Primeval tech v. Darwin again.

Intricate, Optimized Designs in Insects Beg a Question

 Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

 

 

The pesky housefly buzzing around your head as you reach for the swatter didn’t design its own aeronautical expertise. The ants trailing into your kitchen as you reach for the spray didn’t design their own navigational systems. And the brilliant butterfly you see in the garden as you reach for the camera didn’t design its own structural colors. Insects, the most numerous and diverse of all animal groups, frustrate people and arouse their admiration. We can’t eliminate them; we might as well understand them.

Bed of Nails

A daredevil lying down on a bed of nails doesn’t suffer harm, because the weight is distributed over a large number of nails spaced close together. Spreading them farther apart and making them bigger would definitely hurt! Some species of flying insects, like cicadas and dragonflies, use this strategy against bacteria. The photo above shows an unfortunate bacterium lying dead on the nano-nails of a biomimetic cicada wing, like a scene from a horror movie. 

Interestingly, the nano-nails do not always split the bacteria open and make their innards fall out, scientists at the University of Bristol found (see also independent findings from the University of Illinois). Instead, they deform and penetrate the membrane, and also “inhibit bacterial cell division, and trigger production of reactive oxygen species and increased abundance of oxidative stress proteins.” In other words, they turn the microbe’s own stress signals against it, suspending the germ above the wing and preventing it from dividing. The scientists were able to mimic this behavior using titanium nanopillars, and found that it also combats biofilm formation.

Now we understand the mechanisms by which nanopillars damage bacteria, the next step is to apply this knowledge to the rational design and fabrication of nanopatterned surfaces with enhanced antimicrobial properties. [Emphasis added.]

See the open-access paper by Jenkins et al. in Nature Communications, “Antibacterial effects of nanopillar surfaces are mediated by cell impedance, penetration and induction of oxidative stress.” Killing bacteria structurally without antibiotics, sprays, or hand sanitizers would be a desirable strategy in many medical situations. It’s not likely a bacterium will develop resistance to this method of defense. The Bristol team believes it may also be possible for the pillars to discriminate between bacteria and stem cells, allowing therapeutic implants to work without infection.

Armored Butterflies

The paper-thin wings of butterflies don’t conjure up images of combat, but these delicate creatures face battles of their own: projectiles in the form of raindrops. To butterflies, raindrops are like cannonballs coming at them at 10 meters per second, threatening to shred their wings. What if a soldier could hold up a shield that instantly shatters an incoming missile into tiny pieces? That’s like what butterfly “armor” does to raindrops, researchers at Cornell University found. Scientists knew that wing scales are covered with microscopic bumps. In the Cornell Chronicle, Krishna Ramanujan describes what they saw in high-speed films of water droplets landing on the wing surface.

“[Getting hit with] raindrops is the most dangerous event for this kind of small animal,” he said, noting the relative weight of a raindrop hitting a butterfly wing would be analogous to a bowling ball falling from the sky on a human….
In analyzing the film, they found that when a drop hits the surface, it ripples and spreads. A nanoscale wax layer repels the water, while larger microscale bumps on the surface creates holes in the spreading raindrop.

The micro-bumps are like needles to a balloon. A shattered raindrop instantly spreads out, providing more than one benefit to the delicate insect.

This shattering action reduces the amount of time the drop is in contact with the surface, which limits momentum and lowers the impact force on a delicate wing or leaf. It also reduces heat transfer from a cold drop. This is important because the muscles of an insect wing, for example, need to be warm enough to fly.

It’s not hard to think of ways this kind of two-tiered structure could improve artificial armor both against rain and against impacts of other kinds. For the physics details, see the paper by Kim et al. in PNAS, “How a raindrop gets shattered on biological surfaces.” The authors note that bird feathers, insect wings, and plant spores all make use of this trick. Some fungi can use those raindrop ‘cannonballs’ to launch their spores out into the environment.

Fruit Fly Sensing

“Can you imagine looking for a destination without a GPS, visual landmarks, or even street signs?” So asks Drexel University about how fruit flies find food. Consider the hardware and software packed into these tiny insects that are hardly visible except in swarms. First, they have olfactory sensory neurons, as do most animals, both vertebrates and invertebrates. The data from those neurons must be translated into actions. Drexel researchers determined that the flies have a primary system and a backup system. They can use their internal compass for path integration, but they can also measure the effect of hard turns and velocity changes on signal quality.

Tracking fly movement in these zones, the team measured the interplay between orienting, non-orienting, and the ‘internal compass’ used by flies to get to their destination.
“This study shows how non-orienting movement can be an effective mechanism for finding resources when directional cues are absent,” said senior author Vikas Bhandawat, PhD, an associate professor in the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems. “Non-orienting movements are also found in expert navigators, such as desert ants. Once they are near their home, they depend on these movements to get there. Using fruit flies, we are finally gaining ground on tracking these movements alongside other techniques used and how environments and information can alter them.”

Sea Skaters

One of the few insects that has made the open ocean its habitat is the “sea skater,” a type of water strider that walks on sea water and can even leap and somersault off the surface. Phys.org brings news from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, where researchers find sea skaters to be “a super source of inspiration” for improving water repellant materials. Contributing to the research were scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography  in Southern California.

