It’s War!

The blog Telic Thoughts has just declared war on me*:

Remember, prairie dogs are related to rabbits

Detecting Design – Mind and Hands

I have previously raised four criteia that can be used, as a whole, to assess a design inference – Analogy, Discontinuity, Rationality, and Foresight. Over the years, I have placed most emphasis on Foresight, gradually fleshing out the hypothesis of front-loaded evolution. And while I remain quite encouraged by the increasing plausibility of front-loading, the criterion of Rationality has lately begun to attract more of my attention.

Several years ago, Howard Van Till reviewed Dembski’s book, No Free Lunch. Van Till hit on something that I mentioned in my book:

Follow the Light

Watch three different fibroblasts (connective tissue cells) reach for pulses of near- infrared light:

Now THAT’S a car review

A Mistake in the Matrix

In the DM, I write:

A core element of the non-teleological perspective of evolution is that mutations are random with regard to fitness. This means that mutations are not inherently forward- or outward-looking. Instead, a mutation simply occurs in a random fashion (a genuine mistake) and whether or not it benefits the organism depends on contingency, for as far as we know, evolution does not create targeted mutations to solve specific problems. For example, if there was some mechanism by which the PCP molecule itself could trigger the specific mutation that elicits the expression of continue (see Chapter 6), we would have a powerful indicator of a teleological mechanism at work. In such a case, the cell would be selectively mutating regions of its DNA that it needs to retool in order the meet the challenges of the environment.

Yet upon further thought, I do not think many people would consider this “a powerful indicator of a teleological mechanism at work.”

The Top 10 of 2009

Since 2010 is getting close, I thought I would offer the Top Ten posts from this blog during 2009.  These are the 10 bestest, hip-hoppiest postings of all year!*

Anyway, the Top Ten of 2009 are broken down into three categories. And here they are……

Exquisitely Organized

In The Design Matrix, I documented how scientists originally envisioned the cell as an entity that was not very sophisticated or organized.  Yet this original “prediction” did not turn out to be correct.  In fact, a month or so ago a review article was published in the journal Science which continues to illustrate my point:

Bacteria were once viewed as amorphous reaction vessels with chromosomes that wandered freely and randomly throughout the cell.  The advent of genetically encoded fluorescent reporters harnessed to powerful cell-imaging technologies has enabled in vivo tracking of protein movement and revealed a strikingly complex inner world within bacteria.  This inner environment is exquisitely organized, in a highly controlled state of flux, and responsive to changing functions demanded of the cell.  – Shapiro, L., McAdams, HH, and Losick, R.  2009. Why and how bacteria localize proteins.  Science 326: 1225-1228.

In The Design Matrix, I drew out the significance of this:

The Horror of Skull Island

Gotta watch til the end:

Cell Size and Scale

If you ever wanted to better visualize the difference in size between a human cell, a bacterial cell, a virus, and an organelle, you should check out this nifty site.  Cool, eh?