Epigenetics

If you're a regular surfer of the ID/evolution blogs and forums, you've no doubt run across several discussion about "epigenetics" lately.

Epigenetics, epigenetics, epigenetics...

Well, believe it or not, PZ actually wrote a whole post on the topic without succumbing to his tendancy to digress into an atheistic rant about religion. It's quite interesting, but what I enjoyed even more was a link that Greg Patterson referenced. At that PBS site, you'll find several articles, Q&A's and short video clips that provide an easy to understand explanation of epigenetics.

Go check it out!!!

Why do Darwinists consider loss of information a great example of Darwinian evolution??

Yesterday, I read this article by Christopher Hitchens and just sat here shaking my head and wondering wtf?

I mean, Hitchens offers this title for the article...

Losing Sight of Progress
How blind salamanders make nonsense of creationists' claims.

Who in the heck does he think he's fooling? He must certainly know by now exactly how "creationists" are going to address this ridiculous assertion. So, why is it that Darwinists bring up *loss* of information over and over again and insist that these examples somehow "make nonsense of creationists' claims"?

Hitchens writes to his buddy Dawkins to ask if he's on to something...

I wrote to professor Richard Dawkins to ask if I had stumbled on the outlines of a point...

LOL...as if he's the first to point at loss of information and declare that the mysteries surrounding evolution are solved and that "creationists" are IDiots.

News flash Hitchens...Darwinists make these assertions all the time, but I'm sure you're well aware of that. As I've noted several times in the past, Sean Carroll is all over loss of information and equates it with proof of evolution. Sheesh...as if ID supporters question this aspect of evolution in the least.

Sigh...

Cue Casey...

Hitchens, Dawkins and Carroll can have all the evidence they want that the neo-Darwinian mechanism can mess things up, turn genes off, and cause "loss-of-function." No one on any side of this debate doubts that random mutations are quite good at destroying complex features. Us folks on the ID side suspect that random mutation and natural selection aren’t good at doing very much more than that. And the constant citations by Darwinists of "loss of function" examples as alleged refutations of ID only strengthens our argument.

Meanwhile, ID proponents seek to explain a far more interesting aspect of biological history: the origin of new complex biological features. Despite his quotation of Michael Shermer on the evolution of the eye, Hitchens has yet to do that.

Dave's smackdown...

...on PZ and Abbie is quite entertaining.

Enjoy.

Yuck...

Do not like these nasty things.

I'm still hopelessly addicted to energy drinks, but I'm also broke. So, I've been buying the cheaper brands.

Gag.

I. need. my. Monster. Drinks.

See that little donate button at the right of my blog???

HELP ME.

Donate to the energy drink fund. I cannot function without my Monsters...

Gave me a chuckle

I don't know if you're familiar with Ray Comfort, but he's always been right smack in the middle of the bulls eye for the village atheists. He's yet another Christian who questions the extent to which evolution can be considered factual, and he certainly takes a beating for his views.

The other day he changed the name of his blog to "Atheist Central", and he includes a few quotes under the name...

"Only 10% of the world's population claim atheism. It looks like you've managed to attract most of that population to a single blog! Truly amazing."

"It's a great place to meet other atheists."

LOL...that is freaking hilarious...

Scientists discover 'world's first bird' !!!!1111!!

We *know* they existed, though we haven't come up with many fossils supporting the fact, so let's dig through all the old stuff we've found over the years and see if we can come up with something convincing.

JACKPOT!

The long-extinct species was first unearthed in the Britain by Archaeologists in the 1950s, but until now their aerodynamic capability had not been studied.

Their rudimentary 'wings' were always assumed to be some form of flying adaption, but scientists at the time lacked the necessary technology to test the theory.

But earlier this year, experts from Bristol University investigated both types of kuehneosaurs found in the UK - kuehneosuchus and kuehneosaurus - for the first time.

The team built lifesize models of the creatures and used techniques usually employed to test prototype aircraft - including a wind tunnel - to discover their amazing flying ability.

Their pioneering findings, published this week by the Paleontological Association, have turned the history of winged flight on its head.

Today German palaeobiologist Koen Stein, who led the study, said: 'We didn't think kuehneosaurs would have been very efficient in the air. But all the work up to now had been speculation.

