Behe is wrong again

How many of my readers remember when I reviewed Michael Behe's Edge of Evolution? One of Behe's main arguments is that two protein protein binding sites cannot evolve at the same time. As the argument goes, systems like the bacterial flagellum and cilium use many more than two protein protein binding sites, thus evolution by random mutation could not have occured.

When I reviewed the book, I sided with Jerry Coyne, and thought that Behe had made some unsound assumptions when calculating probability. Later on, Nick Matzke wrote a devastating review of Behe's book. Concernin Protein-Protein Binding sites, he said,

"Snake venom shows that even vertebrates with small populations can evolve huge gene families that specifically bind diverse proteins, with massive evidence of duplication, mutation, and selection as the mechanisms, and with intraspecific variation in regulation, sequence, and specificity. Is Someone actively designing rattlesnake (Sistrurus catenatus) venom in the American Midwest [7] and fine-tuning the specificity of black mamba (Dendroaspis polylepis) toxins for subtypes of mammalian muscarinic acetylcholine receptors [8]?"

Seeing as how we had evidence of binding sites evolving so recently, I was confident that Behe would soon be answered. Now, less than a year after The Edge of Evolution, the answer has come: Duplicated binding sites can be altered to produce brand new binding sites. There is a lot of evidence that many of our binding sites are actually duplicates of other binding sites. And better, we have observable, repeatable experiments to base this on.

I wonder how Behe will react? More arm waving? Finally admitting he is wrong? Fat Chance.

Transitional Forms - We got anudder!

Some of you may remember my post about Snake Evolution, if not check it out. Anyway, yet another transitional form has been discovered: A snake with legs!

Ben Stizzle

An Encyclopedia Britannica author has written a review of "Expelled" on his blog.

With that, I think I will not mention the movie any longer. Richard Dawkins has said it is boring and incredibly stupid, and honestly, I don't think it will do well at the box office. My advice is: If you must see it, wait until it comes out on DVD and rent it. We don't want Ben getting rich off of this.

Julia Sweeney wrote a Hilarious Blog Post about him:

"Ben Stein once did a Groundling show, an improv show, that I was a part of. I found him to be spectacularly ill-informed and narcissistic and weirdly devoted to his schtick and worst of all, hacky. He didn’t listen to his fellow performers and played everything outward to his friends in the audience who laughed (fake, forced) at every single thing he did. When he became known as a “thinker” – when his public persona became the “smart guy” I was astounded. So this type of film does not come as any surprise."

An Example of the Power of Evolution

I found the dumbest article imaginable on True.Origin recently. It is about the evolution of sexual reproduction. The authors describe sex as a costly and extravagent way to reproduce. This made me wonder why an intelligent designer would create sexually reproducing species, if it was so inefficient. Nevertheless, natural selection predicts that sex must provide some advantage-otherwise it wouldn't have evolved. There have been a few different proposals put forth, but lately the "Red Queen" hypothesis looks the best, since their is experimental evidence supporting it:

"Scientists from Rutgers University in New Jersey have tested this idea by observing different groups of small fish called topminnow in Mexico. Some populations of the topminnow reproduce sexually, while others reproduce asexually, so they provide the perfect opportunity to test these ideas. The topminnow is under constant attack by a parasite, a worm that causes something called black-spot disease.

The researchers found that identical populations ("clones") of the asexually reproducing topminnows harbored many more black-spot worms than did those producing sexually, a finding that fit the Red Queen hypothesis: The sexual topminnows could devise new defenses faster by recombination than the asexually producing clones." (Found at PBS.org)

A stepwise scenario for the evolution of sex is not hard at all to construct:
My explanation

This is the power of evolution and the failure of creationism: We can make testable predictions with evolution, but not with creationism.

My Website

Hey Everyone! I just launched a website!

It is called God Riddance:
http://www.godriddance.com

Please check it out as I have put a lot of time into creating it and writing the articles in it, and I will update it frequently. I even have a forum. So if you want to drop by for discussion about anything from philosophy to (of course) the existence of God, feel free. It will be a rational, friendly environment where you can take part in discussion, even if you disagree.

Peace Out.

Origin of Life Prize is B.S.

I recently emailed a website offering a million dollar prize for a plausible hypothesis about the origin of life. Of course, I didn't expect to really get the money, I just wanted a look into what the problems were nowadays with the origin of life. A guy named Dave Abel responded to my message, and, I think I know why no one has claimed the prize yet. This prize is akin to Kent Hovind's $250,000 prize for proving evolution. Here are some quotes from his email:

"The problem for me comes in when we start trying to explain formal linear digital prescription, representational symbol systems, Hamming "block-coding" (many to one redundancy coding to reduce noise pollution in the Shannon channel), cellular computation, and formal organization with nothing but a purely materialistic belief system. We can't even practice the scientific method or mathematics with a consistently held materialistic worldview."

"I don't think our overall evolutionary model is scientifically plausible, particularly at the prebiotic molecular level."

In a paper he published, he cited Creationist William Dembski. Of course, so what if he is a creationist? That doesn't make him automatically deluded, does it? Well, in his email he used a lot of technical language that was almost dizzying, if not unnecessary, and in it he voiced his objections to the origin of life. I checked up on his claims, and they are not valid. For one thing, he questions how left handed amino acids and right handed sugars could come about. Did a google search and found a highly plausible, evidence backed explanation like *that*. He questioned how the triplet codon system evolved. Did a google search, found a peer reviewed hypothesis like *that*. So if he's been wrong twice, I am not going to bother getting into any of his other technical problems.

Most likely they've already been solved.

You Know You're a Creationist If...

You know you're a creationist if...



...You claim that similarity isn't evidence of common descent, but never second guess a DNA paternity test.

... You think evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics, despite the fact that "Order" in the thermodynamic sense refers to usable energy and not complexity.

... You repeat Michael Behe's claims of irreducible complexity, but have not read the Dover Trial Transcripts!

... You claim that scientists cannot show you any transitional fossils, and when shown a fossil like Archaeopteryx, you claim it is just a creature with a mix of bird and reptile features.

I'd like to come up with some more, so please tell me your "You Know You're a Creationist" joke in a comment.