Free Republic

Charles Darwin's tree of life, which shows how species are related, is " wrong" and "misleading", claim scientists. They believe the concept misleads us because his theory limits and even obscures the study of organisms and their ancestries. Evolution is far too complex to be explained by a few roots and branches, they claim. Many of their species swap genes back and forth, or engage in gene duplication, recombination, gene loss or gene transfers from multiple sources. Dr John Dupré, a philosopher of biology at Exeter University, said: "If there is a tree of life it's a small irregular structure...

For years researchers have puzzled over whether adaptation plays a major role in human evolution or whether most changes are due to neutral, random selection of genes and traits. Geneticists at Stanford now have laid this question to rest. Their results, scheduled to be published Jan. 16 online in Public Library of Science Genetics, show adaptation-the process by which organisms change to better fit their environment-is indeed a large part of human genomic evolution. "Others have looked for the signal of widespread adaptation and couldn't find it. Now we've used a lot more data and did a lot of work...

New evidence from a study of yeast cells has resulted in the most detailed picture of an organism’s evolutionary process to date, says a Texas A&M University chemical engineering professor whose findings provide the first direct evidence of aspects, which up until now have remained mostly theory. Working with populations of yeast cells, which were color-coded by fluorescent markers, Katy Kao, assistant professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, and Stanford University colleague Gavin Sherlock were able to evolve the cells while maintaining a visual analysis of the entire process.

The traditional understanding of DNA has recently been transformed beyond recognition. DNA does not, as we thought, carry a linear, one-dimensional, one-way, sequential code—like the lines of letters and words on this page. And the 97% in humans that does not carry protein-coding genes is not, as many people thought, fossilized ‘junk’ left over from our evolutionary ancestors. DNA information is overlapping-multi-layered and multi-dimensional; it reads both backwards and forwards; and the ‘junk’ is far more functional than the protein code, so there is no fossilized history of evolution. No human engineer has ever even imagined, let alone designed an...

From Sandro Magister of Chiesa, a piece about Pope Benedict XVI's interest in the nature of mathematics within the relationship of faith and science: Scientists of worldwide fame, like Richard Dawkins of England and Piergiorgio Odifreddi of Italy, insistently link mathematics with the profession of atheism. Spread through conferences, articles, and best-selling books, their theories aspire to become a common language and philosophy. In simple terms, the objections to these atheist mathematicians are the ones expressed by a 17-year-old Roman high school student, Giovanni, during a question-and-answer session with the pope in St. Peter's Square, crowded with young people on...

First an explosion as powerful as thousands of megatons of TNT rained meteorites down on North America. Then forest fires broke out across the continent, sending up a thick layer of soot and dust that blocked out the sun. A sudden ice age ensued, and some of the Earth's largest animals went extinct in a blink of geological time. It's well known that a meteorite colliding with Earth is considered the most likely reason dinosaurs died off 65 million years ago. Now a team of scientists says it has found new evidence that a comet triggered a similar extinction much...

First published:Creation 19(4):22–23September 1997by Carl WielandThe chilling revelations of a recent television documentary1 expose the disturbing consequences of evolutionary ways of thinking. Beginning in the 1920s, many thousands of people in the United States were sterilised against their will and without their consent, to prevent ‘undesirable breeding’. Over 8,000 of these procedures took place at a major centre to which such ‘undesirables’ were sent, in Lynchburg, Virginia.

A team of Princeton University scientists has discovered that chains of proteins found in most living organisms act like adaptive machines, possessing the ability to control their own evolution. The scientists do not know how the cellular machinery guiding this process may have originated, but they emphatically said it does not buttress the case for intelligent design, a controversial notion that posits the existence of a creator responsible for complexity in nature...

Video here. Classic line when she refers to the flag pin, an "accessory" Obama dislikes. Anyone who has pictures of Sarah Palin, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Laura Ingraham, and other both principled and attractive conservative women, please post them all here. Who can post the most? Let the contest begin.

The prominent atheist is stepping down from his post at Oxford University to write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in "anti-scientific" fairytales. Prof Hawkins said: "The book I write next year will be a children's book on how to think about the world, science thinking contrasted with mythical thinking. "I haven't read Harry Potter, I have read Pullman who is the other leading children's author that one might mention and I love his books. I don't know what to think about magic and fairy tales." Prof Dawkins said he wanted to look...