A combination of waxy surface, small body size and shape in the legs and feet contribute to keeping these insects high and dry. When wet, they can leap high above the surface to shake off extra water droplets. The team had difficulty recording their movements in the lab; “We spent hours trying to capture their natural behaviors on film because they jump around a lot.” 

The researchers used high-resolution imaging equipment, including electron microscopy and ultrafast videography, to study the insects’ varied body hairs, grooming behavior and movements as they evaded simulated rain drops and predators. The insect’s body is covered in hairs of different shapes, lengths and diameters, and it secretes a highly water-repellant waxy cocktail that it uses to groom itself.
“The tiniest hairs are shaped like golf clubs and are packed tightly to prevent water from entering between them. This hairy layer, if the insect is submerged accidentally, encases it in an air bubble, helping it to breathe and resurface quickly,” says co-author Lanna Cheng, from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

Further investigation showed that only 5 percent of the leg touches the water surface, meaning that the bug is “practically hovering on air.” The scientists were also amazed at how fast it can jump. 

“While taking off from the water surface, we observed H. germanus accelerate at around 400 m/s²,” says Thoroddsen. “Compare this with a cheetah or Usain Bolt, whose top accelerations taper off at 13 m/s² and 3 m/s², respectively. This extraordinary acceleration is due to the insect’s tiny size and the way it presses down on the water surface, rather like using a trampoline, to boost its jump.”

Studying the hairs, waxy coating, and body shape is giving scientists plenty of inspiration for designing “greener and low-cost technologies for reducing frictional drag and membrane fouling” in artificial water-repellant materials. 

All the Buzz

That’s all the buzz for today. But consider the fact that none of these insects designed their own engineering marvels. They use them, but they did not invent them or “evolve” them. Bringing together the components of complex, integrated systems requires foresight and planning. Biological designs are supplied to organisms big and small by an intelligent cause, so that each being can flourish in its respective habitat, contributing to our rich and diverse biosphere.

 

Darwinism as secular spellbinding.

Evolutionary Theorizing Depends on Magic Words

 Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

 

 

Here is a quick tale about the evolution of the automobile.

1. Billions of years ago, a chassis appeared.
2. The chassis acquired an engine.
3. The crankshaft found a side gig as a steering wheel.
4. The steering wheel linked up with the brake pedal to form a universal joint.
5. Seats developed. They probably arose when the first hood evolved.

Now consider leading journals publishing this account after it has whisked through peer review. Is this not exactly what goes on in evolutionary theorizing? Darwinians have mastered the use of magic words that replace rigor with imagination. And they get away with it; nobody ever blows the whistle on what should be tagged a major scientific foul.

 

 New Findings About Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetases

 

 Here is an example in The Scientist, a news magazine for working scientists who should know better. In the article, “Protein Synthesis Enzymes Have Evolved Additional Jobs,” writer Amber Dance explains new findings about aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, abbreviated AARS, the enzymes that attach amino acids to transfer RNAs. This important family of 20 enzymes stands between the DNA code, written in triplet nucleotide codons, and the protein code, written in amino acids. Ms. Dance recounts new findings that show several of these enzymes “moonlight” as workers with other functions. 
Finding additional functions for these enzymes is a worthwhile discovery. Some of the additional functions involve angiogenesis, meaning they can be considered as targets for cancer treatments. But the article seeks to explain how these additional functions originated, especially in the sidebar, “When these functions arose in evolution” [emphasis added]. Magic words will be shown in bold type.

• “For as long as living things have been building proteins based on the code carried by messenger RNA molecules, aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases have been there.” (Where did they come from?)
• “AARSs picked up additional domains that allow them to do much more.”
• “While other proteins have adopted secondary functions…”
• “These particular synthetases have been present and available for evolution to modify since protein-based life began.”
• “But in the hundreds of millions of years that they’ve existed, these synthetases (AARSs) have picked up several side jobs.”
• “The first blood vascular system, which lacked the endothelium present in modern vertebrates, probably arose in a common ancestor of vertebrates and arthropods around 700 million to 600 million years ago.”
• “Around this same time, TyrRS acquired a glutamic acid–lysine–arginine motif that today is thought to promote angiogenesis.”
• “Then, around 540 million to 510 million years ago, an ancestral vertebrate evolved a closed vascular system….”
• “At some point around that same time period half a billion years ago, the TrpRS picked up a WHEP domain….”
• “In addition, SerRS acquired a domain unique to this enzyme, which now prevents over-vascularization in developing zebrafish, and likely other vertebrates.”

In this magic show, rabbits appear out of hats. Sleeves acquire pigeons. Scarfs arise out of tubes, and cards evolve and develop into the specific cards the magician needs.
In fairness to Ms. Dance, her article focuses primarily on the science of discovery: how these functions were discovered, and what they might mean for medical treatments to help people. But it’s pretty clear that she is using magic words as placeholders for scientists’ ignorance. They add nothing to our understanding. They serve, rather, as statements of faith in the assumed power of natural selection.

