“Everything changed in the past 40 years, when an explosion of evolutionary studies proved that evolution can and does occur rapidly — even from one generation to the next. Evolutionary biologists were thrilled, but the findings reinforced the same paradox: If evolution can happen so fast, then why do most species on Earth continue to […]
Annotated […] excerpts : We now know that Darwin’s ‘gradualist’ view of evolution, exclusively driven by natural selection, is no longer compatible with contemporary science. Species do not emerge from an accumulation of random genetic changes. This has been confirmed by 21st-century genome sequencing, but the idea that natural selection inadequately explains evolutionary change goes […]
A recent study identifies phenotypic plasticity as the ability of tadpoles to change how they look and act, and how their tissues function, in response to their environment. If the pond also contains fairy shrimp, some tadpoles turn into aggressive carnivores and sometimes, the carnivorous tadpole stage becomes entrenched – without the need for a […]
Very nice. Congratulations! But where is the “directed evolution” oxymoron in this story? The process used is simple organism breeding as done by mankind for thousands of years, in this case sped up by advanced technologies. “Random mutations” are not entirely random as the mutations desired had to converge towards a clear, specified target. Random […]
Not often does one get to say “interesting book, but very wrong”. What makes this one so special is the marriage of interesting experimental findings with very bad philosophy built on top of those observations. The book makes a case for life being a collection of autonomous machines that “evolved” in the Darwinist style. Some […]
Your CV shows some great skills that could benefit mankind. Presumably you also want to have a positive impact in this world and eventually be remembered for something good you did. If so, it is very puzzling why you would start and run a blog like peacefulscience.org that takes time and effort detracting from your […]
– A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique Edited By: J.P. Moreland, Stephen C. Meyer, Wayne Grudem. By: Various Contributors Theistic Evolution relies on the assumption that Darwin was right. Without that, there is no Theistic Evolution. Conversely, Theistic Evolution could not be invalidated by any philosophical or theological analysis if Darwin were right. In […]
Here are the five [presumably main] questions from Lents’ book. These are typical Darwinist “gotcha” questions for Intelligent Design proponents and are therefore worth addressing: Why are we designed with nonfunctional pseudogenes? Why do our nasal sinuses drain upward? Why are humans so bad at absorbing vitamins and minerals? Why do humans have muscles and […]
The author of this short and compelling book is a legal scholar that brings a much needed scientific rigor to the debate, while not appealing to authority or the law in support of his case unlike the Darwinists that do both whereas, ironically, also opportunistically seek the support of the Galileo affair. Regarding “natural selection”, […]
Look how some people (also materialists) are willingly risking getting a black eye, which is exactly what they got now. Kudos to them for trying! Of course all current models of the universe resemble a wind-up toy which forces physicists into all kind of unreasonable theories and when one fails they have to come up […]
Ed Young recently reopened the case of jumping genes in mammals. This article is a retake on an older piece originally published in 2013 in a different paper. Jumping genes or transposons are DNA sequences that can change position within a genome, sometimes creating or reversing mutations and altering the cell’s genetic identity and genome […]
This is an explosive book, full of important ideas that only few are aware of. I don’t even remember how I came across the book, the author and, most importantly, his ideas in 2017, or twenty-five years after its first edition. This is a testament to the efficiency of the monstrous Darwinist propaganda machine that […]
Not quite news, but new enough to some of us, Jack Szostak from Harvard Medical School is “trying to build a synthetic cellular system that undergoes Darwinian evolution” to shut up once and for all the creationists and Intelligent Design proponents out there. Well, Good Luck with that! Szostak is of course driven by his […]
Nylonase is a popular evolutionary icon as nylon is a recent human invention and a nylon-eating bacteria strand was discovered in 1975. But beyond inquiries into the “evolutionary mechanism” powering this strand, the question is: does this story even make sense? Recent research shows that common mealworms can safely biodegrade various types of plastic. Most […]
Coyne’s book is a surprisingly honest and significant effort to support his viewpoint with good arguments. He still fails, but kudos for the effort and for not fighting straw men. Here are Coyne’s main arguments and the objections he will need to address: Coyne complains that Evolution is just like Newton’s Laws and should not […]
In this new book supporting Intelligent Design, Douglas Axe is asking the eternal question: “to what or to whom do we owe our existence?”, and then he goes on disputing the materialist hypothesis. Too bad his arguments are not the strongest, his explanations are convoluted and unclear, and the chosen supporting examples are uninspired. Still, […]
Several sources reported on the recent “New trends in evolutionary biology” meeting at The Royal Society. We learn that the 50 years old “Modern Synthesis” needs to be “Extended”. As shown elsewhere, epigenetics argues for a sort of Lamarckism, but in the end both Darwin and Lamarck proposed only “just so” stories, rather that useful […]
“Shaking up the Tree of Life” – http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6314/817 Reproductive isolation was, until recently, part of the classic definition of a species. But this definition never worked, first because various species like Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens can mate and birth fertile descendants, and second because this definition left out all nonsexual reproducing organisms. What is not […]
The Accidental Universe is a short (136 pages) collection of essays mostly on cosmology (what else?). All of these ideas have been discussed elsewhere, but they are still open. More or less convincing hypotheses have been offered before and some of them are described in this book with a personal touch of the author: “The […]
A long book (459 pages) better listened at double speed while enjoying another parallel activity than read. Because of its length, the book lacks coherence, although it contains several important ideas worth debating. Main ideas (in no particular order) include: “Enlightenment (good) versus Parochial (bad)” – but these are not necessarily opposite, and the words […]
A brief book that is not so much about Speech as it is about toppling false prophets. We learn a great deal about the sordid intrigue that made Darwin the historic personality he is while keeping the lowly “fly catcher” Wallace in semi-obscurity. One hundred fifty years later, a somewhat parallel story develops between Noam […]
The experiment (and video) shows bacterium Escherichia Coli adapting to increasingly higher doses of antibiotics on a dish divided into sections saturated with various doses of medication. Mutations to the antibiotic medium resulted in initial growth slowdown. New territory growth was lead by the strains that were sufficiently strong and close to the antibiotic frontier, […]
Rupert Sheldrake’s goal is to dispute ten current scientific dogmas (“the scientific creed”). Dogma: Life is essentially mechanical. Dispute: The mechanical explanation of life is akin to trying to understand a computer by grinding it up and analyzing its component elements. All mechanistic supporters smuggle purpose in their model through concept such as “selfish gene”, […]
The questions asked are pertinent, and the effort put into this endeavor is commendable. The approach – asking groups of three “ordinary people” to do certain experiments – is simple, as one would expect from a basic popular science show. At the end of each experiment, the participants “discover” the answer, or more precisely are […]
JCV-syn3.0 is a new, 473 genes, organism developed by genetic manipulations as part of the Minimal Genome Project. JCV-syn3.0 is less complex than the 525 genes Mycoplasma genitalium – the least complex natural organism known. Contrary to some inflated claims to “synthetic life” and “created life”, the team has not created life out of non-living […]
No! AlphaGo is just a tool designed by humans. Like a vehicle or an industrial machine, it beats the bare-handed human at a certain task. AlphaGo is just an extension of its designers’ intelligence. Could humans ever hope to beat AlphaGo in a rematch? No doubt. Given enough resources, a competing human team will be […]
Here is the Econtalk interview with Matt Ridley. For a book based entirely on Evolution, Ridley never gets around to discuss the concept. He also never clarifies Creation (in his understanding), that he thinks is incompatible with Evolution (in his understanding). Ridley is wrong on many topics and, in this book, In fact, Evolution has […]
Once again, water was confirmed on Mars generating a significant level of excitement especially in conjunction with the newly released movie “The Martian”. The reason for the excitement is the possibility of life: either Mars may one day become a human outpost or, even more sensational, the discovery of native Mars life forms. This second […]