and the stakes have to be high.  Source
Read More

When Darwinism Becomes a Fashionable Doomsday Cult

adaptation, catastrophe, Charles Darwin, Culture & Ethics, Dan Brooks, Darwinian evolution, Darwinism, doomsday, Evolution, evolutionary biologist, Herbert Spencer, Human Extinction Movement, IIsac Asimov, MIT, persecution, Peter Watts, Salvatore J. Agosta, The Darwinian Survival Guide, The Freeze-Frame Revolution, University of Melbourne, University of Toronto
Like all cults, it can make otherwise intelligent people begin to sound rather strange, even precarious. Source
Read More

Darwin Devotion Detector: Take the Test Now

adaptation, atheists, Charles Darwin, chimpanzee, common descent, Darwin Day, Darwin Devotion Detector, eugenics, Evolution, free will, genes, Germany, humanzee, Intelligent Design, J.B.S. Haldane, Jane Austen, Judge John E. Jones, Kitzmiller v. Dover, Kolkata, Love, Meaning, meme theory, natural selection, population growth, purpose, rape, Richard Dawkins, secular saint, United States, value
A tongue-in-cheek questionnaire that nonetheless provides real insight into the extent to which Darwinian ideas have captured our thinking. Source
Read More

Fossil Friday: A Popular Just-So Story on the Origin of Bird Flight Bites the Dust

adaptation, aerodynamics, arboreal hypothesis, avian flight, birds, China, Chukar partridge, computer modelling, Confuciusornis, cursorial hypothesis, empirical data, Evolution, flapping, Flight, forelimb, Fossil Friday, fossil record, ichthyosaur, kinematics, Liaoning, mechanics, muscles, paleontology, powered flight, storytelling, WAIR hypothesis, wing-assisted incline running, wings
There is a long-running about whether birds first took off by running and flapping from the ground up, or whether they jumped as gliders from the tree down. Source
Read More

What’s Driving Darwin’s Driverless Car?

"survival of the fittest", abductive inference, adaptation, blind drivers, CELS, Charles Darwin, Charles Kocher, Columbia University, Current Biology, Darwinian Evolution Machine, driver, driverless car, Engineering, equilibrium, Eric Anderson, Evolution, fitness ratcheting, fitness valleys, golfers, gravity, Herbert Spencer, ignition, Intelligent Design, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Ken Dill, Mars, Mars rovers, molecular machines, New Zealand, orbits, planets, PNAS, rollercoaster, Science Advances, Second Law of Thermodynamics, selective pressure, software, sponges, TEDx talk, University of Otago, University of Sydney, Victoria University, water
What drives natural selection? Evolutionary forces. What are evolutionary forces? They’re what drive natural selection. Source
Read More

Studies on Cichlid Fish Demonstrate the Predictive Power of Engineering Models for Adaptation

adaptation, biology, cichlid fish, engineered systems, Evolution, evolutionary theory, genes, genetic diversity, information, Intelligent Design, Kara Feilich, Lake Malawi, Lake Tanganyka, Lake Victoria, mutation rate, natural genetic engineering, operational gravity well, phenotypic plasticity, principal component analysis, tracking model of adaptation
Cichlid variation do not primarily originate from random mutations but from engineered systems. Source
Read More

Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection Has Left a Legacy of Confusion over Biological Adaptation

adaptation, Biological Emergences, biology, brain, cave fish, Charles Darwin, Conference on Engineering in Living Systems, Evolution, externalism, hurricane, Intelligent Design, internalism, Jerry Fodor, John Gerhard, Marc Kirschner, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, Mother Nature, natural selection, New York Times Book Review, Phreatichthys andruzzii, Pocahontas, Richard Lewontin, Robert G. B. Reid, Stephen Jay Gould, sweating, What Darwin God Wrong, William Paley
Our ability to adapt to fantastically diverse circumstances did not result from the happenstance of environmental conditions. Source
Read More

Engineering Better Explains Adaptation than Evolutionary Theory

adaptation, anatomy, artificial limbs, CELS 2021, Conference on Engineering in Living Systems, design logic, Engineering, engineers, environment, Evolution, fitness, fitness landscape, fur color, genes, genotype, height, Intelligent Design, living systems, micro air vehicles, mutations, nanomachines, natural genetic engineering, operational gravity well, operational parameters, physiology
The genetic variation in any species is confined to a limited set of variables such as a finch beak’s thickness. Source
Read More

Vindicated But Not Cited: Paper in Nature Heredity Supports Michael Behe’s Devolution Hypothesis

adaptation, Andrew Murray, Current Biology, Darwin Devolves, Darwinian mechanism, devolution, Evolution, function, gene loss, genes, Intelligent Design, John Maynard Smith, loss-of-function mutations, Michael Behe, mutations, natural selection, Nature Heredity, phenotypes, The Quarterly Review of Biology
The literature is looking at the same data that intelligent design proponents are looking at, making similar observations, and asking similar questions. Source
Read More