On the Origin of AARS by Magic-Word Selection

Another example comes from the Tokyo Institute of Science. They offer “A Glimpse into Archaic Protein Synthesis Systems,” specifically, the origin of the AARS enzymes. “The study highlights the possible mechanisms of evolution” that led to these essential translators of the genetic code. This team favors the magic word “appear”:

• “The evolution of this complex tRNA-aaRS system is a fascinating enigma, as the existing evolutionary evidence suggests that the upper half of the tRNA containing this operational code appeared earlier in evolutionary history than the lower half part that binds to the triplet code of mRNA.”
• “Our data indicate the existence of a simplified process of alanine addition to tRNA by AlaRS early in the evolutionary process, before the appearance of the G3:U70 base pair.”
• “Furthermore, using ‘RNA minihelix’ molecules, which are considered to be the primitive form of tRNA, we could also illuminate the ‘morphology’ of tRNA before the evolutionary appearance of the G3:U70 base pair.”

The Power of Suggestion

The word “appear” also appears frequently, along with accessory magical terms, in the Tokyo Institute’s paper in the Journal of Molecular Evolution by Arutaki et al., promising “An Insight into the Evolution of Aminoacyl‑tRNA Synthetases.” Like all good magicians, these Darwinians use the power of suggestion to make the origin of the genetic code sound possible.

This suggests that the G3:U70 pair appeared early during genetic code evolution and used as a “second genetic code” (Chong et al. 2018). However, before the appearance of the specific G3:U70, minimalist RNA–protein interactions may have resulted in requisite aminoacylation activities. The activity of AlaRS-α shown in the present study may reflect a vestige of such a primordial aminoacylation of an RNA comprising a small number of nucleotides, including the NCCA-3ʹ (Fig. 6c). In related to this hypothesis, it is suggested that the G3:U70 base pair recognition is actually a later addition to the original operational code (Carter and Wills 2018), as it is likely implemented by segments of the enzyme that were not accessible to the earliest ancestral aaRS forms (Carter 2014). Furthermore, the genomic tag model proposes that ancient linear RNA genomes possessed tRNA-like structures with a 3ʹ-terminal CCA (Weiner and Maizels 1987). A hairpin RNA with NCCA-3ʹ has also been proposed as the origin of homochiral aminoacylation in the RNA world….

The paragraph makes no sense unless you already believe that Evolution the Magician is doing real magic. If, instead, you are watching carefully to see how the trick is done, it becomes clear that the wizard is importing his own beliefs by sleight of mind, distracting the viewer with empty words. He is showing us a crystal ball with an artificial picture of a line of descent from simple to complex. He knows that the current observable genetic code is highly complex and specified, but he wants us to see a possible path by which blind molecules leaped over all the hurdles to get AARS enzymes where they are today. Some parts of the aaRS molecule, therefore, need to be named “primitive” so that they line up in their proper place in the story.

Tell Him to Sit Quietly

To understand the extent of illusion in evolutionary writing, one needs to take the magician out of it entirely, tell him to sit quietly, and watch the props move on their own. That’s what the “scenario” is all about, right? No magician was there to coax them along, telling them where to be and what to do. Robert Shapiro had a good way to describe this. Back in 2007, in Scientific American, he said this about the “appearance” of RNA in the RNA-World scenario:

The analogy that comes to mind is that of a golfer, who having played a golf ball through an 18-hole course, then assumed that the ball could also play itself around the course in his absence. He had demonstrated the possibility of the event; it was only necessary to presume that some combination of natural forces (earthquakes, winds, tornadoes and floods, for example) could produce the same result, given enough time. No physical law need be broken for spontaneous RNA formation to happen, but the chances against it are so immense, that the suggestion implies that the non-living world had an innate desire to generate RNA. The majority of origin-of-life scientists who still support the RNA-first theory either accept this concept (implicitly, if not explicitly) or feel that the immensely unfavorable odds were simply overcome by good luck.

To combine the two analogies, we could picture a golf course instead of a magic stage. An audience at the course is seated, but no golfer is out there playing. A ball is shown inside the 18th cup. The magician whispers, “See that ball? It played the course all by itself!”
Keep an eye out for the magic words in Darwin literature. Richard Dawkins said, “The living results of natural selection … impress us with the illusion of design and planning.” That’s backwards. Those who know how to interpret illusions say, “The magic words of Darwinians about how actually designed organisms came to be impress us with the illusion of scientific explanation.” Good show. Bad science.

John Public:Discount Socrates?

Is Joe Blow “Anti-Intellectual”?

Michael Egnor

It’s a common claim among Darwinists that people who question “expert” scientific opinion on such topics as evolution, global warming, and the mind-brain relationship are “anti-intellectual” science deniers. Steven Novella, a Yale neurologist and credulous Darwinist and materialist makes the claim in a recent post:

As science-communicators and skeptics we are trying to understand the phenomenon of rejection of evidence, logic, and the consensus of expert scientific opinion. 

Ironically, Novella, who considers himself a skeptic, decries the skepticism of people who don’t agree with him.