'So we decided to build models and test them in the wind tunnel in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Bristol University.

'Surprisingly, we found that kuehneosuchus was aerodynamically very stable. Jumping from a tree, it could easily have crossed 9m (29ft) before landing on the ground.'

The species, which inhabited the warm late Triassic period from 235 to 200 million years ago, was first discovered in the UK inside an ancient cave system near Bristol.

Both types of kuehneosaurs lived 80 million years before the largest dinosaurs of the Jurassic period, and 50 million years before the earliest known bird, archaeopteryx, which lived in what is now southern Germany.

Mr Stein and his colleagues used a number of different materials to reconstruct the creatures' scaly wings, which they then tested using specialist aerodynamic equipment.

Aerospace engineers suspended the models in a wind tunnel and passed a jet of hot air over the models' bodies.

This gave experts a detailed idea about the air flow over their wings, and the distance they would have glided from tree-top to tree-top in search of food and to escape larger predators. But Mr Stein admitted the task wasn't always straightforward.

He added: 'We also built webbed hands and feet, and had an extra skin membrane between the legs on the models, but these made the flight of the animals unstable, suggesting they probably did not have such features.'

A quote from Gereth Nelson comes to mind (Wall Street Journal Dec. 9, 1986):

"We've got to have some ancestors. We'll pick those. Why? Because we know they have to be there, and these are the best candidates. That's by and large the way it has worked. I am not exaggerating."

The Altenberg Sixteen and The EES

Evolutionary science is as much about the posturing, salesmanship, stonewalling and bullying that goes on as it is about actual scientific theory. It is a social discourse involving hypotheses of staggering complexity with scientists, recipients of the biggest grants of any intellectuals, assuming the power of politicians while engaged in Animal House pie-throwing and name-calling: "ham-fisted", "looney Marxist hangover", "secular creationist", "philosopher" (a scientist who can’t get grants anymore), "quack", "crackpot". . .

In short, it’s a modern day quest for the holy grail, but with few knights. At a time that calls for scientific vision, scientific inquiry’s been hijacked by an industry of greed, with evolution books hyped like snake oil at a carnival.

Perhaps the most egregious display of commercial dishonesty is next year’s celebration of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species – the so-called theory of evolution by natural selection, i.e., survival of the fittest, that was foisted on us almost 150 years ago.

Scientists agree that natural selection can occur. But the scientific community has known for some time that natural selection has nothing to do with evolution. ...

I broke the story about the Altenberg affair last March with the assistance of Alastair Thompson and the team at Scoop Media, the independent news agency based in New Zealand. ... But will the A-16 deliver? Will they help rid us of the natural selection "survival of the fittest" mentality that has plagued civilization for a century and a half, and on which Darwinism and neo-Darwinism are based, now that the cat is out of the bag that selection is politics not science? That selection cannot be measured exactly. That it is not the mechanism of evolution. That it is an abstract rusty tool left over from 19th century British imperial exploits.

Or will the A-16 tip-toe around the issue, appease the Darwin industry and protect foundation grants?

!!!!! Oh, dear...who wrote that? Go to Evolution Engineered to find out.

Edward O. Wilson

I ran across an interesting article about Edward O. Wilson. I thought my Darwinist readers would especially enjoy it.

Honestly, I don't even know where to begin in offering my personal comments, and I'm ready to hit the hay anyway, so I'll just let you read it yourself.

More on Human Rights for Apes

Awwwww, he's kinda cute, and we need to treat them like family, don't ya know?

Gotta say, though, that I'm glad I didn't inherit this little guy's nose...

VERY, VERY COOL.

The Vegas Showdown

Hitch up your holsters and take your paces...

There's going to be a showdown in Vegas this Saturday:

CSC Director Stephen Meyer and Discovery senior fellow George Gilder face off with Darwinists Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, and Ronald Bailey, science writer for Reason. The debate question: "Is there scientific evidence of intelligent design in nature?"

The debate is the closer of a three day conference, Freedomfest that will feature other speakers like Steve Forbes and Ron Paul, as well as other debates, such as Friday night's between Dinesh D'souza and Christopher Hitchens.

C-SPAN is scheduled to cover the debate and we'll let you know when they plan to air as soon as that is announced.

Sounds fun...anybody wanna buy me an airline ticket to Vegas?!!!!

