Now It's Whale Hips: Another Icon of Darwinian Evolution, Vestigial Structures, Takes a Hit

In the case presented by advocates of Darwinian evolution, vestigial organs are a star in the firmament, frequently and gloatingly pointed to. Darwin himself cited them as such in The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, referring to body parts like the human appendix that, he believed, no longer serve a function:

On the view of each organism with all its separate parts having been specially created, how utterly inexplicable is it that organs bearing the plain stamp of inutility... should so frequently occur.

Of course the appendix is a great example of an organ once thought to be without utility that now turns out to serve a vital role.

In the catalogue of purported vestigial parts, whale hips are "the marquee example," writes Stephanie Keep at the absurdly named "Science League of America" blog populated by our Darwin-lobbying friends at the National Center for Science Education. Unfortunately whale hips have now gone the way of appendix. A paper in the journal Evolution reports that rather than being a useless reminder of the evolutionary past, when whale ancestor Pakicetus strode the land on all fours, they in fact serve an unquestionably important purpose.

full article: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/09/whales_hips_ano089811.html

So “The Hobbit” was a woman with Down syndrome? And Flores man an “invalid” classification?

August 6, 2014

Posted by News under Human evolution, Intelligent Design, News

7 Comments

First, here’s Down syndrome, a form of developmental delay in humans, due to chromosome disorders (often accompanied by physical problems such as heart disorders).

For the uproar around the supposed species of “Flores man,” see: The Little Lady of Flores spoke from the grave. But said what, exactly? Remember, in 2004, she was “extreme,” “spectacular,” “startling,” and “incredible.” In 2007, Science called the dig “hallowed ground.”

Now, from ScienceDaily:

Full article: http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/so-the-hobbit-was-a-woman-with-down-syndrome-and-flores-man-an-invalid-classification/

Jerry Coyne proven wrong by physicists about the eye

July 24, 2014

Posted by scordova under Evolutionary biology, News, Physics

11 Comments

Coyne is not an engineer. He’s sort of a glorified fruitfly farmer. He doesn’t have engineering insights and it shows. He’s also one of the most militant ideologues out there ( protesting the appointment of Francis Collins MD,PhD as head of NIH because Collins was Christian).

Jerry Coyne argues the human eyes is poorly designed:

The human eye, though eminently functional, is imperfect—certainly not the sort of eye an
engineer would create from scratch
…
the nerves and blood vessels that attach to our photoreceptor cells are on the inside
rather than the outside of the eye, running over the surface of the retina.
…
The whole system is like a car in which all the wires to the dashboard hang inside the driver’s compartment.

Jerry Coyne, case aginst ID

The latest from physics.org

full article: 

http://www.uncommondescent.com/physics/jerry-coyne-proven-wrong-by-physicists-about-the-eye/

It’s official: there are no ring species

July 16, 2014

Readers who were taught about ring species as evidence for evolution in high school are due for a surprise: it now appears that there aren’t any, after all. There were only a few alleged cases to begin with, but now, they’ve all been discredited. The last “good example” of a ring species has just been struck off the list, in a new paper by Miguel Alcaide et al. in Nature

full article:

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/its-official-there-are-no-ring-species/

Life Worth Imitating

Posted on July 7, 2014 

The living treasure chest of biological designs opens wider each week, inspiring human engineers to improve human health and productivity.

- See more at: http://crev.info/2014/07/life-worth-imitating/#sthash.FEWn7Iqu.dpuf

For Critics of Intelligent Design, There's No Hiding Behind Claims of "Peer Review" Anymore

David Klinghoffer July 10, 2014 1:23 PM | Permalink

Darwinists have had to back off considerably from the once-confident assertion that peer review in science journals constitutes, as Jerry Coyne put it in 2005 in The New Republic, the "gold standard for modern scientific achievement." The whole institution of peer review is so besmirched now as to arouse, not even amusement anymore, but something more like pity.

In the same article, Coyne maintained that it was precisely by "By that standard" that advocates of the theory of intelligent design "have failed miserably." You mean by the standard of what is now revealed as the intellectual and scientific equivalent of insider trading? Or more like racketeering and simple fraud.

The existence of a blog like Retraction Watch is, in this respect, a sign of the times, a measure of the extent to which science publishing has fallen into derision. Their post from a couple of days ago, on a "peer review and citation ring at the Journal of Vibration and Control," has been widely reported, including the retraction of 60 papers from that journal. Sixty!

"This one deserves a 'wow,'" observes author Ivan Oransky. Indeed. The cat is really out of the bag.

Full article: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/07/for_critics_of_087681.html

RIP for a (supposed) key human species—Heidelberg man?

July 12, 2014

So thinks prominent science writer (Science, paywall) Michael Balter:

The hominin Homo heidelbergensis, which lived between about 800,000 and 200,000 years ago, has long been considered a candidate for the common ancestor of Neandertals and modern humans. But the species is controversial, because whereas some researchers think it lived in Europe, Africa, and Asia, others see it as a European species only (and give other names to similar hominins on other continents). At a meeting in the southern French village of Tautavel, where a face and partial skull of this presumed species were found in a nearby cave in 1971, researchers debated its role in human evolution—and whether it actually existed as a discrete species. Resolving the debate is key to understanding the evolution of our own species, Homo sapiens.

See also: The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (human evolution) for why so many evolutionary biologists desperately need a scenario involving a number of different human species. See this also for why many people need to believe in big racial differences today, due to “ongoing evolution.”

Full article: http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/rip-for-a-supposed-key-human-species-heidelberg-man/