Tragedy Then Hope: Like the First Christmas
I was physically sick when I heard the news. The mass murder of children and adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut is shocking and sadly too common. Evil is a reality in ...
More Functions for “Junk DNA”
A new paper has just been published in the journal Genome Biology by John Rinn and David Kelley, identifying a role for transposable elements in gene regulation in stem cells.
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Life of Pi, Only 3.14% Accurate
Life of Pi,
Only 3.14% Accurate
Scott Symington
An interesting encounter at sea is reported in the Naval Institute’s official magazine, Proceedings. A battleship had been at sea on ...
Intergenic Retrotransposons Can Serve Long-Range Functions
Retrotransposons (which include LINEs, SINEs, and ERVs) are known for the ability of their long-terminal repeats (LTRs) to serve as promoters and enhancers for regulating the expression of genes ...
The Design of the Complement Cascade
When I was an undergraduate biology student, one of my favorite topics was the complement system in immunology. The complement cascade is an array of sequentially interacting proteins that serve ...
Asteroid Belts and Planet Biohabitability
A new study by Rebecca Martin of the University of Colorado finds that "Solar systems with life-bearing planets may be rare if they are dependent on the presence of asteroid belts of just the ...
You Can’t Preach the Gospel without Freedom
When I hear Christians saying we ought not get involved in politics but just “preach the Gospel,” I show them this satellite picture of the Korean peninsula. Here we see a homogenous population ...
The Molecular "Clutch" of the Dynein Motor Protein
Over at Evolution News & Views, I have just published a blog post on the recent paper in the journal Cell regarding the molecular clutch of the dynein motor protein:
Here at ENV, I have ...
Nature News: ‘Arsenic-life’ bacterium prefers phosphorus after all
Readers may recall the media hype, back in December 2010, surrounding the claim that a bacterium is capable of utilising arsenic instead of phosphorous in its DNA. A new study, published in ...
Was Jesus Married?
Dr. Daniel Wallace, one of the top New Testament manuscript experts in the world, has weighed in on the recently revealed manuscript fragment where Jesus allegedly refers to "my wife." The ...
The Same-Sex Marriage Controversy
This week, I participated in a debate on the subject of same-sex marriage before an audience at the University of Glasgow. The motion was "Politics, Religion and Expression: This House ...
The Demise of Junk DNA and Why It Matters
ENV's Casey Luskin has already drawn our attention to the groundbreaking research published this week by ENCODE. A number of ID critics are asking the question: "Why should a pro-intelligent ...
On the Origin of Protein Folds
A common objection to the theory of intelligent design (ID) is that it has no power to make testable predictions, and thus there is no basis for calling it science at all. While recognising ...
Here Comes McBride (Again): The Debate on Junk DNA Continues
Over at his Still Monkeys blog, Paul McBride has offered a rebuttal to my defense of Casey Luskin's chapter on junk DNA in the new book Science and Human Origins. Similar to Larry Moran (whom I ...
"Junk DNA," "Non-Coding DNA," and Larry Moran’s Hyper-Pedantry
Earlier this week, David Klinghoffer posted an article responding to Larry Moran's claim of contradiction between myself and Jonathan Wells on "junk DNA." Larry Moran has now posted a follow-up ...
A Response to Paul McBride on Junk DNA
We have recently been discussing a series of critical reviews of Science and Human Origins published by PhD student Paul McBride on his blog Still Monkeys. I am going to respond now to McBride's ...
On the Evolution of the Mammalian Middle Ear
A correspondent recently asked me about the evolution of the mammalian middle ear in relation to the fossil record. Based on data gathered from embryology, it is widely thought that the bones of ...
An Incontrovertible Case of Intelligent Design: Artificial Jellyfish Made from Silicone and Rat Heart Muscle
The popular science media are abuzz over the creation by scientists of a synthetic jellyfish, called a medusoid, using silicone and a rat's heart muscle cells (Nawroth et al., 2012). Explains ...
The Moral Argument for the Existence of God
The moral argument for the existence of God refers to the claim that God is needed to provide a coherent ontological foundation for the existence of objective moral values and duties. The ...
The End of Moral Relativism: A Chain of Perverts
If you are not familiar with the name Alfred Kinsey, you might want to look him up, and you might want to start with Judith Reisman's, Sexual Sabotage: How One Mad Scientist Unleashed a Plague ...