Purity and Consensus

 
How can it be, scientific experts ask, that so many people doubt scientific experts? Novella:

 There is, of course, no one explanation — complex psychological phenomena are likely to be multifactorial. Decades ago the blame was placed mostly on scientific illiteracy, a knowledge deficit problem, and the prescription was science education. Many studies over the last 20 years or so have found a host of factors — including moral purity, religious identity, ideology, political identity, intuitive (as opposed to analytical) thinking style, and a tendency toward conspiratorial thinking. And yes, knowledge deficit also plays a role. These many factors contribute to varying degrees on different issues and with different groups. They are also not independent variables, as they interact with each other. Religious and political identity, for example, may be partially linked, and may contribute to a desire for moral purity.

 “Moral purity” plays a big role in Novella’s theory. A want of moral purity puts you in tune with the latest science consensus. Novella may have a point. He rambles about several scientific studies that cast aspersion on people who don’t sufficiently esteem scientific studies, and he concludes:

 [The] alternative [to science credulity] is populist rejection of not only experts, but the institutions of expertise and the concept of expertise itself. This leads to intellectual anarchy (often justified by portraying it as intellectual freedom, but that is not the issue and entirely misses the point). The populist view is mostly about believing what feels good, going along with an explanatory narrative that makes some kind of sense of a complex and scary world and organizes that understanding around vilifying an enemy, who is to blame for our problems. What’s scary is that our political and media institutions may favor such simplistic and appealing populist narratives, and disadvantage more nuanced approaches.

 To Novella’s chagrin, the rubes don’t fall in line with science experts nearly as often as scientific experts think they ought to. Why so?

Joe Knows a Few Things

 Consider Joe Blow. Joe has no scientific education. He’s a truck driver. He works a couple of jobs to support his family, he pays his taxes, coaches his son’s little league team, and goes to church on Sundays. He is anything but a scientific expert, but he does know a few things. 

Joe has been told since the 1980s that the world is going to end due to global warming. It sounds like those crazy guys with the placards who say the world is gonna end tomorrow. The earth’s sell-by-date keeps getting pushed forward — polar ice caps were supposed to melt, but didn’t, polar bears were supposed to go extinct, but didn’t, sea levels were supposed to inundate coastal cities, but didn’t, and tens of millions of climate refugees were supposed to perish fleeing the catastrophic heat. Joe’s still waiting. He is also still waiting for the apocalyptic global cooling he was told about in the 1970s (Joe ain’t no scientist, but he has a good memory). He remembers watching Paul Ehrlich on TV in the late 1960s warning that overpopulation was going to cause billions of people to die of starvation and cause nations to disintegrate over the next couple of decades. Joe wonders how a scientist could be so wrong and still keep his job and even get elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

The Rules Don’t Apply to Scientists

 Joe knows that if he screwed up his own job like that, he’d be fired before the day was out. But those rules don’t apply to scientists. Joe remembers hearing that DDT and other pesticides was going to kill all birds and give us all cancer. DDT was banned, and lots of people started (again) dying of malaria, and scientists were pretty proud of themselves for getting DDT banned and told people who didn’t want to get malaria to sleep with nets.  

Joe remembers being told by scientists in the 1990s that AIDS was going to spread to the heterosexual community and kill millions of Americans. He remembers the panic over Y2K, when nothing happened except that some scientists got big grants to study it. Joe has heard a lot about the science replication crisis — he doesn’t fully understand it, but he knows that it means that a whole lot of science is basically made up.

Joe remembers his father talking about when the U.S. government sterilized tens of thousands of innocent people against their will because scientific experts insisted that humanity was degenerating due to poor breeding. Joe isn’t exactly sure what eugenics was, but he knows that nearly all scientific institutions embraced it for nearly a century, and Joe suspects that it was just a way to make sure there weren’t too many people like Joe.

Thinking About Evolution

Joe doesn’t know what to think about evolution. He believes in God, and knows that it’s obvious that a Higher Power made this beautiful and vastly complex world. He doesn’t have a problem with the claim that animals change over time, but he doesn’t think that scientists should drag his son’s teachers into federal court to force them to teach his boy that there’s no purpose in life. He thinks we should be able to question science, especially in schools. And he wonders why Darwin’s theory is so certain, since it can’t even stand up to questions from schoolchildren. 

Joe wonders why scientists say that babies aren’t really human before they’re born, when it’s obvious that life starts at conception. Joe wonders why scientists say that there are lots of genders besides men and women, when it’s pretty obvious that men are men and women are women, and saying otherwise doesn’t make otherwise true. Joe thinks that if scientists don’t like fossil fuels, they’re free to stop using them. Why do scientists fly to global warming conferences in big jets, Joe wonders? Why do billionaires who preach about climate change own so many houses? And Joe wonders why no scientists objected to taking money from a known child molester like Jeffrey Epstein. Heck, if they didn’t speak up about that, why would anyone expect them to speak up for scientific truth?

Joe Is No Scientist

But he knows that time and time again scientists have lied and cheated and said stupid things and they’ve even sterilized and killed people, and they never seem to be held to account. Heck, they even seem to prosper when they’re wrong. 

