A clash of Titans. LXXI

Just enough religion to make them hate?

Exjunk: From brass to gold.

The Un-Junk Industry

Evolution News & Views 

Junk DNA" is so 1972. Why is it hard to shed worn-out phrases? One bad stain can wear out dozens of wipes. Fortunately, we don't have to do all the wiping. Science reporters are getting better at helping clean up this genomic blemish.

A recent example is a paper in PNAS summarized on EurekAlert. The paper doesn't refer to junk DNA, but the news item does. "Punctuating messages encoded in human genome with transposable elements" is the title:

The vast majority of the human genome (~98% of the total genetic information) is not dedicated to encoding proteins, andthis non-coding sequence was initially designated as "junk DNA" to underscore its lack of apparent function. Much of the so-called junk DNA in our genomes has accumulated over evolutionary time due to the activity of retrotransposable elements (RTEs), which are capable of moving (transposing) from one location to another in the genome and make copies of themselves when they do so. These elements have been considered as genomic parasites that exist by virtue of their ability to replicate themselves to high numbers within genomeswithout providing any beneficial function for the hosts in which they reside. However, recent studies on RTEs have shown that they can in fact encode important functions, and much of their functional activity turns out to be related to how genomes areregulated. RTEs have been linked to stem cell function, tissue differentiation, cancer progression and ultimately to aging and age-related pathologies. [Emphasis added.]

Although this statement credits evolution with the accumulation of RTEs, the original paper is loaded with the word "function" and says nothing of significance about evolution. It also never claims that "cancer progression" or "aging" constitute functions for RTEs.

Instead, the paper offers a design prediction and found it largely true. Wanget al. predicted that RTEs act as "insulators" to keep related that help to organize eukaryotic chromatin via enhancer-blocking and chromatin barrier activity." Of the 1,178 mammalian-wide interspersed repeats (MIRs, a form of RTE) they predicted would be functional, they found that 58 percent of them do, indeed, function as insulators (the rest may have so-far-unknown functions). The news item calls them a form of "punctuation":

"We randomly picked a hand full of the MIR sequences predicted to serve as boundary elements by the Jordan lab andexperimentally validated their activity in mouse cell lines and, with help of our Spanish collaborators, in Zebra fish upon embryonic development," Dr. Lunyak said. "This testing revealed that MIR sequences can serve as punctuation marks within our genome that enable cells to correctly read and comprehend the message transmitted by the genomic sequences."

"One thing that is particularly striking is the fact that these punctuation marks, as Victoria calls them, play a role that is deeply evolutionary conserved," said Dr. Jordan. "The same exact MIR sequences were able to function as boundaries in humanCD4+ lymphocytes, in mouse cell models and in Zebrafish."

You wouldn't toss out all the punctuation in a book as "junk ABC" now, would you? Punctuation has a function -- an important one. It came late in human written language (try reading ancient Greek). Human intelligent agents recognized that punctuation could help the understanding of texts. If it took intelligence to design punctuation, why would we credit genetic punctuation to blind processes? The fact that it is deeply conserved in unrelated animals argues against its being randomly accumulated for no purpose.

Here's another function for these MIR sequences: tissue-specific regulation of gene expression. This helps explain why cell types can differ dramatically even though they all contain the same genetic library:

Boundary elements are epigenetic regulatory sequences thatseparate transcriptionally active regions of the human genome from transcriptionally silent regions in a cell-type specific manner. In so doing, these critical regulatory elements help to provide distinct identities to different cell types, although they all contain identical sets of information. The regulatory programs that underlie these cell- and tissue-specific functions and identities are based largely on genome packaging. Genes that should not be expressed in a given cell or tissue are located intightly packaged regions of the genome and inaccessible to the transcription factors that would otherwise turn them on. These boundary elements help to establish the geography of genome packaging by delineating the margins between silent regions in which genes are not expressed and active regions in which they are. In this critical role, boundary elements help to control the timing and extent of gene expression across the entire genome. As a result, defects in the organization of the genome by boundary elements are highly relevant for physiological and pathological processes.

Another benefit of looking for design instead of junk lies in gaining knowledge that has positive applications. Dr. Lunyak comments, "This is an important discovery because the understanding of how RTEs punctuate messages encoded in the human genome can help researchers to develop treatments for a wide variety of human diseases, including aging." You have to understand punctuation in order to fix it. Would the "junk DNA" concept have led to this productive line of inquiry? Incidentally, we can thank the ENCODE Project for motivating Dr. Jordan's project.

Functional Transfer-RNA "Litter"

Another example is this research from UC Santa Cruz. The annoucement doesn't mention junk DNA, but it shows the benefit of looking for function. All geneticists know the well-characterized functions of transfer RNA (tRNA), but the research team wondered why the nucleus is "littered" with pieces of tRNA. Notice the focus on function:

Transfer RNA was characterized decades ago and plays a well-defined role, together with messenger RNA and ribosomal RNA, in translating the genetic instructions encoded in DNA into proteins. The discovery of RNA interference and genetic regulation by microRNA, however, revolutionized scientists'understanding of RNA's role in gene regulation and other cellularfunctions. Since then, a bewildering abundance and variety of small RNA molecules has been found in cells, and scientists are still struggling to sort out what they all do.

