Darwinism

Recently a paper appeared by Ratcliff et al. (2012) entitled “Experimental evolution of mulitcellularity” and received a fair amount of press attention, including a story in the New York Times. (http://tinyurl.com/6va4fpp ) The authors discuss their results in terms of the origin of multicellularity on earth. The senior author of the paper is Michael Travisano of the University of Minnesota, who was a student of Richard Lenski’s in the 1990s. The paper, published in PNAS, was edited by Lenski. The gist is as follows. The authors repeated three steps multiple times: 1) they grew single-celled yeast in a flask; 2) briefly centrifuged it; and 3) took a small amount from the bottom of the flask to seed a new culture. This Read More ›

In my last post I reported that University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, who had critiqued (http://tinyurl.com/2fjenlt) my recent Quarterly Review of Biology article (http://tinyurl.com/25c422s) concerning laboratory evolution studies of the last four decades and what they show us about evolution, had asked several other prominent scientists for comments (http://tinyurl.com/2cyetm7). I replied (http://tinyurl.com/4lq8sre) to those of experimental evolutionary biologist John Bull. In a subsequent post Coyne discussed (http://tinyurl.com/4tqoq7c) a recent paper (http://tinyurl.com/4shw456) by the group of fellow University of Chicago biologist Manyuan Long on gene duplication in fruitflies. After a bit of delay due to the holidays, I will comment on that here. Try as one might to keep Darwinists focused on the data, some can’t help reverting to Read More ›

(This is the third of three posts on Kenneth Miller and the problem of evil.) I think the reason for Miller’s deep disdain of a relatively minor difference in our positions on evolution is not scientific. Rather, it’s theological. It’s called the problem of evil. Briefly stated, if God is responsible for designing not only the lovely parts of biology, but also the dangerous and nasty parts as well, then we have a theological problem on our hands. What kind of a God designs not only pretty flowers, but deadly malaria, too? Is God actually malicious? On the other hand, if God simply designed a process like Darwinism that He knew would lead to life, then, the thinking goes, He Read More ›

(This is the second of three posts on Kenneth Miller and the problem of evil.) Let me emphasize the last point of my previous post: Miller and I are only quibbling over the extent of design in the universe. Thefact of design, the principle of design, we agree on. Now, let’s look a little closer at where Ken Miller draws the limits of design (the edge of evolution, one might say). Although they are clearly necessary, is there reason to suppose that the bare laws and constants of the universe — even if properly tuned — are sufficient to assure life occurs in our universe, as Miller supposes? The answer is no — many other features than just the bare laws of the universe have to be gotten Read More ›

(This is the first of three posts on Kenneth Miller and the problem of evil.) Brown University biologist Kenneth R. Miller has penned a second review of The Edge of Evolution, this one for the Catholic magazine Commonweal (subscription required). In the new review Miller alludes to some scientific points from his first review inNature. (I refer readers to my previous rejoinder to that on this blog.) But much of the second review turns on the theological implications of the book. In the new review Miller seems truly astounded that I argue that common descent is very strongly supported: Those hoping that Behe would argue for a biblical version of human origins will be shocked. Indeed, Behe tells his readers that there must be “no Read More ›