Category: Human Origins

Maropeng Besucherzentrum im Craddle of Human Kind in Südafrika

^{Type
post

Author
Casey Luskin

Date
March 3, 2023

Categorized
Human Origins

Tagged
Alfred Russel Wallace, celibacy, Darwin, Darwinism, DNA survival machines, Evolution, evolution of religion, evolutionary dead-ends, evolutionary psychology, human evolution, Johannesburg, just-so stories, love for enemies, Maropeng Museum, martyrs, non-adaptive behavior, non-kin altruism, Oscar Schindler, Philip Skell, Richard Dawkins, Robert Broom, selfish gene, South Africa}

Casey Luskin Debunks One Museum’s Evolutionary Propaganda

_{Casey Luskin

March 3, 2023

Human Origins}

On today’s ID the Future, geologist Casey Luskin continues to unpack his recently published essay against the view that humans evolved from ape-like ancestors via blind Darwinian processes. In this episode he shares his experience of walking into the fossil hall at South Africa’s famous Maropeng Museum and immediately being confronted by a piece of shameless materialist propaganda, a Richard Dawkins quotation prominently displayed as part of a floor-to-ceiling display. The quotation insisted that humans are essentially just DNA survival machines. Luskin says, not so fast, and points out the various ways such a view fails to explain important aspects of human behavior, including altruistic behavior toward non-kin. Luskin and host Eric Anderson also call evolutionary theory to task for being Read More ›

Close up portrait of a cute baby chimpanzee making eye contact

^{Type
post

Author
Casey Luskin

Date
February 20, 2023

Tagged
Africa, ape-like fossils, beta-globin pseudogene, Bill Nye, Casey Luskin, common ancestry, convergence, Convergent evolution, David Snoke, Eugenie Scott, Fossil Record, genome comparison, genus homo, hominids, human evolution, journal Genetics, Kenneth Miller, Michael Behe, Queen Mary University of London, Richard Buggs, Science and Faith in Dialogue}

Chimp and Human Genomes: An Evolution Myth Unravels

_{Casey Luskin

February 20, 2023}

On today’s ID the Future, Casey Luskin rebuts the oft-repeated claim that the human and chimp genomes are 98-99% similar and therefore surely resulted from Darwinian common descent. Luskin cites an article in the journal Science which describes the 98-99% claim as a myth. The original figure was derived from a single protein-to-protein comparison, but once you compare the entire genomes, and use more rigorous methods, the similarity drops several percentage points, and on one account, down into the mid-80s. Additionally, the chimp genomes used in the original comparison studies borrowed the human genome for scaffolding, thus artificially boosting the degree of similarity. What about supposed junk DNA similarities between human and chimp? Why would an intelligent designer put the Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Michael Denton

Date
June 1, 2022

Categorized
Human Origins

Tagged
air breathing, alveoli, anthropocentrism, bioengineering, circulatory system, environmental fitness, fine tuning, fine tuning of chemistry, H2O, hemoglobin, homo sapiens, human beings, human lungs, hydrological cycle, Intelligent Design, iron, land-based life, lung-breathers, Michael Denton, oxygen, oxygen reactivity, photosynthesis, prior fitness, Privileged Species, respiratory system, sun, sunlight, terrestrial beings, The Miracle of Man, transition metals, transparent atmosphere, Water}

The Miracle of Man: Fine Tuning for Blood and Breath

_{Michael Denton

June 1, 2022

Human Origins}

In Part 3 of The Miracle of Man interview with author Michael Denton, the Australian biologist and MD explores with host Eric Anderson some of the bioengineering marvels of the human lung and, more fundamentally, some of the many things about chemistry, the sun, and planet Earth that had to be just so to allow our respiratory and circulatory systems to work—not merely as well as they do but at all. It’s fine tuning for creatures very much like ourselves, what Denton terms The Miracle of Man. “Denton provides the a scientific underpinning for a theistic real humanism far beyond the nihilistic implications of so-called secular humanism,” writes German paleontologist Günter Bechly. “The book deserves to become a game changer Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Michael Denton

Date
May 18, 2022

Categorized
Human Origins}

Michael Denton: The Miracle of Man Interview

_{Michael Denton

May 18, 2022

Human Origins}

On today’s ID the Future, host Eric Anderson sits down with Australian biologist and MD Michael Denton to discuss his new book, The Miracle of Man: The Fine Tuning of Nature for Human Existence. As Denton notes, throughout the Middle Ages, humans were viewed as central to the cosmic scheme of things, but this anthropocentric view began to fall out of favor in the sixteenth century, and few if any scientific discoveries in the subsequent two centuries offered any apparent aid or comfort to the view. That, however, isn’t the end of the story. According to Denton, even as Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution by natural selection seemed to be draining from the idea what little life remained Read More ›

Quantum physics, time quantum travel. Nanocosmos, nanoworld

^{Type
post

Author
James Tour

Date
September 18, 2020

Categorized
Human Origins, Science

Tagged
__edited, abiogenesis, Albert Einstein, Alexander Vilenkin, Big Bang, cosmic microwave background radiation, Don Ewert, exobiology, general relativity, inflation field, inflationary cosmology, multiverse, origin of life, quantum cosmology, red shift, Scott Minnich, SETI, string theory, Theology, virulence}