One doesn't struggle to find out what junk does. The search for function is a good motivation for research. It inquires: these pieces must be there for a reason. As for the "Transfer RNA fragments," the search for function is only in the early stages, but an important one was found:

"In the past five years, we're starting to see that transfer RNAs are not just translating genes into proteins, they are being chopped up into fragments that do other things in the cell," Lowe said. "Just recently, a subset of these fragments was found to suppress breast cancer progression."

Many women can be relieved these UCSC researchers didn't give up on "litter" they didn't understand.

Endogenous Retroviruses

As Casey Luskin has explained, endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) also have functions and are not junk. Current Biology published a "Quick Guide" to ERVs this month. The authors seem ambivalent about these former poster children for useless, selfish invaders in our genome. On one hand, they point to examples that appear invasive and parasitic. On the other, they show examples of function, where ERVs are expressed purposefully by the "host":

At each end of the ERV genome are long terminal repeats (LTRs), which contain regulatory sequences that can alter the expression, splicing, and polyadenylation of those host genes located near the ERV insertion site. LTRs regulate the cell typethat the virus replicates in by controlling its expression, and so can be co-opted by their hosts as alternative promoters, resulting in tissue-specific expression of host genes. Often, solitary LTRs have been generated by homologous recombination between the two LTRs present in a single ERV, resulting in loss of the internal sequence. Consequently, host genomes are peppered with solo LTRs of potential regulatory significance.

The best evolutionary story the authors come up with is that the host learns to "co-opt" its ERVs and turn them into benefits. However, a search for design of ERVs would be more productive. Why must we always view viruses as destructive invaders? Many are neutral or beneficial. Why not look at ERVs as functional at the ecological level, instead of portraying them in the Dawkins selfish-gene way? The latter would motivate scientists to want to eliminate them, overlooking their potential benefits. It certainly is not helpful to ascribe mental planning to evolution, as the authors say in conclusion:

Taken together, the evidence suggests that sequences sequestered from ERVs have had a considerable influence on the evolution of their vertebrate hosts. So, not only is evolution a tinkerer, but it is also a conscientious recycler.

That word "recycler" represents a tacit admission that there was function there in the first place.

The Future of Genomics

PLOS Biology published a collection of short essays under the title, "Where Next for Genetics and Genomics?" Gil McVean looked back at the revolution in understanding when geneticists turned their attention from junk to gems:

The study of genetic variation has, over the last decade, been turned from a polite discipline focused on the finer points of evolutionary modelling to a fast, exhilarating, and sometimes messy hunt for gems hiding within the mines of genome-wide, population-scale datasets, most of which have been from humans. The coming years will only see the data rush grow: bigger samples, new species, extinct species, data linked to phenotype, temporal data, and so on. What, in this great whirlwind, am I most excited by?

Data are at their most fun when they bring to light things you would never have imagined.

Although he thinks the future will revisit "some of those big questions in evolution that never went away," like "How does adaptation actually work?" (You mean that after 156 years they don't know?), one thing is clear: focusing on "the finer points of evolutionary modelling" is passé. What's "exhilarating" now is "the hunt for gems." Things evolutionists "would never have imagined" -- like finding functions in assumed junk -- have been the "most fun."

Conclusions

The demise of the "junk DNA" meme is a powerful reminder of the positive benefit of design thinking. "Junk DNA" was a science stopper, relegating non-coding sequences in the genome to the trash basket. Many years of fruitful research were lost because of it. Had scientists been focused ondesign and function back in the 1970s, who knows how much further along we would be?

Here is a challenge to all researchers to look at nature with a different focus. When something in a cell or organism appears useless, learn to think: It must be there for a reason. History has shown that approach often leads to fundamental new insights into the design of life, yielding practical applications for health and understanding.

In the battle for conservation hunters are the good guys?:Pros and cons.

Darwinism's lucky stars?

When Evolving Life, Don’t Forget the Astrophysics
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

Much of evolutionary theorizing takes place wearing a sun visor. The eyes of Darwinian biologists look down at what’s happening on the ground or in the water, avoiding the blinding sunlight overhead. But that sunlight, traversing 93 million miles of space, sheds light on realities that must not be ignored when trying to understand how life appeared and changed on the earth. 

Evolution is hard enough just waiting for the right lucky mutations to occur 

(Douglas Axe can tell you all about that).While hoping for mutational luck to add up and actually do something (hear Andrew Jones on that), the Darwinist must get the astrophysics right, too. Evolution will never get off the ground on an inhospitable planet. Some factors for habitability are (as mathematicians like to say) “non-trivial.”

Wild Swings

Many people have heard of “habitable zones” where liquid water can exist. Peter Kelley, however, reminds us that being in the zone is not enough — even if you orbit a lucky star. In news from the University of Washington,he announces, “Orbital variations can trigger ‘snowball’ states in habitable zones around sunlike stars.” 