In the media, Catholicism is the religious tradition most frequently, and misleadingly, held up for approbation as having no problem reconciling Darwinism with theistic faith. The tradition next most often cited as Darwin-friendly is my own, Judaism. You can bet a new Rabbis’ Letter in support of evolution will garner the usual uncomprehending applause. Boasting 305 signatures so far, the letter holds that "It is possible to be inspired by the religious teachings of the Bible while not taking a literalist approach and while accepting the validity of science including the foundational concept of evolution." The Open Letter Concerning Religion...

One of the world's leading biologists, who is also an ordained Anglican priest, has sparked uproar in both religious and scientific circles by campaigning to teach creationism, along with evolution and the "Big Bang" theory in science classrooms. Creationism, an issue that has triggered furious debates in churches, schools and even courts in the United States, rejects Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and holds that God created the universe and all that goes with it - most of all, man - in six days. The Rev. Michael Reiss has truly stirred the pot - and the fury of his fellow...

The Brunswick County school board is looking for a way for creationism to be taught in the classroom side by side with evolution. "It's really a disgrace for the state school board to impose evolution on our students without teaching creationism," county school board member Jimmy Hobbs said at Tuesday's meeting. "The law says we can't have Bibles in schools, but we can have evolution, of the atheists." When asked by a reporter, his fellow board members all said they were in favor of creationism being taught in the classroom. The topic came up after county resident Joel Fanti told...

The 21st century is plagued by wild speculation and fantasies dressed up in graphs and tables and diagrams to look like independently verifiable fact. For example, Muslim lobbyists are currently pouring millions of pounds into producing bogus "atlases of creation", lavishly decorated with photographs and charts "proving" that every living species was created at the same time. This material is currently being delivered free of charge to schools all over Europe. If it emanated from fundamentalist Christian America, I suspect it would be dumped in the wastepaper basket. But schools are more wary of offending the views of Muslim or...

BERLIN (Reuters) - German biologists have discovered a new species of ant they believe is the oldest on the planet, dating back around 120 million years. Researchers from Karlsruhe's Natural History Museum found the 3-millimeter-long (0.118 inch) insect in the Amazon rainforest in 2007, and hope it will shed light on the early evolution of ants. "It's by far the most spectacular find of my 26-year career," said museum biologist Manfred Verhaagh on Tuesday. A new species of Martialis heureka, a blind, subterranean, predatory ant, in an undated photo. German biologists have discovered a new species of ant they believe...

Prof. Thomas Nagel, a self-declared atheist who earned his PhD. in philosophy at Harvard 45 years ago, who has been a professor at U.C. Berkeley, Princeton, and the last 28 years at New York University, and who has published ten books and more than 60 articles, has published an important essay, "Public Education and Intelligent Design," in the Wiley InterScience Journal Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 36, issue 2, on-line at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118493933/home (fee for access US $29.95). Prof. Nagel's paper is a significant and substantial opening, at America's highest intellectual level, that encourages all intelligent, educated, informed individuals — particularly...

Creationism should be taught in schools as a legitimate point of view to stop religious children losing interest in science lessons, a leading Royal Society scientist has urged. Rev Professor Michael Reiss, director of education at the Royal Society and a biologist, said teachers should discuss Creationism openly in science classes. He said one in 10 pupils have Creationist beliefs and he maintained it would be self-defeating to dismiss them all as wrong and misguided. Far better, he told the British Association conference, to treat Creationism as a “world view” rather than a “misconception”. His comments, however, provoked a vociferous...

Sept 10, 2008 — Astrobiologist David Deamer believes that life can spontaneously emerge without design, but he thinks lay people are too uneducated to understand how this is possible, so he gives them the watered-down version of Darwin’s natural selection instead, which he knows is inadequate to explain the complexity of life. That’s what he seemed to be telling reporter Susan Mazur in an interview for the Scoop (New Zealand). Is the lay public really too dense for the deeper knowledge of how evolution works?...

New research by Ingemar Jönsson and colleagues published in the September 9 issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press journal, shows that some animals —the so-called tardigrades or 'water-bears'— are able to do away with space suits and can survive exposure to open-space vacuum, cold and radiation.

Genes alone don’t make the man — after all, humans and chimps share roughly 98 percent of their DNA. But where, when and how much genes are turned on may be essential in setting people apart from other primates. A stretch of human DNA inserted into mice embryos revs the activity of genes in the developing thumb, toe, forelimb and hind limb. But the chimp and rhesus macaque version of this same stretch of DNA spurs only faint activity in the developing limbs, reports a new study in the Sept. 5 Science. The research supports the notion that changes in...