And Joe knows that he’s an expert on one thing: his own money. He pays his taxes, and when scientists call him stupid, what they always mean is that he doesn’t want his own tax money spent on what scientists want just because scientists want it. Joe thinks that scientists should explain why they screwed up so much in the past before we believe everything they say today. 

In a democracy, Joe says, the ultimate expert is the people, and scientists have done little over the past century to earn people’s trust. Unaccountability is the name of the game in the scientific world. Again and again scientists screw up, and then they insult the people who pay their salaries and they insult the people who point out that they’ve screwed up. Joe thinks that employees should be polite to their employers.

Joe may be anti-intellectual, but he’s no fool.

 

 

The cell: Pandora's box for Darwin?

Coming on Darwin Day, a New Video Series — Secrets of the Cell with Michael Behe

Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

The cell is what biochemist Michael Behe has called evolution’s “black box,” its spectacularly complex, superbly designed contents unknown to Charles Darwin. When the box was opened by modern science, it was a turning-point moment for the articulation of the modern theory of intelligent design. A revolution followed, fundamentally challenging how scientists discuss the history of life.

Of course that revolution remains ongoing. To reach ever-wider audiences of the skeptical and the unconvinced, whether in academia or the general culture, is the central mission of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture. What better occasion for that could there be than February 12, also known as Darwin Day? The birthday of the great man is an occasion each year for atheists and materialists to promote once again the theory of purposeless, unguided evolution.

Revolutionary Behe

With that in mind, this coming Darwin Day, Wednesday of next week, we will be launching an exciting new way to introduce your friends and family to the revolutionary work of Professor Behe. It’s Secrets of the Cell with Michael Behe, a five-part YouTube series that will provide a non-technical and beautifully produced introduction to Behe’s key ideas. Look for it here at Evolution News.

The series is the brainchild of filmmaker Cal Covert, President of Silver Ridge Productions, a media production company based in Virginia. Covert has more than 30 years of experience in television and video production. As a bonus, he graduated from Lehigh University, where Dr. Behe is a professor.

Cal approached us in 2019 with an idea for a series that could reach a broad viewership with Behe’s ideas, and things developed from there.

“I’m a big fan of Discovery Institute,” says Cal. “I’ve been a subscriber to Nota Bene for many years, and I read every edition. Dr. Behe and others have shown that good science points to intelligent design. I’d like to make videos that will go on the offensive and challenge people’s thinking with Behe’s findings in a way accessible to a broad audience.”

A Passion for Communication

Cal has a passion for communicating science to the general public. “For the last ten years much of my work has been in medical production,” he explains. “I work with surgeons, researchers, scientists, and patients as they tell their stories. These are widely viewed on Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms. The success of these videos has come through taking technical material and making it both understandable and compelling. That’s what I want to do with Behe’s ideas.”

Secrets of the Cell employs Behe himself as the onscreen host, showing him like you’ve never seen him before — out in the woods, in an auto shop, operating a drone, driving a jeep.

Each 4-6 minute episode investigates some intriguing discovery in science — micro-machines inside the cell, gears in insects, or the evolution of polar bears, and more. Behe uses the examples to explain his concepts of irreducible complexity, the “edge” of evolution, and Darwinian devolution. A new episode of Secrets of the Cell will be released each week from February to early March.

“We are grateful for Cal’s inspiration for this series, as well as how he donated his professional talents for the project and raised funds for new animation and on-location footage,” says John West, CSC Associate Director. “We are always looking for fresh ways to expand the impact of our scientists’ work.”

Among ID scientists, Mike Behe is a superstar. If you missed his thoroughly delightful Socrates in the City interview with Eric Metaxas, see it here now:

Uncommon descent?

A Forest, Not a Tree? Nelson Asks Why Universal Common Descent Needn’t “Pay” for Failures

David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

Philosopher of biology Paul Nelson recalls the expectation, a scientific standard when he was an undergrad, that all living things would turn out to share a universal genetic code. How could they not if, as Darwin argued, there is only a single, universal tree of life? On a classic ID the Future podcast with host Brian Miller, Dr. Nelson discusses the implications of this failed prediction. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

The question is a weighty one since it has emerged that there is no universally shared code, but, instead, many variants. When evolutionists realized this, they performed a sidestep, supposing that since the prediction flopped, it must be the case that the code can itself evolve. But this deft move allows universal common ancestry a luxury that other scientific theories are not allowed: the freedom to fail without paying a price. Nelson suggests that this is a reason to revisit the options in the evolution debate. Maybe life is not a tree but, as biologists are finding to be increasingly likely, a forest or an orchard. But then what are the consequences for strict naturalism?

Broadly, Paul notes, there are four possibilities, each populated with scientific advocates, past and present: no design with common ancestry, no design with no common ancestry, design with no common ancestry, and design with common ancestry. In the last category, he mentions leading intelligent design proponents (Behe, Denton) but perhaps also, and this really intrigued me, the French paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, more typically thought of as a theistic evolutionist. That’s something I’d like to hear more about.

Paul Nelson is a great explainer, remarkably lucid in illuminating complex subjects. You will enjoy this conversation.

