Francis Collins,Darwinism's closer?

Francis Collins and the Overselling of Evolution
Casey Luskin

In two recent posts ( here and here ), I discussed the continuing misrepresentations of intelligent design by Francis Collins, whose confirmation as head of the National Institutes of Health in the Obama administration was announced   on August 7.

Today I would like to shift the focus to Dr. Collins' misrepresentation of evolutionary biology--or more precisely, to his misrepresentation of the scientific usefulness of evolution to biology. Collins has every right to endorse neo-Darwinian evolution if he wishes, but his view of evolution's value to scientific research is pretty much over-the-top. In a recent interview, he claimed:

Trying to do biology without evolution would be like trying to do physics without mathematics.
There is no doubt that modern neo-Darwinian theory has had an important influence on biology, but Collins' grandiose claim says more about the political nature of Darwin-advocacy than it does about evolution itself.
A number of leading scientists feel very differently from Collins. As National Academy of Sciences member Philip Skell has written, the hyping of neo-Darwinism's importance to science goes well beyond reality:

I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No. ... Darwinian evolution -- whatever its other virtues -- does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology. ... the claim that it is the cornerstone of modern experimental biology will be met with quiet skepticism from a growing number of scientists in fields where theories actually do serve as cornerstones for tangible breakthroughs.
(Philip Skell, "Why Do We Invoke Darwin? Evolutionary theory contributes little to experimental biology," The Scientist (August 29, 2005).)

In another essay, Dr. Skell added that he had

queried biologists working in areas where one might have thought the Darwinian paradigm could guide research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I learned that the theory had provided no discernible guidance in choosing the experimental designs but was brought in, after the breakthrough discoveries, as an interesting narrative gloss.
(Philip Skell, Politics and the Life Sciences, Vol. 27(2):47-49 (October 9, 2008).

Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne likewise admitted in Nature that "if truth be told, evolution hasn't yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say."
When testifying before the Texas State Board of Education this past March, Dr. Ray Bohlin said the following when asked about the utility of evolution for biological research. He answered:

I'd be willing to say that virtually 90, 95% of all molecular and cell biology, which is where my Ph.D. is in, does not require evolution whatsoever.
Similarly, Don Ewert, who holds a Ph.D. in microbiology and has been a biology researcher for over 30 years (including 20 years at the Wistar Institute), was asked to "address the notion that very little in biology is testable except for in the light of evolution." Ewert answered:
If you look at scientific textbooks and ask the question, if the theory of evolution were not in that textbook, what material would not make sense? And I would say that very little, if any, would not make sense. In fact, I think that anybody who learned the material apart from Darwin in those textbooks could go on to be successful scientists, veterinarians, and medical doctors. ... I would say that there is very little that you cannot fully understand apart from the theory of evolution.

Clearly evolution is important to some research, but Collins' claim that "[t]rying to do biology without evolution would be like trying to do physics without mathematics" says more about Collins' hardline devotion to neo-Darwinism than it says about modern evolutionary biology itself. Fortunately, there remain highly credible scientists who do not feel the need to uphold Darwinism as the alpha and omega of biology.

Putting a price on the best things in life?

In a Technocratic Age, Redefining Family Bonds
Wesley J. Smith 

This year, I took my mother into my home for the last five months of her life as she was dying. Was I providing her with "unpaid care"? NO! I was being her son.

Yet, in our technocratic era, it seems that family members caring and providing for each other are increasingly perceived as a monetized activity. Reuters reports:

Millions of U.S. children with special needs receive care from family members that would cost billions of dollars if it was instead provided by home health aides receiving minimum wage, a recent study suggests.

Researchers examined data from a nationally representative sample of about 42,000 parents and guardians of children with special needs surveyed from 2009 to 2010. Overall, they estimate that approximately 5.6 million children with special needs receive about 1.5 billion hours a year of unpaid care from family members.

Really? What about mothers providing "unpaid care" for their babies? Or spouses for each other? Should such care also be measured in terms of the cost of having services provided by professional caregivers?

I don't think so. Measuring family love in dollar terms could corrode the importance, place, and purpose of family in society.

Of course, I am not saying that we shouldn't create public policies that promote intra-family caregiving and which ease the difficult tasks family members carry out for their dependent loved ones. We definitely should.


But the societal expectation should also be that families are the first line of caregiving, with civil society and government providing assistance services. Arguing that families provide "unpaid care" objectifies and devalues the love and commitment that are the essence of family.

America's electoral college demystified(Hopefully)

How uncivil peace led to civil war.

On the birth of the English language.

On judgment day: The Watchtower Society's commentary.

JUDGMENT DAY:

A specific “day,” or period, when particular groups, nations, or mankind in general are called to account by God. It may be a time when those already judged to be deserving of death are executed, or the judgment may afford opportunity for some to be delivered, even to everlasting life. Jesus Christ and his apostles pointed to a future “Judgment Day” involving not only the living but also those who had died in the past.—Mt 10:15; 11:21-24; 12:41, 42; 2Ti 4:1, 2.

Past Times of Judgment. At various times in the past Jehovah called peoples and nations to account for their actions and executed his judgments by bringing destruction. Such executional judgments were not arbitrary demonstrations of brute force or overwhelming power. In some instances the Hebrew word translated “judgment” (mish·patʹ) is also rendered “justice” and “what is right.” (Ezr 7:10; Ge 18:25) The Bible emphasizes that Jehovah “is a lover of righteousness and justice,” so his executional judgments involve both of those qualities.—Ps 33:5.

Sometimes the executional judgments came as a result of the wicked conduct of people in their daily lives. Sodom and Gomorrah are an example of this. Jehovah inspected the cities and determined that the sin of the inhabitants was very heavy; he decided to bring the cities to ruin. (Ge 18:20, 21; 19:14) Later Jude wrote that those cities underwent “the judicial punishment [Gr., diʹken; “judgment,” Da; “justice,” Yg; “retributive justice,” ED] of everlasting fire.” (Jude 7) So those cities experienced a “day” of judgment.

