This Saturday, March 24, on the National Mall in Washington D.C., atheists and secularists from all over the world will gather for a day of entertainment from guest speakers, comedians and musicians. The Reason Rally, which claims to be the “the largest secular event in world history,” features such notable figures as Richard Dawkins, Michael […]
Readers may recall my exchange with British geneticist Robert Saunders (here and here) following Stephen Meyer’s lecture at the Lord McKay dinner in London (which you can now watch here). At the time, Saunders admitted that he had not read Signature in the Cell, nor had he attended the lecture. It was, therefore, not entirely […]
L-gulonolactone oxidase (GULO), the final enzyme in the biosynthetic pathway of ascorbic acid (vitamin C), is a subject that comes up often in discussions of common ancestry. The functioning GULO gene allows most plants and many animals to produce vitamin C from glucose or galactose. In some taxa, however, the GULO gene does not function […]
[Note: This is an exchange which took place between myself and an anonymous correspondant regarding a recent article I published on Blogos.org (and also posted here). The correspondant’s comments are appended below and immediately followed by my response.] Dear Blogos Editor, First of all, congratulations on your new site. I’m glad and excited for your […]
I have followed with interest the discussion (“Is James Shapiro a Design Theorist?”) initiated by Bill Dembski and now involving James Shapiro, Ann Gauger and Douglas Axe. The nub of the issue seems to relate to conflicting conceptions about what constitutes a legitimate scientific explanation (what philosophers call the “demarcation problem”). Click here to continue […]
The British Guardian newspaper reports on recent developments in UK governmental policy on teaching evolution in free schools (which, though state funded, are normally not required to follow the national curriculum): Click here to continue reading>>>
With regret, ENV recently noted the passing of biologist Lynn Margulis. Margulis, a scientist whom I admired greatly, was never a stranger to controversy, going so far as to call neo-Darwinism “a complete funk” and asserting that “The critics, including the creationist critics, are right about their criticism. It’s just that they’ve got nothing to […]
An often-heard criticism of intelligent design claims that it is exclusively an American phenomenon, since presumably the rest of the world is too smart to fall for the stuff. Of course this is nonsense. ID is making impressive strides in Europe and Asia. As I can report from personal experience, the future looks particularly bright […]
Earlier, I responded to remarks made by PZ Myers at the recent Skepticon 4 conference. His subject: “Junk DNA.” On his Sandwalk blog, University of Toronto biochemist Larry Moran has posted a response to my article. Since the post is relatively civil (unusually for Moran, he refrains from calling me an “IDiot”) and offers some […]
Nature Reviews Genetics features an excellent high quality computer visualization (including an associated slideshow) of the elegant mechanism of RNA interference. RNA interference is a defence mechanism that enables double-stranded RNA molecules (such as those derived from transcribing the genomes of viruses that invade the cell) to be degraded and destroyed. Click here to continue […]