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.
Readers may recall my encounter with developmental biology professor PZ Myers earlier this year. In that brief interaction, I came to appreciate Myers’s ability to charm his adoring fans and followers irrespective of the scientific robustness of his claims, or the accuracy with which he represents the views of those with whom he disagrees.
Jonathan Wells has already drawn our attention to a recent paper by Vandenberg et al. in the journal Developmental Dynamics. The authors make the startling and innovative discovery that bioelectrical signals are essential for the proper formation of the head and face in frog embryos. Physorg.com reports,
We’ve recently been discussing whether Berkeley law professor Phil Johnson (author of Darwin on Trial) is ill-informed on biology.
Readers may recall the Illustra Media production Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record. The documentary opens with an animation of the hideous Anomalocaris, undisputed terror of the Cambrian seas. The creature is in the news today thanks to new revelations about its fantastic vision. Sadly, it’s proven to be another tough day to be a Darwinian.
We recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of the publication of Phillip Johnson’s groundbreaking book, Darwin on Trial. Phillip Johnson’s meticulous skill in scrutinizing the metaphysical assumptions undergirding much of evolutionary naturalism launched the modern intelligent design movement and set in motion a chain of events that must inevitably lead to the toppling of Darwinism in scientific academia.
At his Wonderful Life blog, geneticist Robert Saunders has responded to my recent take down of his “critique” of Stephen Meyer’s arguments for intelligent design, offered and defended in Signature in the Cell. Of course, it wouldn’t be an anti-ID article without its share of condescending rhetoric. Saunders claims that I “have absorbed a typical strategy beloved of Intelligent Design creationists: of devising neologisms that don’t correspond to normally used science terminology, and combined this with ignorance of biology.” I have no doubt that Dr. Saunders is informed about his discipline but the arguments he presents here are weak.
A few weeks ago, I published the fourth part of my series on Wikipedia and common descent, in which I discussed the purported evidence for common ancestry based on biogeographical distribution. Previously, I had cross-examined the evidence from comparative physiology and biochemistry, comparative anatomy, and paleontology. In this second-to-last installment, I will address Wikipedia’s evidence from observed natural selection and speciation.
As we have already reported, Discovery Institute’s Stephen Meyer recently paid a visit to London to present and defend the thesis of Signature in the Cell at a dinner party attended by scientists, philosophers, politicians and other men and women of influence. His visit included a radio debate against theistic evolutionist Keith Fox, which you can download and listen to here. Fox presented nothing fundamentally novel, and more or less all of the objections raised by him had already been thoroughly addressed in Meyer’s book. Keith Fox is a professor of biochemistry at the University of Southampton, and is also the chairman of Christians in Science — in essence, the UK equivalent of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA).
Francis Crick regarded the genetic code found in nature as a “frozen accident.” Yet more and more it is looking to be the case that this code is exquisitely finely tuned — with features suggesting it is indeed one in a million. Therefore ought not purposive or intelligent design be regarded as a legitimate inference, as the best explanation for how the code came into existence?