Jehovah conducted a legal case against ancient Babylon, the longtime enemy of God and his people. Because of being unnecessarily cruel to the Jews, not intending to release them after the 70-year exile, and crediting Marduk with the victory over God’s people, Babylon was in line for an executional judgment. (Jer 51:36; Isa 14:3-6, 17; Da 5:1-4) That came to Babylon in 539 B.C.E. when it was overthrown by the Medes and Persians. Because the judgment to be executed was Jehovah’s, such a period could be referred to as “the day of Jehovah.”—Isa 13:1, 6, 9.

Similarly, Jeremiah prophesied that God would “put himself in judgment” with Edom, among others. (Jer 25:17-31) Hence the nation that had shown hatred for Jehovah and his people experienced destructive judgment in “the day of Jehovah.”—Ob 1, 15, 16.

When Judah and Jerusalem became unfaithful and merited God’s disapproval, he promised to “execute in the midst of [her] judicial decisions.” (Eze 5:8) In 607 B.C.E. “the day of Jehovah’s fury” came with an execution of his destructive judgment. (Eze 7:19) However, another “day,” or time, of judgment on Jerusalem was foretold. Joel prophesied an outpouring of spirit before “the great and fear-inspiring day of Jehovah.” (Joe 2:28-31) Under inspiration Peter, on the day of Pentecost 33 C.E., explained that they were then experiencing a fulfillment of that prophecy. (Ac 2:16-20) The destructive “day of Jehovah” came in 70 C.E. when the Roman armies executed divine judgment upon the Jews. As Jesus foretold, those were “days for meting out justice.”—Lu 21:22; see DESTRUCTION.

Future Times of Executional Judgment. Aside from Hebrew Scripture prophecies, the Bible definitely mentions a number of future judgment days that are executional. Revelation points to the time when “Babylon the Great” will be completely burned with fire. This judicial punishment is due to her fornication with the nations and her being drunk with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. (Re 17:1-6; 18:8, 20; 19:1, 2) Mentioning another executional judgment, Peter drew upon what occurred in Noah’s day and foretold a “day of judgment and of destruction of the ungodly men.” (2Pe 3:7) Revelation speaks of such a destruction as being executed by “The Word of God,” who will strike the nations with a long sword. (Re 19:11-16; compare Jude 14, 15.) Also, in the first century the Devil already had judgment passed on him, and the demons he leads knew that they would be put into the abyss, as will Satan. (1Ti 3:6; Lu 8:31; Re 20:1-3) Thus it follows that the judgment awaiting them is simply the execution of a judgment that has already been decided upon.—Jude 6; 2Pe 2:4; 1Co 6:3.

May or May Not Be Condemnatory. Most of the occurrences of “judgment” (Gr., kriʹsis and kriʹma) in the Christian Greek Scriptures clearly carry the force of condemnatory, or adverse, judgment. In John 5:24, 29 “judgment” is set in contrast with “life” and “everlasting life,” plainly implying a condemnatory judgment that means utter loss of life—death. (2Pe 2:9; 3:7; Joh 3:18, 19) However, not all adverse judgment leads inevitably to destruction. Illustrating this are Paul’s remarks at 1 Corinthians 11:27-32 about celebrating the Lord’s Evening Meal. If a person did not discern properly what he was doing, he could eat or drink “judgment against himself.” Then Paul adds: “When we are judged, we are disciplined by Jehovah, that we may not become condemned with the world.” Thus one might receive adverse judgment but because of repenting not be destroyed forever.

Furthermore, the possibility of a judgment that is not condemnatory is apparent from 2 Corinthians 5:10. About those manifest before the judgment seat it says: “Each one [will] get his award . . . according to the things he has practiced, whether it is good or vile.” The judging mentioned in Revelation 20:13 evidently results in a favorable outcome for many. Of the dead judged, those receiving an adverse judgment are hurled into “the lake of fire.” The rest, though, come through the judgment, being “found written in the book of life.”—Re 20:15.

Judgment Day of Personal Accountability. Pre-Christian Hebrews were acquainted with the idea that God would hold them personally accountable for their conduct. (Ec 11:9; 12:14) The Christian Greek Scriptures explain that there will be a specific future period, or “day,” when mankind, both the living and those who died in the past, will individually be judged.—2Ti 4:1, 2.

Identity of the judges. In the Hebrew Scriptures Jehovah is identified as “the Judge of all the earth.” (Ge 18:25) Similarly, in the Christian Greek Scriptures he is called “the Judge of all.” (Heb 12:23) He has, though, deputized his Son to do judging for him. (Joh 5:22) The Bible speaks of Jesus as “appointed,” “decreed,” and “destined” to do judging. (Ac 10:42; 17:31; 2Ti 4:1) That Jesus is thus authorized by God resolves any seeming contradiction between the text that says that individuals will “stand before the judgment seat of God” and the verse that says they will “be made manifest before the judgment seat of the Christ.”—Ro 14:10; 2Co 5:10.

Jesus also told his apostles that when he would sit down on his throne in the “re-creation,” they would “sit upon twelve thrones” to do judging. (Mt 19:28; Lu 22:28-30) Paul indicated that Christians who had been “called to be holy ones” will judge the world. (1Co 1:2; 6:2) Also, the apostle John saw in vision the time when some received “power of judging.” (Re 20:4) In view of the above texts, this evidently includes the apostles and the other holy ones. Such a conclusion is borne out by the remainder of the verse, which speaks of those who rule with Christ for the Millennium. These then will be royal judges with Jesus.

The fine quality of the judging that will take place on Judgment Day is assured, for Jehovah’s “judgments are true and righteous.” (Re 19:1, 2) The kind of judging that he authorizes is also righteous and true. (Joh 5:30; 8:16; Re 1:1; 2:23) There will be no perverting of justice or hiding of the facts.