Why the origin of life remains the bane of design deniers.

Mystery of Life’s Origin Authors Reunite for Dallas Conference on Science & Faith
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

There was a wonderful turnout this past Saturday for the 2020 Dallas Conference on Science & Faith, with more than 1,400 in attendance. A highlight was the reunion of the three scientists who sparked the modern intelligent design revolution. That was in 1984 with the publication of The Mystery of Life’s Origin. The pioneering authors, biochemist Charles Thaxton, materials scientist Walter Bradley, and geochemist Roger Olsen, are pictured above (from right to left, Thaxton, Bradley, Olsen), being interviewed by Stephen Meyer about the paradox-filled intellectual world of origin-of-life researchers.

To Carry On a Legacy

The audience, which had already nearly filled the parking lot 45 minutes before the event began, were rewarded with a very entertaining conversation celebrating a new book from Discovery Institute Press. Mystery of Life’s Origin was republished today in a very substantially expanded, updated version that brings the origin-of-life controversy up to date, with new contributions by Meyer, biologist Jonathan Wells, chemist James Tour, physicist Brian Miller, and astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, and a historical introduction by Evolution News editor David Klinghoffer. The new book is graced by an updated title, The Mystery of Life’s Origin: The Continuing Controversy.

Dr. Meyer is of course one of the foremost scholars and ID proponents who have carried on the intellectual legacy of Thaxton and his colleagues. A photo from a pre-conference barbecue, at the home of Pam Bailey who manages Discovery Institute Dallas, shows Thaxton (front), and Olsen, Bradley, and Meyer:A presentation by Dr. Bradley was introduced appropriately by the director of Discovery Institute’s Walter Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence, Robert J. Marks. His comments included the observation that as a theist, Dr. Marks is grateful to have all possible scientific explanations of the natural world, including intelligent design, available to him whereas atheists and materialists have that option arbitrarily foreclosed to them.

A Tour of Intelligent Design

The Dallas Conference was thus a tour of the theory of intelligent design from its beginnings, to today, and looking forward to the next frontier, which Stephen Meyer discussed: his forthcoming book, The Return of the God Hypothesis. The book shows that theism is the one view of reality that is consistent with the relevant scientific evidence.Political scientist and Discovery Institute Vice President John West illuminated the cultural and worldview impact of Darwinism, with its explanations of life’s wonders all rooted in suffering and death. Try fashioning a life-affirming culture from that. Michael Behe (above) discussed irreducible complexity and the provocative argument of his new book, Darwin Devolves, showing that “adaptive” evolution favored by natural selection usually involves squandering genetic information for short-term gains. In a Q&A, Dr. Behe fielded a controversial question from an audience member. The gentleman demanded to know about Behe’s plans for his facial hair. Is he going to allow his beard to really grow out, or not!?

Finally, protein chemist Douglas Axe (above) demonstrated why any modestly sophisticated system showing functional coherence sets off our design intuitions, and rightfully so. These are indicators of extremely specified, low-probability events, which justify the inference to design.

In every way, this conference was an even bigger success than our 2019 Dallas Conference. We are building on many strengths, and looking forward to 2021!

And still yet even more on design all the way down.

Surprises in Cell Codes Reveal Information Goes Far Beyond DNA

Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

Information is the stuff of life. Not limited to DNA, information is found in most biomolecules in living cells. Here are some recent developments.

Sugar Code

Certain forms of sugars (polysaccharides called chitosans) trigger the immune system of plants. Biologists at the University of Münster are “deciphering the sugar code.” They describe the variables in chitosans that constitute a signaling system. 

Chitosans consist of chains of different lengths of a simple sugar called glucosamine. Some of these sugar molecules carry an acetic acid molecule, others do not. Chitosans therefore differ in three factors: the chain length and the number and distribution of acetic acid residues along the sugar chain. For about twenty years, chemists have been able to produce chitosans of different chain lengths and with different amounts of acetic acid residues, and biologists have then investigated their biological activities.

Condensed Code

DNA is becoming known as a more of a team member in a society of biomolecules. In some ways, it is more a patient than a doctor. It gets operated on by numerous machines that alter its message. One of the most important “doctors” that operates on RNA transcripts is the spliceosome, says a review article inThe Scientist about alternative splicing. This complex molecular machine can multiply the messages in the coding regions of DNA by cutting out introns and stitching coded parts called exons together in different ways.

The process of alternative splicing, which had first been observed 26 years before the Human Genome Project was finished, allows a cell to generate different RNAs, and ultimately different proteins, from the same gene. Since its discovery, it has become clear that alternative splicing is common and that the phenomenon helps explain how limited numbers of genes can encode organisms of staggering complexity. While fewer than 40 percent of the genes in a fruit fly undergo alternative splicing, more than 90 percent of genes are alternatively spliced in humans.

Astoundingly, some genes can be alternatively spliced to generate up to 38,000 different transcript isoforms, and each of the proteins they produce has a unique function.

