Tag: Richard Buggs

^{Type
post

Author
Casey Luskin

Date
May 17, 2023

Tagged
auxiliary hypotheses, Casey Luskin, common ancestry, common descent, conflicting trees of life, Darwinism, Dawkins Test, epicycles, Evolution, evolutionary, Evolutionary Biology, evolutionary history, evolutionary trees, genetic data, geocentrism, horizontal gene transfer, Intelligent Design, Neo-Darwinism, nested hierarchies, phylogenomics, phylogeny, Richard Buggs, Richard Dawkins, smoothing the data, The Greatest Show on Earth, Tree of Life, tree-like distributions, trees of life, uncooperative data, universal common descent}

The Dawkins Test Returns an Answer: Intelligent Design

_{Casey Luskin

May 17, 2023

Uncategorized}

In 2009 atheist biologist Richard Dawkins offered a scientific test to decide between Darwinian evolution and intelligent design (ID). The results are in, and as guest Casey Luskin explains on this ID the Future, the evidence has broken strongly in favor of intelligent design. At the time Dawkins presented the test, he was confident that comparative DNA evidence supported Darwin’s tree of life and its idea of universal common ancestry. He made the point in his 2009 book The Greatest Show on Earth and in two interviews. As he put it, “The single most convincing fact or observation you could point to” in favor of Darwinian evolution over against ID “would be the pattern of resemblances that you see when you compare the genes … of any pair of animals you like … and then plot out the resemblances and they form a perfect hierarchy, a perfect family tree. And the only alternative to it being a family tree is that the intelligent designer deliberately set out to deceive us in the most underhanded and devious manner.” But fourteen years later the picture looks very different. Tune in as Casey Luskin details the various ways that the rapidly developing field of phylogenomics is uncovering data that powerfully fits the ID model of life’s history and strongly undermines the idea of universal common ancestry via mindless evolution. As Luskin says in a recent Evolution News article, “Now, years later, scientists have sequenced a great number of whole genomes. And as a consequence, they know that Dawkins was wrong. Every gene does not deliver ‘approximately the same tree of life.’… On its own terms, the Dawkins test for evolution has come up for ID.” So why haven’t evolutionary biologists given up on universal common ancestry? Luskin says that some have, while others reflexively invoke auxiliary hypotheses and employ question-begging computer models to generate tree-like ancestries in the face of contrary data. Luskin compares the behavior to astronomers who protected the dying geocentric model of the solar system by invoking “epicycles” to explain away contrary astronomical data. Better to let the Dawkins Test speak for itself, Luskin says. Listen in for the full story.

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

Uncategorized}

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 same useless “pseudogene” in both the original chimp population and original human population? Surely a better explanation, the evolutionists argue, is Darwinian common ancestry. The problem with that argument, according to Luskin, is that pseudogenes are turning out to have functions. In other words, they aren’t, as evolutionists had assumed, just so much junk DNA. One example: evolution advocates Kenneth Miller and Eugenie Scott cited the beta-globin pseudogene as knockdown evidence of common descent between humans and apes. But the beta-globin pseudogene, it turns out, is essential for producing red blood cells. This means that finding this gene in both apes and humans is no more indicative of mindless common descent than finding wheels on both cars and airplanes. An intelligent designer would be expected to use the successful design element in both cases. Luskin provides still other lines of evidence undercutting the DNA-similarity argument for chimp-human common ancestry. Tune in to hear it all. And to read Luskin’s latest work on the subject, get the new free online ID book from South Africa, Science and Faith in Dialogue, with contributions from Luskin, Stephen Meyer, Hugh Ross, Guillermo Gonzalez, James Tour, Fazale Rana, Marcos Eberlin, and others.

^{Type
post

Author
Günter Bechly

Date
February 22, 2021

Tagged
Abominable Mystery, abrupt appearance, abrupt origin of flowering plants, American Journal of Botany, angiosperms, artifact hypothesis, Carboniferous, Charles Darwin, conifers, Cretaceous, Darwinism, dicotyledons, Evolution, flowering plants, Fossil Record, ghost lineages, gradualism, gymnosperms, Intelligent Design, Jurassic angiosperms, Jurassic flowering plants, monocotyledons, Neo-Darwinism, Oswald Heer, paleobotany, Richard Bateman, Richard Buggs, waiting time problem, William Carruthers}

Botany Journal Revisits Darwin’s “Abominable Mystery”

_{Günter Bechly

February 22, 2021

Uncategorized}

On today’s ID the Future, German paleontologist Günter Bechly unpacks what Charles Darwin referred to as an “abominable mystery,” the sudden appearance in the fossil record of a certain group of flowering plants. It was a mystery to Darwin because according to his theory, there should have been a long succession of precursors gradually evolving toward the flowering plants of the Cretaceous. Bechly and host Eric Anderson focus their conversation around a recent paper by Richard Buggs in the American Journal of Botany showing that the problem for evolutionary theory has actually grown more acute since Darwin’s time. What about a recent article claiming to have found evidence of flowering plants in the Jurassic? Bechly says that the “evidence” amounts to the authors theorizing that there must have been a common ancestor long before the Cretaceous. The fossil evidence for any such Jurassic plants remains absent. In other words, they posited ghost lineages based on what is required by modern evolutionary theory, specifically an assumption of common descent and Neo-Darwinism mechanism of gradual, unguided evolutionary change. Anderson and Bechly wrap up their conversation by considering the implications of all this for the evolution/intelligent design debate.