Resurrection is involved. When using the expression “Judgment Day,” Jesus brought into the picture a resurrection of the dead. He mentioned that a city might reject the apostles and their message, and said: “It will be more endurable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on Judgment Day than for that city.” (Mt 10:15) Although he was evidently using a hyperbole (because Sodom and Gomorrah had undergone everlasting destruction), his statement did point to a future judgment for at least some from such a first-century Jewish city. (Compare Mt 11:21-24; Lu 10:13-15; Jude 7.) Even clearer is Jesus’ statement that “the queen of the south will be raised up in the judgment.” (Mt 12:41, 42; Lu 11:31, 32) The Biblical statements about Jesus’ judging “the living and the dead” can be viewed in the light of the fact that resurrection is involved in Judgment Day.—Ac 10:42; 2Ti 4:1.

A final indication that many being examined on Judgment Day will be resurrected ones is the information in Revelation 20:12, 13. Individuals are seen “standing before the throne.” The dead are mentioned and so is the fact that death and Hades gave up those dead in them. Such ones are judged.

Time for Judgment Day. In John 12:48 Christ linked the judging of persons with “the last day.” Revelation 11:17, 18 locates a judging of the dead as occurring after God takes his great power and begins ruling in a special way as king. Additional light on the matter comes from the sequence of events recorded in Revelation chapters 19 and 20. There one reads of a war in which the “King of kings” kills “the kings of the earth and their armies.” (Earlier in Revelation [16:14] this is called “the war of the great day of God the Almighty.”) Next Satan is bound for a thousand years. During that thousand years royal judges serve with Christ. In the same context, resurrection and the judging of the dead are mentioned. This, then, is an indication of the time when Judgment Day comes. And it is not impossible from a Scriptural standpoint for a thousand-year period to be viewed as a “day,” for such an equation is stated in the Bible.—2Pe 3:8; Ps 90:4.

Basis for judgment. In describing what will take place on earth during the time of judgment, Revelation 20:12 says that the resurrected dead will then be “judged out of those things written in the scrolls according to their deeds.” Those resurrected will not be judged on the basis of the works done in their former life, because the rule at Romans 6:7 says: “He who has died has been acquitted from his sin.”


However, Jesus said that unwillingness to take note of his powerful works and repent or unresponsiveness to God’s message would make it hard for some to endure Judgment Day.—Mt 10:14, 15; 11:21-24.

What's so great about the great wall of China?

On the birth of the world's largest country.

History judges Richard Nixon.

Nothing to fear but fear itself?:Pros and cons.

Fear itself VIII

Fear itself VII

Speaking of fake news:

Evolutionists Defend Scaremongering on Fake News "Petition"
David Klinghoffer

In recent days, a series of posts by Darwin's atheists (Jerry Coyne, P.Z. Myers, Dan Arel) brandished a "petition" to ban teaching evolution in the U.S. The petition, which read like a parody to me, was addressed to VP-elect Pence. They presented this as evidence of what we can anticipate from the "Christian Right" under a Trump-Pence Administration.

"And so it begins," intoned Emeritus Professor Coyne of the University of Chicago ominously. "This is the kind of activism we can expect for the next four years," wrote Mr. Arel over at Patheos. "Mike Pence will eat it up," Dr. Myers told his readers, adding that he received a link to the petition accompanied by an email concluding "Merry Christmas to y'all," from "Joe Hannon, Republicans Abroad (Make America Great Again)."

Everything about this was dubious, including the fact that "Hannon" sent his petition, ostensibly in search of anti-evolution signatures, to a group of atheists and Darwinists. If a legion of "activists" were likely to take up and run with such a (stupid) idea, why not direct your petition to them? The question doesn't seem to have occurred to Coyne or the others. The fact that the signatures it in fact garnered were almost all joke names contributed to the impression that there was no extrapolation here to what we can expect under Trump.

I called out the Darwin activists who were promoting this "news," including Michael Zimmerman of the Clergy Letter Project. Well, they're back and defending themselves and each other.

P.Z. Myers now agrees with me that "Joe Hannon" is a fake name -- used, he informs us, by an often-banned Internet troll from Manchester, England, who haunts blog comments sections under a variety of pseudonyms. Myers cites University of Toronto's Larry Moran, saying that "Hannon" is "a holocaust denier. He used to run a business 'selling components -- just nuts and bolts -- to the Iranian nuclear and missile industries' but it was shut down because of sanctions. Now he rants against British conspiracies." Oh. So he's not with "Republicans Abroad," after all? Why didn't Professor Myers say so to begin with? Perhaps because that would have deflated the post he wanted to write.

P.Z. chides me. "Uh, it's a real petition. You can sign it and everything." Another Darwinist, Matt Young at Panda's Thumb, concurs.

The petition is not phony, at least not in the sense that Mr. Klinghoffer means it. I have received 3 e-mail messages directly from Joseph Hannon. The first of these was sent to approximately 30 other people, and all I can tell you is that I must travel in very good company.
Professor Coyne chimes in on this. He thinks I'm "hoist with [my] own petard": "Matt Young and his commenters adduce evidence that Joe Hannon is not a hoaxer, but what one commenter called a 'delusional fanatic.'" Ah, so Coyne and his friends were promoting, as significant and worrisome, a product not of deception but of mere delusion. Got it.

Michael Zimmerman is also upset with me, writing once again at the Huffington Post:

Interestingly, in a Catch 22 sort of way, one piece of "evidence" presented for this false flag conspiracy is the fact that I didn't ignore the petition entirely. And, by responding, I'm accused of initiating my own publicity stunt by "propagandizing for [my] organization."
I don't believe in conspiracies, and there's no need for one to explain what happened here.

