The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In "Darwin's failures are positive sources of information for ID," I noted

Failures of Darwinism are not merely a negative. They are a positive. The growing number of stress points at which Darwinism fails can, taken together, form a picture, one that points to general laws that govern how high levels of information are produced in life forms.

And in "All renovation projects start as teardowns"

Throwing out assorted Darwinisms is like renovating a badly treated century home. The first thing we do is rent a dumpster. Because we must clear away the rubbish to rescue the core value. One outcome is that 99% of the initial work is, unavoidably, teardown.

The teardown takes longer and costs more than we hope. But now we're here. So what's next?

Next is assessing the size and shape of the fail points. What are the similarities and the differences between the gaps that Darwinism* cannot bridge without violating the boundary of what, it is generally agreed, cannot happen by chance in this universe. Darwinists do everything they can to stop people from applying that obvious measure.

Ignoring them, can we gain information that enables us to make successful predictions that can be generalized?

It's hard to say what comes afterward simply because we need the answers to some of these questions to know precisely where further research into actual causes of evolution would pay off.

Put another way: Intelligent design will prevail when engineers rule.

*Darwin himself usually resorted to slippery, well-executed rhetoric at these points. We admire such displays but prefer information.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain. Follow UD News at Twitter!

In "The last five years: Darwin's failures are positive sources of information for ID," I noted

Failures of Darwinism are not merely a negative. They are a positive. The growing number of stress points at which Darwinism fails can, taken together, form a picture, one that points to general laws that govern how high levels of information are produced in life forms. Obviously, as with dpi, the more such points, the clearer the picture. We can't have too many of them, though eventually, there will be enough to work productively with.

Throwing out assorted Darwinisms is like renovating a badly treated century home. The first thing we do is rent a dumpster. Because we must clear away the rubbish to rescue the core value.
One outcome is that 99% of the initial work is, unavoidably, teardown.

In the case of evolution, as Mike Behe realizes, we must compute the edge of natural selection's ability to create new information: Just beyond that edge may lie the principal sources of new information.

Of course, computing the edge involves a number of questions: Is it the same for all life forms? If not, which ones differ and what characteristics might they have in common?

Of course, sidelining the usual, tiresome, untethered "Darwin dunit" accounts would be a plus, but it is certainly not the motive for the project.

See also: How far has ID come in the last five years

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.
Follow UD News at Twitter!

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

From "Geometry of Sex: How Body Size Could Lead to New Species" (ScienceDaily, Aug. 29, 2011), we learn:

Different species of scincid lizards, commonly known as skinks, rarely interbreed, but it's not for lack of trying. According to Jonathan Richmond, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey, different species of skinks in western North America will often try to mate with each other when given the opportunity, but mechanical difficulties caused by differing body sizes can cause these encounters to fail.

After observing hundreds of cross-species mating attempts in the lab, Richmond and his colleagues developed a computational model showing how size differences create reproductive barriers between skink species. In order to align their genitals for successful insemination, the male must corkscrew his body around the female. Once the sizes of the male and female diverge outside the threshold of the researchers' model, successful mating was very rare. The model elucidates the role body size plays in splitting skinks into separate species. For skinks, it apparently isn't behavioral preference that prevents gene flow between species. It's the mechanics of body size.

This is most enlightening, but it doesn't really explain how speciation happened.

What it really explains is why "de-speciation" doesn't happen in skinks Even discussing this question implies, without saying it, that retreats from speciation are common and normal in life forms. (The dog, wolf, and coyote never succeeded in making a clean break, but then they remained within a size range, more or less.*)

Given that most skinks would be better off, from the point of view of spreading their genes, in a large population of just-right mates, we still need to understand how size came to vary so much despite that fact.

"As size diverges, the corkscrew fails," Richmond said. "In this case, it just happens that this is about the only thing necessary to get the ball rolling for speciation."

Wait a minute, Dr. Redmond. We haven't yet figured out why size diverges so much. But this is a promising start.

Here's a truly formidable scientific explanation from a dog: "If you're not with the one ya love, ya love the one yer with! Yap! Yap! Yap!"

See also: Land-based fish helps researchers assess how animals moved to land – and stayed there

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain. Follow UD News at Twitter!

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In "Stone tools shed light on early human migrations" (Nature, August 31, 2011), Matt Kaplan tells us that "Hominins with different tool-making technologies coexisted,"

The axes, found in Kenya by Christopher Lepre, a palaeontologist at Columbia University in New York, and his team are estimated to be around 1.76 million years old. That's 350,000 years older than any other complex tools yet discovered.

e significant finding is that the hand axes from 1.5 million years ago were found beside primitive chopping tools of a type used a million years earlieDid one type of human make both types of tools? Stone toolmaking is hard work, and it may be that no one saw a need to embellish a device that worked fine as it was for chopping meat or vegetables.

File under: Older than thought

See also: Stone tools nearly 2 million years old – and Michael Cremo is still wrong?

Were people cooking two million years ago?

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain. Follow UD News at Twitter!