Aspects of an otherwise Earthlike planet’s tilt and orbital dynamics can severely affect its potential habitability — even triggering abrupt “snowball states” where oceans freeze and surface life is impossible, according to new research from astronomers at the University of Washington.

The UW astronomers studied just two factors — obliquity and eccentricity. Separately and together, they can cause make-or-break situations on a nice planet trying to evolve life around a gentle star. Too much obliquity, or tilt, causes seasonal changes that can lead to advancing ice sheets, blanketing the planet with snow, even within the habitable zone. This was a surprising finding to those who thought high obliquity would actually warm the planet. 

The other factor, eccentricity, could have the same effect, swinging the planet in and out of the zone. Russell Dietrick, lead author of a forthcoming paper about this, cautioned that “We shouldn’t neglect orbital dynamics in habitability studies.” Fortunately, the earth scores well on both obliquity (23.5 degrees tilt) and eccentricity (0.0167, nearly circular).

Death Rays

Ah, space. So serene, so quiet, so timeless. Not! It’s a battle scene out there. Solar rays and cosmic rays can accelerate electrons to nearly the speed of light. If those killer rays hit DNA too often, you’re not going to get evolution; you’re going to get extinction. Fortunately, the earth has three protective measures against the barrage: the ozone layer, which filters UV light; a strong magnetic field, which traps charged particles; and the Van Allen Belts, which shield the surface from the most energetic electrons and ions.

The Van Allen Belts, discovered sxity years ago by America’s first satellites, are quite amazing. Since 2012, two Van Allen Probes have been studying the belts and how they interact with electrons from the solar wind. Some of the electrons become accelerated to near light speed in the outer Van Allen Belt. A few years ago, Baker et al. thought they had inferred a very thin, impenetrable “space shield” through which “killer electrons” could not pass. This was located in a “slot” between the inner and outer lobes. Now, Ozeke et al., writing in Nature Communications, finesse those findings somewhat without changing the conclusions about habitability. They claim there is not an impenetrable layer, but rather a more gradual decline of the energy of the electrons as they traverse the slot between the lobes. The bottom line, though, is that few of the high-energy particles reach the surface of the earth; most are stopped before they can reach the inner lobe. Do we see a Goldilocks situation here?

Here we presented evidence showing that ULF [ultra low frequency] wave radial diffusion can transport the ultra-relativistic electron inward down to L ~ 2.8 [earth radii] consistent with the observed electron flux. Specifically, we show that the rates of ULF wave transport are both: (i) fast enough to rapidly transport electrons inward to the barrier during the period of the duration of a typical magnetic storm; (ii) slow enough once the storm abates to subsequently maintain the observed very steep flux gradient at the inner edge of the apparent barrier and hence effectively prevent any subsequent penetration further Earthward into the slot.

Would other planets need something like Van Allen Belts to enable life? 

Such an apparent barrier to ultra-relativistic radiation flux might also be expected in other astrophysical plasma systems perturbed aperiodically by a bursty stellar wind. If such systems have different characteristics, such an apparent barrier could however be located at a different radial distance from the magnetised body than in the terrestrial case.

To keep the barrier at a safe radial distance, it would appear necessary to finely tune the outflow of the stellar wind, the strength of the magnetic field, the height of the lobes, and their resilience against large bursts from the star. Don’t forget the obliquity and eccentricity, too.

Astrophysical Nudging

Evolutionists sometimes relish destructive events, seeing them as blessings in disguise. Examples include the notion that ultraviolet radiation could have created the building blocks of life, or the idea that asteroid impacts could have delivered prebiotic molecules to the earth. Why not let death rays penetrate the atmosphere? Aren’t those agents of mutation, the celebrated source of genetic variations that Darwin can select? 

There’s a kinder, gentler astrophysical phenomenon that some Darwinians look to for a kind of celestial massage, nudging life to ebb and flow with its soothing fingers. It’s the notion of Milankovitch Cycles. These are long-term variations in celestial mechanics that might affect climate on the earth, giving opportunities for heat-loving and cold-loving organisms to flourish in their own epochs. The idea is controversial. Nobody knows exactly how much the climate could be affected by these very slight cyclic variations which interact and overlap in complex ways. 

A new paper in PNAS by Crampton et al. claims a correlation (but not causation) between “macroevolutionary rates” in certain marine organisms called graptoloids and “Milankovitch grand cycles.” Careful reading, though, reveals a lot of guessing and hoping.

There has been long-standing debate about the relative roles of intrinsic biotic interactions vs. extrinsic environmental factors as drivers of biodiversity change. Here, we show that, relatively early in the history of complex life, Milankovitch “grand cycles” associated with astronomical rhythms explain between 9 and 16% of variation in species turnover probability (extinction probability plus speciation probability) in a major Early Paleozoic zooplankton group, the graptoloids. These grand cycles would have modulated climate variability, alternating times of relative stability in the environment with times of maximum volatility, which influenced oceanic circulation and structure and thus, phytoplankton populations at the base of the marine food web

In looking at their Materials and Methods, though, we see only a very restricted time range and a restricted set of organisms. Graptoloids are filter-feeding hemichordates with some diversity, but no real “macroevolution” in terms of new body plans, organs or taxons. We also see that only 9 to 16 percent of variation fits the Milankovitch cycles; what about the other 91 percent to 84 percent that don’t fit? There is so much wiggle room in this theory, it could explain anything. “We cannot say with certainty whether the observed cyclicity in graptoloid species turnover is driven more by speciation or extinction,” they say. The idea that climate change is a “driver” of macroevolution seems silly. It’s like attributing the Cambrian explosion to a rise in oxygen.

