About a week and a half ago, I was infected with an evolving blog meme, and I think the only way to get better is to pass it on. Brian over at Laelaps tagged me; maybe he's annoyed about my suggestion to his profs that they assign him more homework, or maybe he's indignant at my mention of the RU Screw. I know he wants to be a transitional fossil, but I doubt he wants to be an evolutionary dead-end, so I'll help him out just this once.
One of my main goals in this blog is to help non-scientists (Christian readers in particular) understand science and God's world, by reviewing and explaining recently-published scientific research.
2004 might have been a miracle, but...
Evolutionary science is so much bigger, so much deeper, so much more interesting than its opponents (understandably) will admit. It's more complicated than Michael Behe or Bill Dembski let on, and yet it's not that hard to follow, for those who are willing to try. The best papers by evolutionary biologists are endlessly fascinating and scientifically superb, and reading them is stimulating and fun.
UPDATE: answers posted at the end. Which of these plant specimens doesn't belong? (Images will be properly credited in a forthcoming article which will explain why they're so interesting.) The images are all the same magnification, but have been colorized so that the color won't give you any clues. Focus on the structure of each specimen, and pick one that doesn't belong with the others.
If you have only read the more superficial descriptions of intelligent design theory, and specifically the descriptions of irreducible complexity, you might (reasonably) conclude that Michael Behe and other devotees of ID have claimed that any precise interaction between two biological components (two parts of a flagellum, two enzymes in the blood clotting cascade, or a hormone and its receptor) cannot arise through standard Darwinian evolution.
As a Christian biologist (and now Christian biologist blogger), one of my goals is to help Christians understand biology. And right now, that means I need to focus on helping Christians see the worthlessness of most of the ideas in the Intelligent Design movement, and especially to help Christians see how embracing ID is both theologically and intellectually unwise. Well, John Farrell is a an ally, and he's a great read.
Our family embraced the Reformed tradition (of evangelical Christianity) while we were a part of Park Street Church in Boston. We have many fond memories of our time at Park Street; I first picked up a copy of Del Ratzsch's excellent Science and Its Limits from the church library there, and it was at Park Street where we first learned about Calvin College.
Long before Richard Dawkins topped the charts with his recent entry into the folk-religion genre, he was reviled by Christian culture warriors as a Public Enemy, an ayatollah of atheism, the embodiment of the evil that ensnares all who embrace Darwin's Dangerous Idea TM . His revivalistic fervor, combined with his, um, expertise in handling the media, makes him a near-perfect spokesperson for unbelief, and consequently he is credited
I did promise to make baseball a part of this blog, and so far it's been all sorts of serious stuff about science and faith. And now it's October! We all know what that means. In fact, it's going to an excellent fall in the Matheson household, for we are fans of two major league teams: first and foremost, the Boston Red Sox, and second, the Arizona Diamondbacks. (I'm from Phoenix and my wife Susan is from Tucson;
Well, I guess I should start with some contrition. I have gotten cheap laughs referring to Richard Dawkins as an idiot, such that students of mine have twice referred to him simply as 'The Idiot,' knowing they'd be perfectly well understood.