Those who want to try to plumb the psychology of the masquerading "Joe Hannon" are welcome to do so on their own time. If Moran and Myers are right about this person's genuine identity, then they've confirmed that this was fake news, pushed by Darwinists for their own reasons. Whether a random Brit would sincerely shut down evolution instruction in the U.S. if he could is of no importance. It is not in the least noteworthy. To pretend otherwise was silly at best, dishonest at worst.

The person behind "Hannon," whatever his legal name might be, is real. The petition was not computer-generated. The rest of this -- the scaremongering about Republicans and American Christians, the bootstrapping from a handful of joke names on an online petition to an advertisement for your pro-evolution group on the Huffington Post -- is phony.


Update: As I was about to hit the Publish button on this post, I received an email from "Joseph Hannon." I don't correspond with pseudonyms, but for what it may be worth, this "Hannon," if it's the real one, now says the petition was "only semi-serious," a "tongue-in-cheek wind-up," "parodic." OK, enough of this.

An African legend.

History judges Andrew Jackson.

An F in foreign policy for the Obama whitehouse?:Pros and cons.

Gerrymandering will mean the end of the republic?:Pros and cons.

One upping God?

Think You Can Design a Better Fruit Fly?

Evolution News & Views March 8, 2016 3:40 AM

What happens when you tinker with the design specs of a live flyer? Four European scientists with specialties in biology and aerodynamics got together and ran some clever experiments with fruit flies to find out. The biologists found ways to change the shape of the flies' wings, and the flight engineers measured what happened in performance tests. Their findings, published in Nature Communications, yield some lessons about the capabilities of mutation and natural selection to make modifications on the fly, so to speak.

Aircraft designers have the luxury of changing just one thing at a time and measuring the impact on flight performance. Living things, however, are bundles of requirements that must be optimized together as they develop from the embryo. The authors recognize this difference:

Wing shape is governed by the expression of a number of genes, the modulation of which leads to phenotypic variation. The results of changing the balance of expression bears little relation to the independent parameters engineers vary when designing aircraft wings, yet these are the gene expression-driven shape warps upon which natural selection acts. [Emphasis added.]

How far could natural selection vary a gene for wing shape without introducing unacceptable costs on other parts of the system? To find out, the scientists used RNA interference (RNAi) to alter expression patterns in a gene called narrow for only the wing tissues, without affecting other body parts. They bred four lineages with altered wing shapes that were progressively narrower than the wild type. Then they put them through a series of flight tests, including escape from a predator, a dragonfly.

All of the morphs could fly -- some with even better performance on tight turns. That "improvement" (from a human perspective) came at a cost (from the fly perspective).

Our aerodynamic model shows that all of the wing morphs we have tested show a decrease in aerodynamic efficiency in comparison with the control. Thus, measurable differences in flight performance are likely to be the result of a balance between the aerodynamic and mechanical modifications due to the shape change and its energetic cost. In the two milder morphs, we suggest that the energetic cost is not high enough to negate the performance benefits whereas, in the most extreme morph, an intersection is crossed beyond which the necessary power is more challenging to achieve. Akey factor contributing to this shift from improved to inferior performance is likely to be the disruption we have introduced into the system by altering the wing planform without changing the complex musculoskeletal apparatus that drives it. In an engineering sense, the induced changes in wing shape force the flight motor to operate off-design.

Using intelligent design, aircraft engineers can correct for the cost of one alteration with a subsequent alteration. Lengthening a wing, for instance, might increase lift, but will require more engine power to compensate for the extra weight. Ann Gauger talked about this in a recent ID the Future podcast in response to charges that some designs in the human body are sub-optimal.

The next thing I would say is that good design doesn't necessarily mean optimal design for all things because design often means multiple constraints... you can't be perfectly designed for one feature because it often goes against what you need for a second feature. The example I give is from airplane technology. Airplanes have to have a lot of design features that match a lot of different constraints. They have to be light so they can fly but they have to be strong so that they can withstand the kinds of stresses they undergo. They have to be able to keep people warm and keep it from being too loud, but that all adds weight. They have to keep the atmosphere breathable, but that also adds weight. All of those things have conflicting needs....

In the case of the fruit fly, the interconnectedness of constraints is even more evident. The entire fly must develop from a zygote containing all the instructions for building the final product. That final product must not only be capable of powered flight, it has to get to the point of reproduction, or else any fitness gains will be lost. The authors realize this. As human engineers, we cannot presume to know what is most important to the fruit fly:

Insect flight performance is a direct consequence of the interaction of the wings with the air and is determined by acombination of kinematics and morphology. Routine behaviour can be dominant over escape responses as the predictor of survival in dragonfly-fruit fly interactions, with sharp turns highlighted as vital for evading capture. Selective pressures on fruit fly morphology may have been expected, therefore, to promote adaptations that enable a high degree of manoeuvrability. Our findings show that fruit flies do not develop wings that are best suited for agile flight even when driven by their existing flight motor. Moreover, flight performance envelopes could be widened by affecting the function of a single gene. That flies are suboptimal in this regard is not particularly surprising but symptomatic of at least one antagonistic developmental, physical or behavioural selection pressure: for example, sexual selection mediated by the effect of wing planform on auditory or visual cues.

The more agile flyer, in other words, might not be able to get a date with a female who thinks he buzzes too loud or looks weird. He would have to find a female who has mutated into a kind that likes those things about him. More seriously, the agile flyer might need more powerful flight muscles to handle the stresses of a tighter turning radius. If there is "at least one antagonistic developmental, physical or behavioural selection pressure" constraining maneuverability, there are more likely several -- perhaps many. Is it reasonable to expect blind mutations to occur simultaneously such that all the constraints are satisfied in a coordinated fashion in one individual?

Animal morphologies reflect the cumulative effect of non-adaptive variation and time-integrated selective pressuresincluding -- but not limited to -- those optimizing form for function. Insect wings are under selective pressures driving towards local multi-objective optima, embodying a design compromise between features that are aerodynamically relevant (contributing to flight performance) and features that may contribute to fitness but are independent of aerobatic capability.