James Tour and Stephen Meyer on the Origin of Life, Pt. 3

_{James Tour

September 18, 2020

Human Origins, Science}

On this episode of ID the Future, Rice University synthetic organic chemist and inventor James M. Tour continues his conversation with Stephen C. Meyer. Read More ›

Hybrid Biotechnology - Biomimicry - Abstract Illustration

^{Type
post

Author
James Tour

Date
September 16, 2020

Categorized
Human Origins, Science

Tagged
__edited, abduction, abiogenesis, Brian Miller, causal adequacy, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, complex specified information, dissipation theorems, Inference to the Best Explanation, intelligent agency, intelligent causes, Intelligent Design, Jeremy England, origin of life, second law of thermodynamics}

James Tour and Stephen Meyer on the Origin of Life, Pt. 2

_{James Tour

September 16, 2020

Human Origins, Science}

On this episode of ID the Future, James M. Tour and Stephen C. Meyer begin a discussion about the hard problems facing researchers trying to discover how the first life could have come about naturalistically. Meyer is the director of the Center for Science and Culture; Tour is a world-renowned synthetic organic chemist with over 700 research publications and multiple major recognitions, including TheBestSchools.org naming him one of the 50 most influential scientists in the world today. Though he doesn’t sign on to ID theory, he says he’s sympathetic with the idea, and certainly not impressed with any naturalistic explanations for the origin of life. In this first of a three-part series, they explore problems ranging from the extreme improbabilities associated with protein assembly, Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
James Tour

Date
September 14, 2020

Categorized
Human Origins, Science

Tagged
__edited, abiogenesis, Big Bang, definition of life, Directed panspermia, fine-tuning, Francis Crick, Fred Hoyle, goldilocks principle, James M. Tour, origin of life, philosophy of science, Roger Penrose, Stephen C. Meyer, Stephen Meyer}

James Tour and Stephen Meyer on the Origin of Life, Pt. 1

_{James Tour

September 14, 2020

Human Origins, Science}

^{Type
post

Author
Eric H. Anderson

Date
September 2, 2020

Categorized
Human Origins, Science

Tagged
__edited, abiogenesis, Intelligent Design, Materialism, membrane first, metabolism first, Naturalism, OOL, origin of life, protocell, RNA first, RNA world, scientific Materialism}

New Origin-of-Life Proposal Revives a Hopeful Monster

_{Eric H. Anderson

September 2, 2020

Human Origins, Science}

On this episode of ID the Future, host Eric Anderson talks with scientist and fellow engineer Rob Stadler about a recent origin-of-life paper and how the authors paint themselves into a corner. The context for the paper is this: Decades of research have undermined the three great hopes for a purely naturalistic origin of life — scenarios starting with some sort of metabolism, scenarios starting with some kind of membrane, and scenarios starting with RNA. All three are necessary for cellular life; none seems able to have come ahead of the others. So now some recent work described in an article in New Scientist suggests it all happened at once in a sort of “chemical big bang.” It’s the return Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Eric H. Anderson

Date
August 19, 2020

Categorized
Human Origins, Science

Tagged
__edited, abiogenesis, DNA, God of the gaps, Materialism, materialism of the gaps, methodological naturalism, origin of life, repair mechanisms, spontaneous generation, Stairway to Life}

The Origin of Life and the Materialism of the Gaps

_{Eric H. Anderson

August 19, 2020

Human Origins, Science}

On this episode of ID the Future, host Eric Anderson speaks again with medical engineer Rob Stadler, co-author with molecular biologist Change Laura Tan of the new book Stairway to Life: An Origin of Life Reality Check. Here in Part 2 of their conversation, Stadler says that following the Miller-Urey experiments in the mid-twentieth century, researchers were optimistic that a purely naturalistic explanation for the origin of the first life was just around the corner, but since then the field has run into one obstacle after another. The challenge to mindless origin-of-life scenarios is now far greater than it was 60-70 years ago. And yet many in the field still cling to the belief that life must have arisen by Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Günter Bechly

Date
April 6, 2020

Categorized
Human Origins, Science

Tagged
__edited, anagenesis, Australopithecenes, Australopithecus afarensis, Australopithecus anamensis, cladogenesis, common descent, Fossil Record, gradualism, human evolution, Johannes Haile-Selassie, Larry Moran, Lucy, Niles Eldredge, Punctuated Equilibrium, speciation, stasis, Stephen Jay Gould}

Günter Bechly Says Goodbye to Darwinian Gradualism

_{Günter Bechly

April 6, 2020

Human Origins, Science}

On this episode of ID the Future, paleontologist Günter Bechly and host Andrew McDiarmid discuss Bechly’s article “Ape-Man Waves Goodbye to Darwinian Gradualism.” Bechly touches on the oldest australopithecine fossil skull ever found, from 3.8 million years ago. The researchers behind the find are confident of its age but puzzled because the discovery undercuts one of the best examples of alleged gradual transition between two hominid species, and it also doesn’t fit well with common theories of phylogenetic relationship. The evidence poses a significant problem for the Darwinian mechanistic paradigm, but can be readily explained with an intelligent design approach.