Debate over proposed Fla. evolution rules

The Florida Department of Education Web site was flooded with comments after the Feb. 19 vote was announced, and many of the messages denounced the required teaching of evolution, which the proposed standards describe as the "fundamental concept underlying all of biology," which is "supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence," the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel reported Monday.

"I have no problem with them hearing about evolution. I just don't want them to hear a one-sided fact," said LeVon Pettis, a Panhandle, Fla., father who said he may put his daughters in private school if the standards are adopted. "If you're going to teach evolution, then also throw in creationism and intelligent design."

I am amazed at the ease ID supporters allow themselves to be drawn onto the field of scientific debate.  They feel that somehow that is a win for them, but the only way it would result in that is for ID to win in a fair game of scientific discovery.  That's not a likily outcome.

Tags: Creationism, ID, Intelligent Design

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Edge: LIFE: WHAT A CONCEPT!

Freeman Dyson describes the origin of life in six stages.

Edge: LIFE: WHAT A CONCEPT!

 

Technorati Tags: Freeman Dyson

zidouta.com - Edge @ DLD: Life: A gene-centric View

Dawkins and Vinter discuss open source biology, sexual reproduction and genetic information transfer.  Dawkins, once again, sets a new standard for life as a pure form of information.

zidouta.com - Edge @ DLD: Life: A gene-centric View

Embryos created with DNA from 3 people - Yahoo! News

 

LONDON - British scientists say they have created human embryos containing DNA from two women and a man in a procedure that researchers hope might be used one day to produce embryos free of inherited diseases

Embryos created with DNA from 3 people - Yahoo! News

The Scientist : home : Wednesday

 

The Scientist : home : Wednesday

This magazine is about the life sciences

Longest Piece of Synthetic DNA Yet: Scientific American

 

Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Rockville, Md., report in the online edition of Science that they pieced together the genes of Mycoplasma genitalium, the smallest free-living bacterium that can be grown in the laboratory and a common culprit in urinary tract infections.
"The 582,970 base pair M. genitalium bacterial genome is the largest chemically defined structure synthesized in the lab," lead author Daniel Gibson told ScientificAmerican.com via e-mail. (Base pairs are complementary linked nucleotide bases, such as adenine–thymine.)

Longest Piece of Synthetic DNA Yet: Scientific American

Intelligent Design and Vertebrate Eye Design

“The vertebrate eye is the best example of structural perfection – as used by proponents of intelligent design to claim that something so complex couldn’t possibly have evolved,” Dr Young said.

“Part of the trouble in tracing the evolution of the eye is that soft tissues don’t tend to fossilise. But the eye cavities in the braincase of these 400 million-year-old fossil fish were lined with a delicate layer of very thin bone. All the details of the nerve canals and muscle insertions inside the eye socket are preserved – the first definite fossil evidence demonstrating an intermediate stage in the evolution of our most complex sensory organ.

“These extinct placoderms had the eyeball still connected to the braincase by cartilage, as in modern sharks, and a primitive eye muscle arrangement as in living jawless fish.” Dr Young said that this anatomical arrangement is different from all modern vertebrates, in which there is a consistent pattern of tiny muscles for rotating each eyeball.

Link

This is evidence against the irreducible complexity argument put forth by ID proponents.  Their point is that the vertebrate eye is too complex to develop in stages.  This evidence takes issue with that view.

ID, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Eye

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