It's not surprising that genetic manipulation can improve one trait at the expense of others:

We did not encounter a physical limit along the principal component axis that we were able to influence; all our genotypes were able to fly, albeit with reduced performance maxima at the extremes of our morphological manipulations.

This is exactly what breeders do with artificial selection. Our prize cattle are optimized for humans' desires, but would likely not do well in the wild. By practicing "influence" and "manipulation" of existing champion flyers, the scientists did not provide insight into the "evolution of performance specialities in animals" as they had hoped. Rather, they showed the power of the engineering mind to optimize multiple competing constraints in a coordinated fashion.

In her podcast, Dr. Gauger recounted the epic flight of the Rutan Voyager, the first airplane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling. To achieve that feat, designer Burt Rutan had to optimize lift and discard every unnecessary weight. It's interesting that Rutgers scientists just identified a world-traveling insect of that caliber: a small dragonfly they determined is the "world's longest-distance flyer." Gene comparisons show the same species is found as far Texas, Korea, South America, and Canada. Pantala dragonflies can fly across oceans from continent to continent, some of them flying nonstop over 4,400 miles, besting the Monarch butterflies shown in Metamorphosis.

Pantala leaves many of its fellow dragonflies even farther behind. The mysteries of evolution are such that whilePantala and its cousin the Green Darner (Anax junius) havedeveloped into world travelers, Ware says that by contrast, other members of the family "don't ever leave the pond on which they're born -- traveling barely 36 feet away their entire lives."

Could this be an example of "non-adaptive influences" that "may exhibit some features that are unrelated to fitness" the researchers spoke of? It doesn't appear necessary for any dragonfly to acquire international flight ranking when their pond-dwelling cousins are doing just fine. If world-traveling dragonflies are a mystery to evolution, then evolution is not doing a good explanatory job.

By contrast, we know the power of minds to create flying machines that range from puddle jumpers to global circumnavigators. And that's what we find in biological flyers (birds and insects), each species exhibiting not only perfect balance between multi-objective optima but the ability to faithfully transmit its design instructions across generations. That's positive evidence for designing intelligence.

A remedy for the doubt;Just add oxygen?

The Great Cambrian Whitewash
Evolution News & Views February 23, 2016 3:26 AM

Stephen Meyer's book Darwin's Doubt has been out for almost three years. Paleontologist Mark McMenamin called it a "game changer for the study of evolution..." It has over 700 reviews on Amazon (78 percent five-star, 6 percent four-star). When it came out in 2013, it ranked #7 for hardback nonfiction on the New York Times bestseller list. And last year, a follow-up book, Debating Darwin's Doubt, addressed all the known objections to the original work.

To read most of the scientific journals, though, you would think they know nothing about this. Nature, PNAS, Current Biology, you name it: they avert their eyes from Meyer's 500-page challenge whenever they discuss the Cambrian explosion. (The journal Science is the noble exception.) It is simply not possible that the authors of these papers, and the editors of these journals, are unaware of the controversy. Meyer has raised a significant challenge to the usual Darwinian explanation for the sudden appearance of complex animal life in the fossil record. It's time for the journals to face it and engage the scientific debate.

The leading science journal Nature, sad to say, whitewashed the controversy once again in a recent piece, "What sparked the Cambrian explosion?" Author Douglas Fox gives the usual positivist spin:

An evolutionary burst 540 million years ago filled the seas with an astonishing diversity of animals. The trigger behind that revolution is finally coming into focus. [Emphasis added.]

Such writing has all the comfort of Pravda telling the captives behind the Iron Curtain, deprived of alternative sources of information, that the famine will soon be over. Science should abjure a closed society. Besides, journals cannot afford the luxury of one-sided propaganda in this internet age. You can't wall off information for long. Search on "Cambrian explosion" and critiques pop up for the entire world to see. Not the least of those is Darwin's Doubt. Journals look foolish when they adopt the three-monkey posture, "Hear no controversy; see no controversy; speak no controversy." The smart strategy is to deal with it openly, so that consumers in the marketplace of ideas can decide who has the better product.

What is implied by Nature's line that the trigger for the Cambrian explosion is "finally coming into focus"? It can only mean one thing. It's been out of focus till now. When you consider that the problem of the Cambrian explosion troubled Charles Darwin, it's a sad commentary on the ability of scientists to admit being unable to focus on a solution for 157 years. That's enough time for 31 Five-Year Plans proverbially launched by the dear leader of evolution to find the fossils that would support his theory.

But Nature isn't really looking for support. As doctrinaire believers in Darwin's "mechanism" of natural selection, they don't need support. It's self-evident to them that an "evolutionary burst... filled the seas with an astonishing diversity of animals." Douglas Fox just wants to help by finding the "trigger."

And what is that trigger that is finally coming into focus? Oxygen.

Sperling has looked for insights into Ediacaran oceans by studying oxygen-depleted regions in modern seas around the globe. He suggests that biologists have conventionally taken the wrong approach to thinking about how oxygen shaped animal evolution. By pooling and analysing previously published data with some of his own, he found that tiny worms survive in areas of the sea floor where oxygen levels are incredibly low -- less than 0.5% of average global sea-surface concentrations. Food webs in these oxygen-poor environments are simple, and the animals feed directly on microbes. In places where sea-floor oxygen levels are a bit higher -- about 0.5-3% of concentrations at the sea surface -- animals are more abundant but their food webs remain limited: the animals still feed on microbes rather than on each other. But around somewhere between 3% and 10% oxygen levels, predators emerge and start to consume other animals.