Conclusions

Set aside this last idea as weak at best, since they admit in the end, “This may suggest that extinction in the graptoloids was influenced more strongly by these astronomical cycles than speciation, although further testing is required.” 

The observable, testable evidence presented earlier shows that astrophysical factors present more evidence of fine-tuning for habitability. When we observe tuning, we usually infer the actions of a tuner. A tuner had a goal in mind and brought the necessary factors together to achieve it. For life on earth, those factors included biological, geophysical, and astrophysical requirements. Unless you really want to believe in incredible luck, the combination of multiple, disparate, independent factors coming together to permit life speaks powerfully of design.

Why dragonflies remain a problem for Darwinism.

Scientist Names Dragonfly Species after Behe. Gets Roasted. Shrugs.
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

On an episode of ID the Future, paleoentomologist Günter Bechly discusses the new dragonfly fossil that he discovered, described, and named after intelligent design theorist Michael Behe – Chrismooreia michaelbehei. Download the podcast or listen to it here.


Bechly describes what’s remarkable about this stunning fossil, explains some problems dragonflies pose for Darwinism, and shares some of the strangely uninformed criticisms he’s received for naming the species after Behe.

Darwin of the gaps logic continues to collapse.

Human Fine Body Hair and the Myth of Junk Body Parts

David Klinghoffer

 you might call Junk Body Parts. This myth points to supposedly useless or defective anatomical features that give evidence of "unintelligent design." An example is the fine hair on our arms and legs. 

Isn't that nothing more than an evolutionary holdover from our apelike ancestors? A list of "God's Greatest Mistakes" that Jerry Coyne likes to promote asks wonderingly, "If our skin is meant to be mostly bare, why do we have the tiny ineffectual hairs (and separate muscles and nerves for them) at all?" Discover Magazine has a similar list of "Useless Body Parts" that observes, "Brows help keep sweat from the eyes, and male facial hair may play a role in sexual selection, but apparently most of the hair left on the human body serves no function."

If you ever entertained the intuition that that can't be right, that we'd be missing something without our arm and leg hair, well it looks like you were...right. Researchers at the University of Sheffield in England explain that it helps fend off unwanted parasites on our body. New Scientisthas the story:

We're often reminded that we're genetically almost identical to apes, so how did we become the baldest primate? Charles Darwin thought sexual selection explained it -- as he put it, women with less hair were more attractive and men became less hairy as a corollary. Alfred Russel Wallace, who didn't like the idea of sexual selection, attributed our naked form to God. In fact, we have the same density of hair follicles as chimps, it's just our hair is much finer.

So the question becomes, why does fine hair persist in humans?

Now Michael Siva-Jothy and Isabelle Dean of the University of Sheffield, UK, have a suggestion: fine hair helps us detect parasites as they crawl over our bodies. It also makes it harder for the bugs to bite.

The results of their experiments -- carried out by putting bedbugs like the one pictured on the arms of student volunteers -- suggest that hair lengthens the insect's search for a feeding site, and increases its chances of detection.

Which makes sense at the intuitive level and is, in any event, more that just a "suggestion." The study, "Human fine body hair enhances ectoparasite detection," is out now in the journal Biology Letters published by the Royal Society.

Why reductionism fails re:abiogenesis.

The Onset of Information on Earth

To a casual reader, the following four paragraphs may seem like a lot to grasp in a single sitting, but it is something that every truly curious person should want to know. Modern biology has revealed a fundamental fact of physical reality: life on earth is the product of information recorded inside the cell.When this information is translated by cellular machinery, it organizes inanimate matter (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc) into all the living things on earth. The mystery of life’s origin is therefore equal to the mystery of information. Where did the information come from that organized the very first living cell on earth? Did this information come together as an incredible chance event in chemical history, or was it the result of a deliberate act of design?

Whichever theory one follows, there is one thing that all people can be certain of. Prior to the organization of the first heterogeneous living cell, unique physical conditions had to arise to make that organization possible. These conditions enable the translation of recorded information into physical effects. They are brought about by the presence of two sets of objects operating in a very special system. To organize the first living cell, one set of objects must encode the information in a series of representations, and the other set of objects mustspecify what is being represented. This is how a "recipe" for the cell can exist in a universe where no object inherently means (represents or specifies) any other object. It requires both a representation and the means to interpret it.

But there is a third requirement. The organization of the system must also preserve the naturaldiscontinuity that exists between the representations and their effects. By doing so, a group of  arbitrary relationships are established that otherwise wouldn't exist. That set of relationships is what we now call The Genetic Code.