The discovery of splicing seemed “bizarre” from an evolutionary perspective, the authors say, recalling obsolete ideas about “junk DNA.” It seemed weird and wasteful that introns were being cut out of transcripts by the spliceosome. Then, the ENCODE project found that the vast majority of non-coding DNA was transcribed, giving “these seemingly nonfunctional elements an essential role in gene expression, as evidence emerged over the next few years that there are sequences housed within introns that can help or hinder splicing activity.”

This article is a good reminder that evolutionary assumptions hinder science. Once biochemists ridded themselves of the evolutionary notion of leftover junk in the genetic code, a race was on to understand the role of alternative splicing. 

Understanding the story behind each protein in our bodies has turned out to be far more complex than reading our DNA. Although the basic splicing mechanism was uncovered more than 40 years ago, working out the interplay between splicing and physiology continues to fascinate us. We hope that advanced knowledge of how alternative splicing is regulated and the functional role of each protein isoform during development and disease will lay the groundwork for the success of future translational therapies.

Beyond Methylation

Another discovery that is opening doors to research opportunities comes from the University of Chicago. Darwin-free, they announce a “fundamental pathway” likely to “open up completely new directions of research and inquiry.” Biologists knew about how methyl tags on RNA transcripts regulate the ways they are translated. Now, Professor Chuan He and colleagues have found that some RNAs, dubbed carRNAs, don’t get translated at all. “Instead, they controlled how DNA itself was stored and transcribed.”

“This has major implications in basic biology,” He said. “It directly affects gene transcriptions, and not just a few of them. It could induce global chromatin change and affects transcription of 6,000 genes in the cell line we studied.”

Dr. He is excited about the breakthrough. The “conceptual change” in how RNA regulates DNA offers an “enormous opportunity” to guide medical treatments and promote health. Take a look at this design-friendly quote:

The human body is among the most complex pieces of machinery to exist. Every time you so much as scratch your nose, you’re using more intricate engineering than any rocket ship or supercomputer ever designed. It’s taken us centuries to deconstruct how this works, and each time someone discovers a new mechanism, a few more mysteries of human health make sense — and new treatments become available.

Genes Jumping for Joy

Remember the evolutionary myth that “jumping genes” were parasites from our evolutionary past that learned how to evade the immune system? A discovery at the Washington University School of Medicine changes that tune, saying, “‘Jumping genes’ help stabilize DNA folding patterns.” These long-misunderstood genes thought by some evolutionists to be sources of novel genetic traits actually function to provide genomic stability.

“Jumping genes” — bits of DNA that can move from one spot in the genome to another — are well-known for increasing genetic diversity over the long course of evolution. Now, new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis indicates that such genes, also called transposable elements, play another, more surprising role: stabilizing the 3D folding patterns of the DNA molecule inside the cell’s nucleus.

Lead author Ting Wang says this gives insight into why coding regions between different animals vary in structure.

“Our study changes how we interpret genetic variation in the noncoding regions of the DNA,” Wang said. “For example, large surveys of genomes from many people have identified a lot of variations in noncoding regions that don’t seem to have any effect on gene regulation, which has been puzzling. But it makes more sense in light of our new understanding of transposable elements — while the local sequence can change, but the function stays the same.

So while evolutionists had expected junk and simplicity, Wang says the opposite has occurred. “We have uncovered another layer of complexity in the genome sequence that was not known before.” Now, more discoveries are likely to flow from intelligent design’s expectation that a closer look reveals more complexity.

Mountains of Complexity

In another recent podcast at ID the Future honoring the late Phillip E. Johnson, Paul Nelson likened a graph of mounting discoveries about life to a sharply rising mountain range. Darwin proposed his theory on the flatlands, unaware of the peaks his theory would have to explain. In the last fifty years, scientists have encountered mountain after mountain of complexity in life that evolutionary theory never anticipated back out there on the flatlands. “We can’t see the top of the mountains yet, but we know that we’re still not there, and we won’t be for a long, long time,” Nelson says. As we witness scientists continuing up the mountains, we anticipate with awe more wonders of design that will likely come to light in the next decade.

Why the Origin of Life remains the main pressure point in the design debate.

On the myth of scientific objectivity.

Scientific “Decadence” and the Myth of Objectivity
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

Writing here yesterday about the mischaracterization of 437-million-year-old scorpion fossils, paleontologist Günter Bechly used an apt but unexpected word to describe evolutionary thinking. It isn’t just mistaken. It reflects a state of “decadence”: 

In today’s science world it is no longer sufficient to objectively describe some nicely preserved ancient fossils. You must overinterpret the evidence and oversell their importance with a fancy evolutionary narrative. And you do not have to hesitate to be really bold with your claims, because neither the scientific reviewers nor the popular science media will care if your claims are actually supported by the evidence. This system is broken. It was broken by the pressure to publish or perish, by the pressure of public relation departments to generate lurid headlines, and by the pressure of the idiotic paradigm that nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution.

“By the Wayside”

Under these circumstances, “Good science falls by the wayside.” Now neuroscientist Michael Egnor comments over at Mind Matters on decadence in a completely different scientific field: medicine and medical ethics. Abortion advocates have long advanced the falsehood that babies in the womb feel less pain than we do or no pain at all. The truth is the exact opposite: “An unborn child with an immature brain probably experiences pain more intensely than an individual with a mature cortex.”