The implications of this finding for evolution are profound, Sperling says.The modest oxygen rise that he thinks may have occurred just before the Cambrian would have been enough to trigger a big change. "If oxygen levels were 3% and they rose past that 10% threshold, that would have had a huge influence on early animal evolution," he says. "There's just so much in animal ecology, lifestyle and body size that seems to change so dramatically through those levels."

This excerpt illustrates why airing of the controversy is so drastically needed. Fox's prose hardly rises to the level of fairy tale. Would anyone outside the iron curtain of Darwinian explanations fall for a "just add oxygen" theory for the emergence of a trilobite or Anomalocaris?

Meyer would grant Fox and Nature all the oxygen they could ever want. He would let them inject copious quantities of oxygen bubbles into the Cambrian oceans right at the start of the explosion. No trilobites would emerge, he would argue, because the Cambrian explosion is not about gases, triggers, or influences. It's about information: the specifications to build animal body plans. That is the central challenge that the journals ignore.

Fox whitewashes the problem by repeating the party line no matter what. He offers pipe dreams that solutions will come someday, as long as everyone holds to the dogma.

Understanding how oxygen influenced the appearance of complex animals will require scientists to tease more-subtle clues out of the rocks. "We've been challenging people working on fossils to tie their fossils more closely to our oxygen proxies," says Lyons. It will mean deciphering what oxygen levels were in different ancient environments, and connecting those values with the kinds of traits exhibited by the animal fossils found in the same locations.

Communist ideologues were masters at interpreting every economic condition, including the failures in Russia and the riches in the West, in terms of class struggle and economic determinism. Yet now we look back at the fruits of that closed system.

Science should abhor iron curtains. Nature's willful neglect of the controversy surrounding the Cambrian explosion subverts the ideals of science. Besides that, it just looks bad. What are they hiding behind that wall? What do they have to lose by engaging scientific challenges? Only the story that oxygen causes trilobites. That's a tale worth losing. The time for détente, for glasnost, has arrived. Good things follow.

Cellular information processing v. Darwin.

Is Messenger RNA Regulation Controlled by an Irreducibly Complex Pathway?.
Jonathan M.

What we know about the complexity of the cellular information storage, processing and retrieval mechanisms continues to increase exponentially, and at an unprecedented rate. Almost on a daily basis, new papers are published revealing the ingenuity of the elaborate mechanisms by which the cell processes information -- processes and mechanisms that bespeak design and continue to elude explanation by Darwinian means. For how exactly could such a system - apparently, an irreducibly complex one - be accounted for in terms of traditional Darwinian selective pressure?

A new paper has just been published in Molecular Cell, in which the researchers, Karginov et al. reported their discovery that messenger RNA (mRNA) can be targeted for destruction by several different molecules.

According to the paper's summary,
The life span of a mammalian mRNA is determined, in part, by the binding of regulatory proteins and small RNA-guided complexes. The conserved endonuclease activity of Argonaute2 requires extensive complementarity between a small RNA and its target and is not used by animal microRNAs, which pair with their targets imperfectly. Here we investigate the endonucleolytic function of Ago2 and other nucleases by transcriptome-wide profiling of mRNA cleavage products retaining 5′ phosphate groups in mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs). We detect a prominent signature of Ago2-dependent cleavage events and validate several such targets. Unexpectedly, a broader class of Ago2-independent cleavage sites is also observed, indicating participation of additional nucleases in site-specific mRNA cleavage. Within this class, we identify a cohort of Drosha-dependent mRNA cleavage events that functionally regulate mRNA levels in mESCs, including one in the Dgcr8 mRNA. Together, these results highlight the underappreciated role of endonucleolytic cleavage in controlling mRNA fates in mammals.
Translated into English, the paper makes the following points:

RNA interference (RNAi) refers to a cellular pathway that helps to regulate the activity of genes within the cell. Fundamental to the process of RNA interference are small interfering RNAs (siRNA) and microRNAs (MiRNA).
Small RNAs can prevent the translation of a target messenger RNA into protein, thereby reducing the activity of the RNAs to which it binds.
MicroRNAs also act as regulators, binding to their complementary sequences on a target messenger RNA to result in gene silencing. MiRNAs also serve as guides to a family of proteins called Artonautes. When a miRNA-Artonaute complex binds to its complementary mRNA target, it triggers its destruction.
The researchers surveyed a population of cleaved mRNAs in mammalian embryonic stem cells, discovering that mRNAs had been sliced or cleaved by the enzyme Ago2 and other enzymes.
It was previously thought that the destruction was due to the destabilization of mRNA by initiation of cellular pathways. In contrast, Karginov et al. have discovered a host of ways that mRNA may be destroyed by enzymatic cleavage.
So, how exactly can these things be explained by traditional Darwinian selective pressure?

Consider, for example, the enzyme Dicer, which is responsible for activating the RNAi pathway. The pathway is initiated when Dicer cleaves long double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) molecules into shorter fragments, consisting of roughly 20 nucleotides each. Each fragment possesses two strands, one of which (called the "guide strand") is subsequently incorporated into the "RISC complex" (RNA-induced silencing complex). Following base pairing between the guide strand and its complementary sequence, a cleavage is brought about by the enzyme Argonaute.

One has to wonder whether there is any significant biological system that, in fact, can be accounted for in a Darwinian step-wise fashion. The adequacy of Darwinian selection to account for the features of biodiversity is never demonstrated. Rather, it is merely assumed that Darwinism can account for these systems, in the almost complete absence of corroborative data.


It might be asked of the Darwinian advocates what kind of system, in principle, could not be explained in Darwinian fashion. In the absence of such testable statements, Darwinism cannot be regarded as good falsifiable science.

A design filter for E.T?

To Rule Out False Positives in the Search for ET, Astrophysicist Advocates a Design Filter.
Evolution News & Views

Paul Sutter, an astrophysicist at Ohio State, writes occasional articles for lay people. Recently he put out a challenge to his readers. He wants to keep them from falling for media hysteria about space aliens. His reasoning poses an indirect challenge to any kind of explanation positing a hidden designer.

In "Aliens are never the answer" on Live Science, he begins by talking about recent reports of unusually strong signals from a sun-like star. Here's another one: physicist Carole Mundell asks, "Are aliens trying to tell us something? Brightest burst of radio waves detected" (The Conversation). The particular incident doesn't matter, because "mysterious radio signals from outer space are almost always in the news," Sutter says. What he doesn't like is the rush to attribute mysterious signals to the work of aliens. He recounts other incidents over the decades. The point he wants to make is that science demands better explanations. An appeal to aliens is useless, because it can explain anything.

Here's the thing: The hypothesis that aliens are causing a mysterious radio signal is almost always useless, because intelligent creatures can create almost any signal they want. Hear a bleep-bleep-bloop? Maybe aliens did it. Whoops! I meant bloop-bloop-bleep. Well, aliens could have done that, too. There's no predictive power in the "aliens did it" hypothesis. We can't ever disprove it. [Emphasis added.]
Of course, proof that "aliens did it" is the holy grail for SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Sutter mentions SETI a couple of times, but he doesn't make clear whether he feels their quest is justified. He's mainly concerned about the rush to judgment.

When a natural astrophysical explanation is weak or not very convincing, there's often a temptation to wonder if aliens are behind it. After all, we can't rule out aliens! Exactly. We can't ever rule out aliens, because intelligent actors are capable of pretty much anything. We can't rule them out, so it's a scientifically useless position.
He's right, to a certain extent. Intelligent actors are sly. They can throw paint on a canvas, drive over it, and call it art. They can hide messages in noise. They can cough a certain way to signal a friend that the prison guards are coming. We can't rule out intelligent actors. So is the appeal to intelligent design a scientifically useless position?

It's a very, very, very big leap to go from "We don't know what's causing this signal," to "Maybe aliens are causing this signal."
Sutter is onto something. He's basically arguing that we need a design filter. And ID theory provides one. ID advocates agree that you don't infer intelligence until there is sufficient reason to reject chance and natural law. When other astronomers jump to conclusions about space aliens, they haven't done their homework. Proper use of the design filter would prevent invalid design inferences. The best-trained SETI folks will certainly want to rule out natural causes before running to the press.

Sutter cannot, however, rule out all intelligent actors, otherwise he would have to beat his head against a brick wall. Brick walls don't arise by natural causes, once you rule out columnar basalt and other cases of natural self-organization. We know of a cause that can build brick walls firm and straight, with right-angle corners, as part of buildings reaching tens of meters high. The walls don't even have to be straight. Consider Stonehenge. If Sutter were to rule out all intelligent causes as useless, he would have to beat his head against that wall for a lifetime trying to explain it by natural causes. That would be the "scientifically useless position."

Intelligent actors are indeed "capable of pretty much anything." That's why we can be fooled by false negatives, claiming something isn't designed when it really is (as in the modern art case and the hidden message case). But ID theory can protect us against false positives (calling something designed when there is a natural explanation) by using the design filter properly. Once you set up the "rejection region" appropriately (see Dembski, No Free Lunch, Chapter 1), the Design-Specification Criterion becomes so robust, there comes a point when refusing to acknowledge design is absurd.


If Paul Sutter detected a series of bloops and bleeps from space tapping out the first 100 prime numbers in a row, he would likely concede the point.

Sea turtles V. Darwin.

Sea Turtles from Pre-Turtles? No Evidence of It
Evolution News & Views

We recently shared news about  humpback whales. Here are some new findings about another group of stars of Illustra's film  Living Waters: sea turtles. There are seven species of sea turtles in the world today, all beautifully designed and, sadly, all endangered. Consider first, appropriately, the enigma of origins.

Fossils

Do we see progression in the fossil record of sea turtles? No; according to the University of Alabama at Birmingham , the oldest ancestor of modern sea turtles was -- a sea turtle. Apparently they profited from global warming.

"Climatic warming during the mid-Cretaceous resulted in elevated sea levels and temperatures that, in turn, provided an abundance of new niches for marine turtles to invade," said Drew Gentry, a UAB biology doctoral student and the lead researcher on the project. "Represented today by only seven living species, sea turtles were once one of the most diverse lineages of marine reptiles. Before the cataclysm that claimed the dinosaurs, there may have been dozens of specialized species of sea turtle living in different oceanic habitats around the world."
This won't likely switch turtle conservationists in favor of anthropogenic climate change. It does seem a little bit dubious, though, to make evolutionary diversity a function of temperature.

"There is strong evidence which indicates freshwater turtles may have evolved to occupy marine environments at several points in the past," Gentry said. "But most of those lineages went extinct, making the exact origins of living or 'true' sea turtles somewhat of a mystery."
Evolutionists can always concoct a just-so story to explain any observation. Not wanting to leave a mystery unsolved, UAB's Gentry offers one:

"Data from C. acris tell us not only that marine turtles are capable of occupying specialized oceanic niches, but also that many of the sea turtles we know today may have gotten their evolutionary start as something similar to an oversized snapping turtle in what eventually became the southeastern United States."
 Phys.org tells about volunteers who found turtles on Cape Cod suffering from hypothermia and released them in warmer waters. That's 54 "cold-stunned turtles" rescued this year, and 600 last year. If sea turtles are "capable of occupying specialized oceanic niches," should humans be interfering with their evolution?

Turtles and tortoises occupy the wettest and driest habitats on earth, yet we humans feel a need to help them out.  Phys.org also tells about citizen scientists helping save Australian land turtles from extinction, despite the fact that "A single female freshwater turtle may live more than 100 years and produce more than 2000 eggs in her lifetime." Apparently they aren't evolving fast enough to outfox the red fox, introduced in the 1800s by humans. But evolution is clever. It evolved humans to do the job:

"Our computer models show that one harvest population may provide enough hatchling turtles to restore 25 other similar sized populations to pre-European turtle densities."
"Creating low cost 'turtle nurseries' throughout the country will provide a way to out-fox the fox without a single poison bait or bullet."