The unique physical conditions described here are the universal requirements of translation. Theywere proposed in theory, confirmed by experiment, and are not even controversial. They are also something that the living cell shares with every other instance of translated information ever known to exist. The genetic translation system provides objective physical evidence of the first irreducible organic system on earth, and from it, all other organic systems follow. It is irreducible because without both sets of objects operating in the system, translation cannot occur, and the cell could not be organized. Moreover, this system isnot the product of Darwinian evolution. Instead, it is the source of evolution (i.e. the physical conditions that enable life's capacity to change and adapt over time) and as the first instance ofspecification on earth, it marks the rise of the genome and the starting point of heredity.

And as a final indication of just how profound the appearance of this system was, an almost impossible observation remains – not only must these objects arise from a non-information (inanimate) environment, but the details of their construction must also be simultaneously encoded in the very information that they make possible. Without these things, life on earth would simply not exist.

God's 'folly' defeats man's genius.

Spiders Have Eight (Well-Designed) Eyes
Evolution News & Views 


Have you ever wanted eyes in the back of your head? Spiders have eight eyes, compared to our two. They can boast of better vision than ours on some counts; sharp, color vision that extends into the ultraviolet. Their ample set of peepers allows for division of labor: the main pair in front helps them see detail, while the smaller eyes wrapped around their heads warn them of looming threats. Stephanie Pappas wrote about spider eyes on Live Science recently.
"We see that division of labor within that visual system... That's pretty cool if you think about it, because we only have one pair of eyes."
That was actually a quote from Skye Long, a doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who decided to test and find out what the extra eyes are for. She outfitted an enclosure for her 46 jumping spider subjects and used paint to "blindfold" the principal eyes on a third of them, and the adjacent, smaller eyes (anterior lateral pair) on another third, leaving one third blindfold-free. (Don't worry about the spiders; the paint could be easily removed.)
Then she used an iPod Touch to create images of a black dot growing or shrinking in size. When seeing the "looming threat," the spiders backed up quickly and raised their front legs in defense, as if they felt scared -- even when the principal eyes were covered. This means the anterior lateral pair are crucial for alerting the spider to potential dangers. What are the other four eyes used for? That's what Long wants to find out next.
This would have been a "pretty cool" Halloween animal story, featuring a nice, experimental science project, had not Skye Long wandered off into evolutionary tale-telling:
That means the secondary eyes are crucial for alerting the spider to dangerous motion, Long said. Spider eyes are a "really cool step in evolution," she added; insects have compound eyes with multiple lenses, and some areas of those eyes have certain functions. Spiders, on the other hand, separate out visual functions across their heads.
"This is a different pathway that evolution has taken to allow a very small animal to have a very extensive visual system," Long said.
Right. No matter how cool or well-designed the adaption, just say it evolved. It's a "really cool step in evolution." It's a "different pathway evolution has taken." The blind, aimless, purposeless process of natural selection gave spiders a "very extensive visual system." Turn in your paper and get an A.
Here's a better way. Look what researchers at the Optical Society of Americaare doing with spiders. Incredible as it sounds, they are taking spider silk and using it for fiber optics. Spider silk is already prized as an ideal material: it's strong, flexible, and biodegradable. Now, a team has found it can also transmit and guide light almost as well as glass fibers.
One team is using it as a light guide in photonic chips, while another is trying to imitate the proteins in silk from spiders and silkworms to be able to manufacture it. This second team has already made a silk-based "plastic" that can be used for everything from biodegradable cups to implantable devices that dissolve in the body. Fiorenzo Omenetto presented his work in a superb TED Talk that raised the audience to their feet without him once mentioning evolution. And he is getting grants from the NSF!
Evolution is a straw scarecrow whenever it appears in biological research. The whole story is intelligent design, in the animals and plants studied, in the experiments devised to gain knowledge about them, and in the applications they lead to. Animal tricks become science's treats.

Black lives don't matter?:Pros and cons.

Would you buy a used theory from these people?

For Selling Evolution, a Little Knowledge Is a Glorious Thing

Jonathan Witt | @JonathanRWitt

The authors of a recent  Bioscience paper say their survey research shows “that Americans’ views on evolution are significantly influenced by their knowledge about this theory.” Many Americans reject evolution, the paper suggests, because they’re uniformed. 

But there are problems with the survey and the conclusions drawn from the results. I’ll get to those in a bit, but first I want to confess that I was suspicious of the paper’s claim from the outset because in my experience, many Americans accept evolution because they are uninformed. That is, they have heard the popular arguments for the theory but have encountered little if any of the strongest evidence against it. 

Even many highly educated evolutionists betray a curious ignorance of evidence against evolution, evidence that sits in plain sight both in and beyond the peer-reviewed literature. Jonathan Wells details a recent instance of that here. 

To be sure, one can know various facts that make trouble for evolution and still accept it. But the more of this eyebrow-raising information you know, the more mental gymnastics you’ll need to perform in order to embrace modern evolutionary theory — contortions that many Americans are either unable or unwilling to perform. 