Just sayin'...

I was reading the Christian Research Journal the other day, and they included a three page critique of Christopher Hitchen's, "god is not great".

Thought I'd share a bit...

Hitchens argues that religion "poisons everything," but a strong historical case can be made that Christianity in particular has motivated a host of beneficial movements in history.1 I will select only one to discuss. Christianity was at the start and heart of the scientific revolution in Europe, beginning around the middle of the sixteenth century. Given that Hitchens (and other new atheists) think that science has displaced God, this is an ironic truth. Non-Christian philosopher Alfred North Whitehead argued that modern science was born in a Christian cradle;2 more recently, respected sociologist and historian Rodney Stark has staked the same claim in more detail.3 That Christians were at the forefront of modern science cannot really be disputed. Why? The Christian worldview was the impetus for science for many reasons, but principally because, unlike other worldviews, it deemed nature as good, rational, non-divine, and worthy of investigation and development for the glory of God.4

Atheism, on the other hand, lives on borrowed (or stolen) intellectual capital. It must take the rationality and knowability of nature as a brute and inexplicable given, since nature, according to atheism, was not created or designed by a rational Mind. To atheists, mindless matter precedes the appearances of minds. Minds turn up for no reason. Our reasoning just happens to have the resources for developing sophisticated scientific theories about the universe and ingenious ways to harness nature's potential through technology. One atheist mathematician, who puzzled over the success of his discipline in a Godless cosmos, wrote an article on the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics."5 Given a naturalistic/atheistic worldview, as he observed, there is no reason to believe that mathematics should correspond with the objective world so wonderfully; yet it does. The idea of a coherent and knowable universe is unreasonable for atheism, but it is perfectly reasonable for those who believe in God as Creator and Designer.

1. Rodney Start, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (New York: Random House, 2005), and Dinesh D'Souza, What's So Great about Christianity (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2007), chaps. 5-10.

2. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York; The MacMillan Company, 1926), chap. 1.

3. See Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformation, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2003), chap. 2.

4. See Kenneth Samples, Without a Doubt (Grand Rapids Zondervan, 2004), 187-94, for a powerful explanation of this.

5. Eugene Wigner, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics 13, 1 (February 1960).

Kinda funny...

This can't be right, can it? Big bad Professor PZ Myer's blog ranks at a junior high reading level...

TV Reviews

...and, mine ranks at a college undergrad level?

Movie Reviews

Tee Hee...tells ya that there really ain't much larnin' going on over at the Grand Poobah of Atheism's lair.

HT: EE

Do as I say...not as I do

Liberal professors for tolerance? Yeah, right....tolerance for everything under the sun *except* religion, which most people hold sacred.

PZ Myers, the crusader for atheism, preaches constantly that religion is the hub of intolerance. Whatever...another classic case of do as I say, not as I do. Evidently, in the world of Pharyngula, tolerance is admirable except in the case of religious tolerance.

Check out his latest escapades via Vox Day.

Vox notes, and I wholeheartedly agree...

The question of desecrating the Host aside, there's little question that there is very little, if anything, respectful, fair, or civil about PZ's nasty Internet morass. This should also explode once and for all the myth that Pharyngula is a "science" blog; it's little more than the public soapbox of a mediocre individual with a mild form of Asperger's Syndrome who happens to hate religion. Which is fine, but if PZ wrote about blacks, Jews or gays the way he writes about Christians, he'd have been fired long ago.

It really makes one wonder how this type of behavior is suppose to provide people with a positive view of atheism?

God is Not Dead Yet

Article by William Lane Craig.

Great Article by Roddy Bullock

You can find it here.

Bullock is the author of The Cave Painting...an excellent book that gives the reader a better understanding of the concept of Intelligent Design.

HT to Sal at UD

HT: TT

Poison Ivy...

Have it everywhere...crap...shot in the buttocks this morning...should be back to posting regularly again soon....itch like hell.

Later...

The celebration carries on into the early hours of the 5th

Sigh...

1:15 am and the kids are still going strong. They're camping right outside my bedroom window, so it may be a very long night. At the moment, they sound like a bunch of little drunks singing karaoke. I can't make out what the heck they're singing, but the laughter and giggling in between each verse is hilarious.