Perhaps the most disturbing damage that the abortion lobby has done to our society — aside from the systematic killing of tens of millions of innocent human beings — is the corruption of science in the name of ideology. Nowhere is this corruption more obvious than in the misrepresentation of the neuroscience of fetal pain perception.

A new article in the Journal of Medical Ethics titled Reconsidering Fetal Pain (open access) is a welcome correction to the abortion lobby’s systematic misrepresentation. The authors, one of whom is an abortion advocate, reviewed the literature on the perception of fetal pain and came to the conclusion that there is clear scientific evidence to support the view that unborn children feel pain as early as 13 weeks of gestation.

This should not have come as a surprise, since doctors who work with newborns and premature babies routinely observe that they respond with screams to a needle prick that an adult would barely register. 

Dr. Bechly calls it “decadence.” Dr. Egnor calls it “corruption.” It’s one and the same thing: whereas, according to widespread legend, scientists just objectively sift facts, in reality ideological ax-grinding is common and probably worse than it ever was. Remember, what Bechly and Egnor are describing isn’t limited to a stray scientist here or there. It is systematic. Hence the state of decadence.

Corrosive or Worse

As the new “Long Story Short” video from Discovery Institute on homology puts it, “Scientists are just like everyone else: people. And we can be uncritical of things that we want to believe.” 

That’s a charitable way of putting it. In one way, scientists aren’t like “everyone else”: that is, because of the enormous prestige they enjoy, the impact of their being “uncritical of things that [they] want to believe” is tremendous. And it can be quite corrosive, quite malign. It affects how the rest of us think about the origins of life, about the nature of reality — ultimate questions — and about how to treat the most vulnerable members of humankind, the unborn in the womb, whether with care or savage disregard.

These are reasons for applying special scrutiny and an extra degree of skepticism — they are reasons for thinking your own thoughts rather than be spoon-fed — when considering what “Scientists Say.”

For more on the culture of contemporary science, see Egnor’s post“Jeffrey Epstein and the Silence of the Scientists.”

Settled science v. Actual science.

Apocalypse Now — More Things Scientists Would Like You to Forget 

 Michael Egnor

 

 

Scientific consensus is in the news. Scientists agree (at least in public) on all sorts of things: evolution is Darwinian, global warming is real, taking money from patrons like Jeffrey Epstein is great but mustn’t be publicized, etc. The history of science is the history of shifting consensus, and of scientists who shifted it, for better or worse. 

Of late, scientific consensus has been apocalyptic. When you read this morning that we only have a few years left before we are incinerated by our over-heated planet, it’s worth recalling the science apocalypses of recent memory. 

Science Apocalypses Past

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has done for us what scientists won’t — that is, remind us of science apocalypses past. It’s amusing: 

• “Space satellites show new Ice Age coming fast” (1974)
• “Already too late to avert famine” (1975)
• “New York City’s West Side Highway underwater by 2019” (1989)
• “Snowfalls Are Now Just a Thing of the Past” (2000)
• “Rising Seas Could Obliterate Nations by 2000” (1989)
• “Britain will be Siberian in less than 20 years” (2004)

Science apocalypses can only be understood in context. The context is that there have been a lot of them, there are a lot of them, there no doubt will be a lot of them, and they’re always wrong. And, obviously, there’s a scientific consensus that you shouldn’t pay attention to the last scientific consensus.

The Sales Pitch

The contemporary sales pitch for this stuff — that evolution is only by chance and necessity, that DDT will silence the spring, that overpopulation is reaching a Malthusian brink, that man is burning the planet to a cinder — needs to be distinguished from science, which is the work that challenges the consensus.

Scientific consensus is not science. Actually, scientific consensus has almost always been wrong. It was consensus that heavenly bodies move in epicycles, that heavy objects fall faster than light ones, that phlogiston is what burns in a furnace, that malaria is caused by bad air, and that light propagates in ether. This is not to condemn scientific consensus. Science is a business, so scientists have to agree as a corporate body to get things done. 

A Consensus at 30,000 Feet

Scientific consensus that isn’t true is consigned to oblivion, by scientific consensus. Scientific consensus that is true is engineering. Scientific consensus governs the construction of bridges and power plants and airplanes. On my commute and when I flip a light switch and when I look out the window at the clouds below I’m grateful for scientific consensus. I like engineering, especially when I’m at 30,000 feet.

Science is a search, and precludes consensus. Consensus is a means to act, whether wisely or foolishly. The scientific consensus that penicillin kills streptococcus has saved millions of lives. The scientific consensus that DDT causes cancer has cost millions of lives. 

But we must never confuse scientific consensus with science. Science is inquiry. Consensus is cloture of inquiry. What is consensus is not science. Yet consensus has its place — it makes it possible to act corporately. 

The purpose of consensus in science is to manipulate. It’s a political act. It permits scientists to act as a polity. The purpose of the scientific consensus in engineering is to manipulate nature. The purpose of scientific consensus in evolution, in global warming, and in discreet patronage is to manipulate you.