Discovery Institute vs Geologist

This is really amusing. Especially this bit:

I only hope the materialist, reductionist scales fall off your eyes one day. Until then, I feel sorry for your students.

(material omitted – afarensis)

The “scales falling off the eyes” bit is apparently derived from the Bible. I’ve only heard that phrase once previously, when speaking with a devout Christian friend. It’s a curious tactic for him to employ. I certainly can’t say it compelled me: basically it means that someone was deluded or wrong, and that a new piece of information shifts their perspective fundamentally.

They just can’t keep religion out of their discourse, no matter how hard they try to deny the connection between Christianity and ID. Check out the rest of the post.

Hat Tip: Ptaylor

Mutations That Affect Phenotype

Pardon the awkward title of this post. What I would like to do in this post is revisit something I mentioned in the first part of my review of Science and Human Origins in that post I mentioned a paper by Jianzhi Zhang called “Parallel Functional Changes in the Digestive RNases of Ruminants and Colobines by Divergent Amino Acid Substitutions.” The paper looked at mutations in the pancreatic RnNase of ruminants and colobines and found nine mutations in colobine RNase and five -different- mutations in ruminant RNase. The fact that Zhang found fourteen different mutations that affected pancreatic in much the same way prompted Zhang to come up with an estimate of how many different mutations can affect the function of the Rnase. He concluded that this number was somewhere between 16-44. So, of those 16-44 theoretical mutations 14 had been identified.

I have found a more graphic example to illustrate the point. The picture below illustrates the Melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R)

(Picture Source)

The picture is self explanatory. The black colored dots are mutations that cause melanism, the green dots are mutations linked to coat color changes in rock pocket mice, the red are mutations that cause red fur or hair, the blue are mutations that cause red hair in humans and possibly melanism in other species. Not shown are the mutations in the -COOH that affect coat color in retrievers and other dogs.

The point is that there are many ways to a new function and to say that unless a given specified pathway is followed evolution can’t happen is clearly nonsense.

Majerus and Mundy (2003) Mammalian melanism: natural selection in black and white. TRENDS in Genetics: 19(11)585-588
Zhang (2003) Parallel Functional Changes in the Digestive RNases of Ruminants and Colobines by Divergent Amino Acid Substitutions. Molecular Biology and Evolution 20(8):1310-1317

Book Review: Science and Human Origins – Chapter One: Part One

This little book is one of a class that was more common twenty years ago, when any acute literary critic thought he could demolish Darwin. Mr. Syme has, however, the advantage of having read some of the best works both for and against Darwinism, and is thus able to support his views by quoting writers of eminence. He begins boldly. In the table of contents of the first chapter we find such headings as, “A fatal admission—Darwin’s definition misleading—Refutes his own theory.” But when we look for the proof of these statements we find they rest on misconception, misrepresentation, or misquotation. A few examples will show that this is the case. – Alfred Russel Wallace 1891. Another darwinian critic. Nature 43 (1119): 529-530.

The above quote from Alfred Russel Wallace comes from his review of On the Modification of Organisms by David Syme. As the quote shows, criticizing Darwin as been a cottage industry since on the Origin of Species was published in 1859. As the above quote also shows, the reliance on misconception, misrepresentation, and misquotation has been a standard tactic in the arsenal of creationists for over one hundred years. As we will see below (and in future posts), the latest entry, Science and Human Origins, in the cottage industry continues this illustrious tradition.

Science and Human Origins was written by Ann Gauger, Douglas Axe, and Casey Luskin. Science and Human Origins was published by the Discovery Institute earlier this year and created quite ruckus in the science blogosphere when it did. You can see this post (and the links therein) for additional details. Originally I was just going to review the section on fossils but have decided to review the entire book – or at least those parts I feel competent to deal with. This post looks at chapter one.