Presumably evolution is capable of creating beings that can use intelligent design to solve problems of their own making.

The Tragedy of the Commons

Human beings seem to be the only creatures on earth that willfully fall into the tragedy of the commons -- or that can use their minds to recognize the tragedy and try to avert it. Sea turtles would probably be thriving without bad human actors, who capture them for their eggs and meat and destroy their habitats. Consider the case in Indonesia. Still another article at  Phys.org  shows volunteers releasing sea turtle hatchlings onto a beach:

A group of turtles scurried down a beach and glided into the sea, enjoying their newfound freedom after being cared for at an Indonesian conservation centre.
The sea turtles were released by local tourists in Pariaman city, on western Sumatra island, in front of the Turtle Conservation Technical Operating Unit. [Emphasis added.]

It's a curious case of humans protecting non-humans from other humans.

Six of the world's seven turtle species can be found in Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands that is home to a dizzying array of exotic wildlife.
Almost all turtle species are endangered. Their eggs are considered a delicacy and they are also slaughtered for their meat, skin and shells.

We see here another indication of human uniqueness: moral responsibility for the living world. Without it, nobody could claim the slaughter of turtles is wrong. It would just be survival of the fittest, and the turtles would lose the race.

Hawksbills

On the other side of the globe, Belize has good news: the hawksbill sea turtle, classed as "critically endangered," is doing "swimmingly well" thanks to conservation efforts, reports Fox News. Once again, it was humans killing them off for their shells, meat, and eggs, but protection efforts at a reef offshore have borne fruit: "The Wildlife Conservation Society says that the sea turtle's rebound is an indication of the success of protection efforts in this large reef system." After snorkeling, catching, tagging, and releasing turtles for years, marine biologists estimate a thousand juveniles in the area, a model for other conservation programs.  Phys.org has a picture of one marine scientist handling a hawksbill, and another photo of a turtle being hoisted onboard a ship for tagging. Stephen Dunbar, who appears in Living Waters, has been involved for years in conservation efforts of hawksbill sea turtles in nearby Honduras.

Leatherbacks

Leatherback sea turtles are the largest reptiles alive today. Take it from the Cornell Chronicle:

Leatherbacks, the world's largest reptiles, do not have hard shells like other turtles. Instead, they have a softer, leather-like shell. The turtles can weigh up to 1,500 pounds and are eating machines, as one can nosh daily on hundreds of pounds of its favorite meal -- jellyfish. Leatherback sea turtles and jellyfish are found throughout the world's oceans, but the authors of this study think that these leatherbacks are likely enjoying a bountiful jellyfish supply in the Mozambique Channel.
They hint at a further evolutionary conundrum: why would long-distance migration evolve?

Endangered leatherback sea turtles are known for their open-ocean migratory nature and nomadic foraging habits -- traveling thousands of miles. But a Cornell naturalist and his colleagues have discovered an area along the Mozambique coast that the turtles have made their permanent home, according to a study published in Nature's  Scientific Reports.

All that magnetic-field navigation equipment for nothing? One would think neo-Darwinism, stingy as it is, would stop here where life is good. Instead, some of the turtles ventured out 10,000 km toward the south Atlantic Ocean or into the Indian Ocean. The research news says nothing about evolution.

Unhyping big science.

Let's Tell the Truth about Science Funding
Evolution News & Views

A false and sentimental glow surrounds science in the minds of many outside the science world. A reverent belief in the purity of scientists, so tender and mild (except for those intelligent-design scoundrels), is a badge of membership for the enlightened. The cult of science all but denies that professionals in the field are human beings, subject to the familiar corruptions that go with money, power, and prestige.

But then occasionally a scientist or other insider will come along and dash a pitcher of cold water on all that. letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal by Professor Daniel Metz is thus refreshing. He replies to an  op-ed by MIT president L. Rafael Reif, who laments what Reif sees as the underfunding of basic science.

Interesting guy -- Metz retired as a professor of General Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and now races cars among other pursuits. Writes Dr. Metz:

Mr. Reif ignores some facts associated with government funding of research, much of which is funded at universities. Nearly all government-sponsored projects are funded in response to a request for proposals (RFPs). The directions of funded research are thus established not by scientists, but by bureaucrats in the funding agencies. The bureaucrats are graduates of an old-boy network that rewards alumni, contacts, trendism and longevity, with proposal quality coming dead last. It is positively guaranteed that any big, new, government research initiative will send money to Palo Alto, Berkeley, Austin, Ann Arbor, Madison, Champaign and Cambridge.

Government funding of university research has bastardized the definition of a "professor." New assistant professors are quick to realize that actually teaching classes has nothing whatsoever to do with their desire for long-term success and tenure, and in fact teaching is a disincentive. Only bringing in outside research money counts. Universities have become addicted to the mother's milk of government funding. Any major research university could reduce its budget by 50% or more simply by requiring the faculty to actually teach a few classes now and then.

Em. Prof. L. Daniel Metz
Champaign, Ill.

Indeed, the incestuous world of science grants is one of the best-kept secrets of the Federal Government. Billions of dollars are involved and Congressional oversight is unimpressive. Moreover, the system is so big that it effectively shapes research priorities of universities, rather than responding to them. The Federal Government controls and monopolizes science research, and the whole business is in the service of something quite other than the legendary disinterested search for truth.

Addicted and engorged, Big Science isn't what most of the public pictures it to be. Professors don't so much profess -- they suck money as through a straw, thanks to a system that epitomizes the kinds of corruption we associate with government. Now give them more funding? Come to think of it, Rafael Reif is not exactly disinterested on the subject.


Among all the reasons to doubt the authority of a scientific consensus on all matters, this would be one.