Rendering evolution palatable for those Americans means serving them just the right concoction of evolution ed. — not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Call it the Goldilocks zone of evolutionary pedagogy. 

This, I think, is why the pro-Darwin lobby resists our recommended policy of teaching public high school biology students more rather than less about evolution — the evidence not only for it but also against it. 

Evolution Porridge

Like baby bear’s porridge in the Goldilocks tale, it’s just right to know that evolution is not a purely random process — that natural selection plays a clever role. But it’s too hot to know that studies of microbes such as E. coli suggest that there are severe limits to how far the random mutation/natural selection mechanism can evolve an organism, even given millions of years.

Pro-evolution educators also regard it as just right to know that beak size has “evolved” among the finches of the Galápagos Islands, a tidbit that regularly pops up in high school biology textbooks. But it’s not helpful to know — and thus rarely mentioned — that their beaks vary only within a narrow range,or that finches long viewed as separate species  actually interbreed. 

Again, it’s just right to know that the vertebrate eye is wired “backwards,” creating a tiny blind spot in our eyes, something one might neatly explain by reference to the trial-and-error process of evolution. Darwinists love to mention this. But too hot to touch is the knowledge that specialists in the vertebrate eye have shown decisively that the so-called “backward wiring” is actually a clever engineering solution to the vertebrate eye’s high demand for oxygen.

It’s also just right to know that the fossil record suggests that the history of life on Earth moves from microbes to larger, brainless life forms on the ocean floor, to sophisticated sea creatures in the Cambrian, to land animals and now humans. But it’s too much to further learn that the pattern of the fossil record is one in which new animal body plans appear suddenly. It’s equally unhelpful to learn that even some leading paleontologists view this as a major unsolved problem for evolution, not something to be blithely waved away be vague talk of an incomplete fossil record. 

This problem is so unhelpful for selling evolution that Darwinists in Texas tried to  remove it from the state biology standards last year. (I know, because I was there during the hearings) This information about the pattern of the fossil record, you see, makes for papa bear porridge — too hot for impressionable young minds to taste. 

So that’s my experience. And that’s the experience of scientists such as Michael Behe (professor, Lehigh University), Douglas Axe (former postdoc researcher at University of Cambridge), Jonathan Wells (PhD, UC Berkeley), and others. Time and again they’ve had their nuanced arguments against blind evolution reduced to unrecognizable strawmen, the better to blow the arguments over. 

Wells, in fact, has written two books on the Darwinists’ zeal for what I’m calling Goldilocks pedagogy. Both detail how evolutionists obsessively recycle debunked factoids about evolution, and resist including updated information in textbooks that would show why these icons of evolution collapse under scrutiny. 

The Survey on Evolution Acceptance

So, now let’s return to the new survey reported on in the journal Bioscience. Do the results really demonstrate that knowing more about science and evolution increases a student’s willingness to accept evolutionary theory? What follows are some things that heighten my skepticism.

First, the study’s conclusions run counter to some earlier studies. That doesn’t mean the study is wrong. But somebody got it wrong, and it might just as easily have been these researchers as the other ones. 

As for the survey itself, some of the wording, and some of the reasoning used to interpret the survey results, suggest to me that the authors are uninformed about important contours of the evolution debate. 

To be fair, there is one promising moment early on in their Bioscience paper describing their survey. “Extant surveys … may not fully capture Americans’ views about evolutionary theory,” they write. “For the current study, we therefore developed a new measure of acceptance.” 

Good! A lot of the older evolution surveys are simplistic, missing key options among the set of multiple choice answers.

The authors of the new study underscore the problem, citing one prominent older poll, then explain how they tried to fix things:

[The Gallup] poll asks which of three options comes closest to respondents’ views on the origin and development of human beings: (1) human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process; (2) human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process; and (3) God created human beings pretty much in their current form in the last 10,000 years or so. Because this question offers three possible answers, it is better than most. However, these three options do not allow for any nuance about God’s role in evolution; the “guidance” could take many forms. We thus added a fourth answer option, reflecting a deistic view: God set up the laws of nature, which then unfolded on their own.

That’s a step in the right direction. Many contemporary biologists fall squarely under this new deism option, while nevertheless styling themselves theistic evolutionists. Why? I hesitate to guess at motive, but many of them are church-going Christians, so it’s possible they want to minimize the difference between their deistic picture of origins, and orthodox Christian theism’s picture of a cosmic maker getting his hands dirty at multiple points in his fashioning of the world. 

The authors of this latest survey noticed the difference nonetheless. Good for them. It’s a better survey question thanks to the addition.

The Survey’s Big, Big Gap

Unfortunately, the researchers left out one major option. Call it option five: God made various plant and animal forms in a series of discrete creative bursts over many millions of years. God created human beings pretty much in their current form. Some microevolution, and some mass extinctions, occurred in the history of life, but there was no macroevolution giving rise to fundamentally new biological forms.

That is a major option to leave out of the survey! Some prominent intelligent design thinkers have made arguments that place them squarely in the option five category. Their work has put them in the national spotlight at times, and landed at least one of the books on the New York Times bestseller list. 