Luskin On Neanderthals And A Johanson Redux

Luskin, Science and Human Origins, and Dik-Dik Feces

The Discovery Institute recently published a book entitled Science and Human Origins that gives the ID take on human evolution. The book is authored by Douglas Axe, Anne Gauger (Both of the Biologic Institute), and Casey Luskin (from the Discovery Institute) From the book description at Amazon:

Evidence for a purely Darwinian account of human origins is supposed to be overwhelming. But is it? In this provocative book, three scientists challenge the claim that undirected natural selection is capable of building a human being, critically assess fossil and genetic evidence that human beings share a common ancestor with apes, and debunk recent claims that the human race could not have started from an original couple.

The book was reviewed in five parts by Paul McBride (starting here). This review created some defensive posts from the folks that created the book, but the dik-dik feces hit the fan when Carl Zimmer asked a simple question (be sure to read all four parts). Nick Matzke captured some of the fun over at The Panda’s Thumb. What caught my attention were the comments referring to the fossil record of human evolution, which prompted a defensive post by Luskin in which he promised to discuss the issue further in future posts. In the meantime he has excerpted several sections of his chapter in the book. In this post I will look at this excerpt. Note, I have ordered the book and will be reviewing Luskin’s chapter on paleoanthropology as soon as it has arrived and I have had a chance to read it. If this excerpt is any example, however, i will have to set my expectations pretty low.

A Response to Joseph Kuhn’s Dissecting Darwinism

I was alerted to creationist article published in the Proceedings of the Baylor University Medical Center via Why Evolution Is True. The author of the paper is Joseph Kuhn, MD who claims that “…surgeons are uniquely capable of gathering information, making observations, and reaching conclusions about scientific discoveries.” For the most part it is your standard ID mumbo jumbo and has been ably dissected elsewhere. One part, however, caught my eye:

The transitional species from primitive primates to man have been illustrated in textbooks for over 100 years. These drawings form the visual imagery that supports Darwinian evolution for high school students, university students, medical students, and the public. However, honest dissent exists in the accuracy of most of the transitional prehominoids, with many found to be frauds or animal species. Reconstructions based on fragmentary and scattered bones, surface bones, and gross morphologic features are limited. Anomalous findings of stone tools, bones, and hundreds of other artifacts have suggested that Homo sapiens were actually present 2 to 7 million years ago (at the same time as early proposed transitional species)…(reference omitted – afarensis) Certainly, there has been no additional transitional mutant or species change from the first generally accepted Homo sapiens over 200,000 years ago.

Can I Get a Design Inference?

Intelligent design advocates are fond of trying to claim archaeology is a fellow design science – basically the part of archaeology that deals with identifying whether an item is an artifact (and hence designed) or a product of natural processes. The rest of archaeology – the part where archaeologists use the patterned distribution of artifacts to infer something about the people who made them – gets quietly ignored.

Count The Wrong! Nelson and Ontogenetic Depth

Looks like we won’t have Paul Nelson to kick around anymore! He seems to be trying to make good on his promise to provide details on ontogenetic depth. I know, I’m shocked too, but, well, there it is. Says Paul:

Rather, building animals de novo by known biological (evolutionary) processes is an evolutionary problem. Common descent by natural selection is the main theory on the table in 2010. It’s the theory that, in this OD 2.0 series, I hope to show does not
work.

Coffee, says I! At any rate, how many errors can you spot in that short paragraph?

Stupid Intelligent Design Comments Of The Week

It all started at Uncommon Descent, on a thread about Biologos and their criticism of Signature in the Cell. Vmartin starts the stupidity:

Ayale published at Biologos another speculations. One of his attacks against ID was this emotive one (”On Reading the Cell’s Signature” Jan 7):
“The birth canal is too narrow for the head of the newborn to pass easily through it, so that millions of innocent babies—and their mothers—have died in childbirth throughout human history.”

I noticed darwinists that in fact this argument refutes Natural selection more than anything else. Because natural selection should have given advantage to woman with wider canals. Actually it was professor Adolf Portmann who mentioned this argument against natural selection.

Luskin on National Geographics Website? Why?

National Geographic has an Intelligent Design vs. Evolution feature that gives some time to Casey Luskin. One has to wonder why. To their credit National Geographic counters Luskin with Don Prothero. An example, in talking about the evolution of whales we get this nonsensical argument from Luskin: