In the News

In Christian Darwinism - Why Theistic Evolution Fails As Science and Theology (Broadman and Holman, November 2011), mathematician Dembski and journalist O'Leary address a powerful new trend to accommodate Christianity with atheist materialism, via acceptance of Darwinian ("survival of the fittest") evolution.

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This is very technical, but the research shows that the randomness of Darwinism should be seriously questioned.

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From the Oxford Journal...

"Throughout evolution, eukaryotic genomes have been invaded by transposable elements (TEs). Little is known (emphasis mine) about the factors leading to genomic proliferation of TEs, their preferred integration sites and the molecular mechanisms underlying their insertion. We analyzed hundreds of thousands of nested TEs in the genome, i.e. insertions of TEs into existing ones. We first discovered that most TEs insert within specific 'hotspots' along the targeted TE. In particular, retrotransposed Alu elements contain a non-canonical single nucleotide hotspot for insertion of other Alu sequences. We next devised a method for identification of integration sequence motifs of inserted TEs that are conserved within the targeted TEs. This method revealed novel sequences motifs characterizing insertions of various important TE families: Alu, hAT, ERV1 and MaLR. Finally, we performed a global assessment to determine the extent to which young TEs tend to nest within older transposed elements and identified a 4-fold higher tendency of TEs to isnert into existing TEs than to insert within non-TE intergenic regions. Our analysis demonstrates that TEs are highly biased to insert within certain TEs, in specific orientations and within specific targeted TE positions. TE nesting events also reveal new characteristics of the molecular mechanisms underlying transposition."

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These are not isolated results...such as the identical exon substitutions in the GULO pseudogene in humans, chimpanzee and the guinea pig and the linear pattern of placement of retroviral elements among mice and rats.

A story on NPR by Barbara Bradley Hagerty reports on the question...Do universities discriminate against religious conservatives?

Some professors and students say they do, but it's not an easy charge to pin down.

When Elaine Howard Ecklund began asking top scientists whether they believe in God, she got a surprise. Ecklund, an assistant professor at Rice University and author of the book Science Vs. Religion, polled 1,700 scientists at elite universities. Contrary to the stereotype that most scientists are atheists, she says, nearly half of them say they are religious. But when she did follow up interviews, she found they practice a "closeted faith."

"They just do not want to bring up that they are religious in an academic discussion. There's somewhat of almost a culture of suppression surrounding discussions of religion at these kinds of academic institutions," Ecklund says.

She says the scientists worried that their colleagues would believe they were politically conservative - or worse, subscribed to the theory of intelligent design. Ecklund says they all insisted on anonymity.

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Horrors...the conservative professor may even believe that intelligent design is plausible!

The culture of suppression reminds me of a passage in the Christian Bible, Romans 1:18-19.

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From ENV...

This past June, Discovery Institute announced it was settling its public documents lawsuit against the California Science Center (CSC). The lawsuit had been filed last December after CSC refused to disclose public documents pertaining to its cancellation of a rental contract with American Freedom Alliance (AFA) to allow AFA to show a pro-intelligent design video at CSC's facilities. Per the terms of the settlement, CSC was to deliver to Discovery Institute many of the documents which we originally requested. Those documents have now been delivered, and combined with other previously known documents, they reveal striking evidence of CSC's viewpoint discrimination against intelligent design (ID) in AFA's case.

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From BBC News...Charles Darwin may have been wrong when he argued that competition was the major driving force of evolution.

He imagined a world in which organisms battled for supremacy and only the fittest survived.

But new research identifies the availability of "living space", rather than competition, as being of key importance for evolution.

The study conducted by PhD student Sarda Sahney and colleagues at the University of Bristol is published in Biology Letters.

Focusing on land animals - amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds - the scientists showed that the amount of biodiversity closely matched the availability of "living space" through time.

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So, we are asked to believe that opportunity alone causes complex body parts to "emerge". We don't exact know how. Maybe it's the "miracle" of time. Does "life's creative power will these changes?

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Cincinnati researchers are reporting on the discovery of a bug with bifocals.

"To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of truly bifocal lenses in the extant animal kingdom," the researchers state in the August 24 cover feature of the life-science journal Current Biology.

The new article is an exploration of two eyes of the larvae of the sunburst diving beetle (Thermonectus marmoratus). The two eyes have the bifocal lens, which the researchers have found in four of the larvae's 12 eyes, says researcher Elke K. Buschbeck, a UC associate professor of biology.

The article explains that using two retinas and two distinct focal planes that are substantially separated, the larvae can more efficiently use these bifocals.

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The miracle of natural selection plus time or the creative genius of an intelligent designer?

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From ENV...biologist Kathryn Applegate's astonishing attempt to attribute the bacterial flagellum to "magic" rather than intelligent design. But, another problem with her critique of ID is that she apparently does not understand what the theory of intelligent design actually proposes.

ID would claim that the process is NOT undirected.

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