That this new survey doesn’t even offer a multiple choice option for this prominent view is telling. It tells us the survey makers either don’t understand, or don’t care to capture in their survey, this prominent part of the ID/evolution landscape. It also tells us we should view the survey and its results with a healthy measure of skepticism.

This is only the first of several things that get muddled in the survey. At another point the researchers write that “we asked people to choose which of the following options best described how they think animals and plants came to exist on Earth.” They give four options. The latter three represent deistic evolution, theistic evolution, and materialistic/naturalistic evolution respectively. What about the first of the four options? It reads: “Animals and plants were created by God in more or less their current form.”

But what if you reject the latter three options but don’t like this first option either. What if you are convinced that many creatures made directly by God have gone extinct? What if you think that all dog breeds are descended from wolves? Many people might consider it a real stretch to say that a wiener dog and a wolf have “more or less” the same form. What if you think that some pretty distinct cat species share a common ancestor, but that cats and dogs do not share a common ancestor? I’m describing a significant swath of the American public here, but there’s not a single answer option for them on this multiple choice question.

Those are glaring problems. There are subtler but still significant problems at other points in the survey. 

Conflating Understanding and Acceptance of Evolution

The authors ask if there’s a positive relation between acceptance of evolutionary theory and knowledge of the theory. They answer in the affirmative. But some of their questions conflate acceptance and understanding, thus invalidating any statistical results on this score.

One of the multiple choice questions reads:

Bats’ wings and dogs’ legs are made up of the same kinds of bones in the same arrangement. Scientists think this is because:

a.Bats’ wings and dogs’ legs work the same way.

b.Bats descended from dogs.

c.Bats and dogs descend from a common ancestor.

d.This arrangement is the best possible for all mammals.

This portion of the survey purports to tease out how well the respondent understands the theory of evolution, separate and apart from whether she actually accepts it. But any skeptic of modern evolutionary theory dialed into the debate knows that scientists do not all think alike on this matter. 

Most biologists would check off answer c, but thousands of scientists, including some biologists, reject option c. If you know this, you may bridle at this survey question. It smacks of the “science says” bluff that pro-evolution lobbyists habitually indulge in. (That suspicion is reinforced by the fact that none of the alternative options capture the standard ID position in an accurate, non-tendentious way.) 

So, if you came to this survey question and bridled at its slanted language, how might you respond? You might take a deep breath and remind yourself that the survey question is designed merely to determine if you know what evolutionists think is the right answer. Or you might be sufficiently annoyed by the misleading language that you refuse to fill in the answer c bubble, even knowing that this is what most biologists think.

Another set of questions tries to see if you are a slave to authority or, instead, are willing to think independently. But a slave to which authority? What if you view the authority of the “science says” and “scientists think” lobby as suspect? What if you insist on thinking independently about all that, too?  

If so, you might also bridle at this survey question:

Scientists think that DDT resistance evolved in mosquitos because:

a.Individual mosquitos learned to avoid DDT and passed that ability to their babies.

b.Individual mosquitos that did not have a resistance to DDT died, so only those that were resistant to DDT had babies. 

c.Individual mosquitos became resistant to DDT because they needed to be.

Answer b is right, taken in isolation, but it doesn’t quite fit the setup. The setup asks what caused DDT resistance to evolve in mosquitos. But under answer b, the DDT-resistant mosquitoes have already evolved. They already exist. All that happens in c is that they come to dominate a mosquito population. Recognizing this, a respondent could view all three answer options as flawed.

The respondent might then go fishing for the least wrong answer. Well, hmm, a dilemma. Option c might be referring to a random mutation event that conferred the DDT resistance. It incorrectly frames it as something the mosquitoes were striving toward, but at least option c mentions, however obscurely, the mutational event that generated the DDT resistance in the first place. So perhaps that’s the least wrong of the wrong answers, the respondent might conclude, and so pick option c. 

For this more nuanced and knowledgeable reflection and response, the respondent would get dinged as less knowledgeable.

Question Why One Might Question Authority

As for the section measuring your attitude towards authority, there is cause for concern here as well. A series of questions are designed to see if the respondent has a slavish regard for authority, which would compromise his ability to do science and therefore presumably mean he was less likely to accept evolution. Is it more important, this series of questions asked, for a kid to be “respectful of their elders or independent,” “creative or well behaved,” “good-mannered or curious,” “self-reliant or obedient”? 

The survey found that those who accept naturalistic evolution tilt away from the respectful/well-behaved/good mannered/obedient set of options (β = –1.68, p < .001). But is this because such people have been schooled in the scientific virtues of creativity, curiosity, independence, and self-reliance and so are better equipped to appreciate evolution? Maybe, but as every first-semester student of statistics or logic learns, correlation isn’t causation. 

And there is another possible cause the survey makers appear to ignore. Atheist Richard Dawkins has said that Darwin’s theory of evolution made it possible to be an “intellectually fulfilled atheist.” Some people may be attracted to evolutionary theory precisely because they want to cast off the authority of a religious upbringing, and of a father God they view as morally constricting. Such people, particularly if they were raised in a religious home, might well put less stock in being “obedient” and “respectful of their elders.”