We've only had to go out twice to help them so far. One of them threw a huge log on the fire and put it out, and then they jammed the zipper on the tent and couldn't get it closed. I figure they'll be back in within the hour with another problem.

The giggling and hysterical laughter is really fun to listen to.

Oh, to be a teen again....

Well, I'll be darn...

...Thomas Jefferson was an advocate of Intelligent Design:

On the contrary I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in it's parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to percieve and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of it's composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with it's distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organised as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms. We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the Universe in it's course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view, comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and, were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos. So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed thro' all time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe. Surely this unanimous sentiment renders this more probable than that of the few in the other hypothesis.

Though Jefferson spoke out against traditional Christianity and the divinity of Jesus, he seems to be smack dab in the ID camp. So, there you have it...another advocate of ID who was not religiously motivated to support the inference...A FOUNDING FATHER, NO LESS.

[HT: EN&V]

Happy 4th of July!!!

My favorite holiday is finally here again. We're celebrating with family at our place this year. The kids have invited all their cousins to spend the night and camp by the pond, catch fish, eat smores, light endless fireworks...the whole deal.

I absolutely love this time of year. Hope you all celebrate in a big way!!

Commentary on Academic Freedom

Commentary by Caroline Crocker can be found in the Wichita Examiner.

From the article:

Our embracing of divergent peoples and viewpoints marks us as unique and we are rightly proud of being broad-minded, a “melting pot,” welcoming people of different nationalities, cultures and races. This has enabled us to be world leaders in innovative ideas, in marked contrast to what is produced by totalitarian regimes where citizens are only allowed to think one way.

Alarmingly, the current denial of academic freedom rights for those who are judged politically incorrect has put this in jeopardy. The freedom to teach, and learn about, both sides of many issues is noticeably lacking on most college campuses.

A study published in Forum (2005) by Lichter, Rothman, and Nevitte reported that 72 percent of university faculty are liberal (87 percent in elite universities). That this is reflected in the teaching is easily seen in the prolific displays of left-wing propaganda displayed on campuses. The University of Colorado at Boulder has such a preponderance of liberal faculty (96 percent) that, according to a Wall Street Journal article (5/13/08), Chancellor G.P. Peterson intends to support intellectual diversity by establishing an endowed chair for a professor of conservative thought and policy.

There were vociferous faculty objections. Ironically, Mr. Peterson responded to these by the welcome assurance that the new professor would not have to be an actual conservative, just someone who can teach that viewpoint.

The movie, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” has convincingly documented the persecution of scientists who suggest the products of intelligence can be detected by application of certain aspects of information theory (detection of specified complexity) and that these products may be found in biological systems.

Yet another evolutionary discovery!

This just in...scientists say that our ability to dance evolved from the Cockatoo.

For real...

Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less.

American Solutions is advancing a petition requesting that the US starts drilling again in an attempt to lower prices at the pump.

From this article:

Drilling is no silver bullet. But it is vital. It won’t generate overnight production. But just announcing that America is finally hunting oil again would send a powerful signal to energy markets … and to speculators – many of whom are betting that continued US drilling restrictions will further exacerbate the global demand-supply imbalance, and send “futures” prices even higher.

Pro-drilling policies would likely bring lower prices, as did recent announcements that Brazil had found new offshore oil fields and Iraq would sign contracts to increase oil production. Conversely, news that supplies are tightening – because of sabotage in Nigeria’s delta region, or more congressional bans on leasing – will send prices upward.

One of our best prospects is Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which geologists say contains billions of barrels of recoverable oil. If President Clinton hadn’t bowed to Wilderness Society demands and vetoed 1995 legislation, we’d be producing a million barrels a day from ANWR right now. That’s equal to US imports from Saudi Arabia, at $50 billion annually.

Drilling in ANWR would get new oil flowing in 5-10 years, depending on how many lawsuits environmentalists file. That’s far faster than benefits would flow from supposed alternatives: devoting millions more acres of cropland to corn or cellulosic ethanol, converting our vehicle fleet to hybrid and flex-fuel cars, building dozens of new nuclear power plants, and blanketing thousands of square miles with wind turbines and solar panels. These alternatives would take decades to implement, and all face political, legal, technological, economic and environmental hurdles.

Opinions anyone??