Tuesday 14 February 2017
Taking an axe to Darwinism's tree of life
When genome mapper Craig Venter made clear he doubted universal common descent…
Posted by News under Evolution, Genomics, Origin Of Life, Tree of life
We’d heard about Craig Venter’s dissent before but you should read the whole story: From Tom Bethell in Darwin’s House of Cards: A Journalist’s Odyssey Through the Darwin Debates,
This was publicized in a science forum held at Arizona State University in February 2011, a little over a year after Dawkins’s Greatest Show
was published. The physicist Paul Davies and others, including two Nobel Prize winners, participated in the event, which was videotaped. Richard Dawkins himself was on the panel. The forum addressed the question, “What is life?”Most of the panelists accepted that all organisms on Earth represent a single kind of life because they believed that the genetic code is universal. The NASA scientist and panelist Chris McKay made the case that this single form of life—a “sample of one”—should encourage us to further explore Mars and other planets for signs of life.
Craig Venter then disputed the premise. He challenged the claim “that there’s only one life form on this planet.” We have “a lot of different types of metabolism, different organisms,” he said. He turned to Paul Davies and added: “I wouldn’t call you the same life form as the one we have that lives in pH 12 base. That would dissolve your skin if we dropped you in it.” (pp. 53–54)
Venter went on to doubt that there is a single “tree of life” and evolutionary bioinformatics specialist W. Ford Doolittle noted that “the history of life cannot properly be represented as a tree.”
Guy to watch. In a world where so many people are defending themselves from shadows and rumours, he wants to look at reality. He should be banished from pop science coverage as a bad influence.
What if it turns out that there are multiple streams of life arising from a single era? How would that change the picture of the origin of life?
Posted by News under Evolution, Genomics, Origin Of Life, Tree of life
We’d heard about Craig Venter’s dissent before but you should read the whole story: From Tom Bethell in Darwin’s House of Cards: A Journalist’s Odyssey Through the Darwin Debates,
This was publicized in a science forum held at Arizona State University in February 2011, a little over a year after Dawkins’s Greatest Show
was published. The physicist Paul Davies and others, including two Nobel Prize winners, participated in the event, which was videotaped. Richard Dawkins himself was on the panel. The forum addressed the question, “What is life?”Most of the panelists accepted that all organisms on Earth represent a single kind of life because they believed that the genetic code is universal. The NASA scientist and panelist Chris McKay made the case that this single form of life—a “sample of one”—should encourage us to further explore Mars and other planets for signs of life.
Craig Venter then disputed the premise. He challenged the claim “that there’s only one life form on this planet.” We have “a lot of different types of metabolism, different organisms,” he said. He turned to Paul Davies and added: “I wouldn’t call you the same life form as the one we have that lives in pH 12 base. That would dissolve your skin if we dropped you in it.” (pp. 53–54)
Venter went on to doubt that there is a single “tree of life” and evolutionary bioinformatics specialist W. Ford Doolittle noted that “the history of life cannot properly be represented as a tree.”
Guy to watch. In a world where so many people are defending themselves from shadows and rumours, he wants to look at reality. He should be banished from pop science coverage as a bad influence.
What if it turns out that there are multiple streams of life arising from a single era? How would that change the picture of the origin of life?
Undeniably designed.
A Son Realizes the Irrepressible Truth
Howard Glicksman
Recently while seeing a new hospice patient with severe heart failure, I encountered the man's son, who happens to work in manufacturing. The younger man sought to better understand his father's medical condition and with it the relevant treatment options. So, beginning with the anatomy of the heart and its role within the cardiovascular system, we quickly moved on to what happens when the heart fails and how this had manifested in his father.
The son proved to be an astute interlocutor, as each answer engendered another probing question. Soon I had to explain how water is either inside or outside the cell, and if outside, either in the circulation or around the cells. We discussed the effects of hydrostatic and osmotic pressure on water movement in and out of the capillary. In the midst of this, as he gazed away rapt in thought, I assumed he was now content with what I had explained. But then a quizzical look came over his face and he asked, "But what happens to the water that doesn't make it back to the veins?"
I responded, "Ah, have you ever heard of the lymphatics?" and went on to describe this microscopic drainage system. He quickly smiled, tapped the heel of his palm to his forehead, gave out a yell, and exclaimed "What a beautiful design!" As I mentioned, he works in manufacturing and so knows a thing or two about design.
I had just witnessed in action what Douglas Axe describes in his book Undeniable as the design intuition. It was much more than just an intellectual assent to the truth. It animated the son's whole body as he expressed with joy, despite the painful circumstances of his father's health, the recognition of his own body's design.
It was a natural human response to the facts set before him. Yet in the wake of yesterday's marking of Darwin Day, aka Academic Freedom Day, it's sobering to consider that if he had done this in many a public or private university setting, he likely would have been belittled, criticized, or depending on his position, censured.
Howard Glicksman
Recently while seeing a new hospice patient with severe heart failure, I encountered the man's son, who happens to work in manufacturing. The younger man sought to better understand his father's medical condition and with it the relevant treatment options. So, beginning with the anatomy of the heart and its role within the cardiovascular system, we quickly moved on to what happens when the heart fails and how this had manifested in his father.
The son proved to be an astute interlocutor, as each answer engendered another probing question. Soon I had to explain how water is either inside or outside the cell, and if outside, either in the circulation or around the cells. We discussed the effects of hydrostatic and osmotic pressure on water movement in and out of the capillary. In the midst of this, as he gazed away rapt in thought, I assumed he was now content with what I had explained. But then a quizzical look came over his face and he asked, "But what happens to the water that doesn't make it back to the veins?"
I responded, "Ah, have you ever heard of the lymphatics?" and went on to describe this microscopic drainage system. He quickly smiled, tapped the heel of his palm to his forehead, gave out a yell, and exclaimed "What a beautiful design!" As I mentioned, he works in manufacturing and so knows a thing or two about design.
I had just witnessed in action what Douglas Axe describes in his book Undeniable as the design intuition. It was much more than just an intellectual assent to the truth. It animated the son's whole body as he expressed with joy, despite the painful circumstances of his father's health, the recognition of his own body's design.
It was a natural human response to the facts set before him. Yet in the wake of yesterday's marking of Darwin Day, aka Academic Freedom Day, it's sobering to consider that if he had done this in many a public or private university setting, he likely would have been belittled, criticized, or depending on his position, censured.
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