I am not advocating here for one cause over the other. My point is more modest: The survey makers should have considered both possible causes and not merely assumed the one over the other. 

What we are advocating for is more evolution education in our schools — exposing students to evidence not just for modern evolutionary theory but also to evidence from the peer-reviewed literature that challenges aspects of the theory. Let students grapple critically with the evidence pro and con. That’s good science education. 

Tiny homes; The next big thing?

Paradise stolen?

Another display of Darwinism's immunity to falsification?

Hunter: With Darwinism, “The Theory Is Always Driving the Ideas In Spite of the Evidence”
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

Here on a new episode of ID the Future is a quite a neat and even charming conversation between biologist Ray Bohlin and biophysicist Cornelius Hunter. Dr. Hunter offers another instance illustrating how with Darwinism, “the theory is always driving the ideas in spite of the evidence.” It’s this “religious” motivation behind the theory that Hunter notes as a theme in his writing here at Evolution News.

Listen to the podcast or download it here.

Hunter explains how mitochondria, the powerhouse of eukaryotic cells, pose a powerful and newly acute problem for evolution. For years evolutionists thought that some early cells must somehow have brought other cells inside of them, “gobbled them up” in technical terms, and those other cells then mysteriously evolved into mitochondria. 

But recent research undermines that notion. Why do many evolutionists then still cling to the idea? Because, as Hunter says, in many ways, religion not empiricism drives science. Evidence is interpreted to fit the theory, rather the theory being driven by the evidence. Funny state of affairs.

All data is created equal?:pros and cons.

Been there done that and then some.

The undead continue to wander Darwinism's badlands.

There You Go Again, Nathan Lents
Jonathan Wells

Nathan Lents is professor of biology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. In 2015, Dr. Lents wrote  on his “Human Evolution” blog” blog, “The human eye is a well-tread [sic] example of how evolution can produce a clunky design.” It’s clunky because

the photoreceptor cells of the retina appear to be placed backward, with the wiring facing the light and the photoreceptor facing inward…. This is not an optimal design for obvious reasons. The photons of light must travel around the bulk of the photoreceptor cell in order to hit the receiver tucked in the back. It’s as if you were speaking into the wrong end of a microphone.

According to Lents, “there are no working hypotheses about why the vertebrate retina is wired in backwards. It seems to have been a random development that then ‘stuck’ because a correction of that magnitude would be very difficult to pull off with random mutations” in the course of evolution.

In 2017, I published a book titled  Zombie Science, which included a chapter on the human eye showing why the “clunky design” claim doesn’t fit the evidence. The claim is false because the photoreceptor cells in the human retina are so active that they must be nourished by a dense network of blood vessels and constantly renewed by a layer of specialized epithelial cells. If the blood vessels and epithelial cells were in front of the photoreceptor cells, where Lents thinks they should be, we would be almost blind. Instead, human eyes (and the eyes of other animals with backbones) are  very well designed.

Apparently, Dr. Lents didn’t read my book. That’s OK; I don’t have time to read every book written even by my own colleagues. Instead, Dr. Lents just published his own book titled Human Errors , in which he repeats on page 5 his claim that the human eye is badly designed because the photoreceptor cells “appear to be installed backward.”

Over thirty years ago, Richard Dawkins had used this claim as an argument for Darwinian evolution in his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker. Since then the argument has been repeated by evolutionary biologists George Williams, Kenneth R. Miller, Douglas Futuyma, and Jerry Coyne, among others.

But even before Dawkins published his claim in 1986, scientists writing in standard textbooks on eye physiology had shown why the “backwards retina” is functionally better than its opposite. Those scientists and textbooks included Gordon Walls in The Vertebrate Eye (Hafner, 1963); Sidney Futterman in Adler’s Physiology of the Eye (Mosby, 1975); and Paul Henkind, Richard Hansen, and Jeanne Szalay in Physiology of the Human Eye and the Visual System (Harper & Row, 1979). Abundant evidence that Dawkins’s claim was false had also been published in scientific journals in  1967, 1969, 1973, and 1985.

Obviously, Dawkins didn’t bother to check the scientific literature before claiming that the human eye is badly designed. He simply assumed that Darwinian evolution is true and that he knew how an eye should be designed. Williams, Miller, Futuyma, Coyne, and Lents also neglected to check the scientific literature when they repeated Dawkins’s false claim.

For most people (myself included), science is an enterprise that pursues truth by comparing hypotheses with evidence. For some people, science is an enterprise that searches for natural explanations on the assumption that everything can be explained in terms of material objects and the forces among them. Mind, spirit, free will, and God are excluded from consideration. The first is empirical science; the second is applied materialistic philosophy. When people persist in defending materialistic explanations even when they don’t fit the evidence (and are thus empirically dead), I call this enterprise  “zombie science.” 

The argument that the bad design of human eyes provides evidence for Darwinian evolution and against intelligent design is an example of zombie science.