Is There Evidence for God?

William Lane Craig debates Lawrence Krauss at North Carolina State University on the evidence for God.

Click HERE for the transcript of the debate

Does Reason Lead to Atheism or Theism?

Dr. Craig shows the importance of not taking persons out of context. Also, do atheists really believe in God but just lie about it?

Click HERE to listen

Does Theism Foster Scepticism? Question of the week by Dr. Craig

Dr. Craig

I was reading about Plantinga's Argument Against Naturalism, and I've noticed a similar argument among atheist's that holds that theism is also self-refuting. Excuse my rough caricature, but it goes something like this:

If a person believes that an omnipotent being exists, then he is not justified in any belief he may have due to the possibility that this being could be toying with our minds without our knowledge.

I don't really know how to respond to this, and I've never seen it addressed in any published work, so I was just curious to see what you have to say about it.

Thanks!

Brian

United States

Click HERE to read Dr. Craig's response.

Is Intelligent Design a Circular Argument?

Recently we received an e-mail from a reader asking if ID is a "circular argument." He described ID like this:

Complex stuff doesn't just arise spontaneously, it can only arise through ID. Therefore, if we find evidence of complex stuff, that serves as proof it was ID-ed.

In a very rough and rudimentary kind of way, this is not a totally inaccurate description of the basic case for intelligent design. However, it is not a circular argument.

ID is a historical science based upon the principle of uniformitarianism. The principle of uniformitarianism holds that "the present is the key to the past," where we study present day causes that are at work in the world around us. Once we understand the effects of those causes from present-day observations, we can then study the historical record to see if it too contains the known effects of those causes. When we find those effects, we can infer that the cause was at work.

Here's a brief example.

Geology is a classic case of a historical science. We observe in the present day that rivers remove sediment and cut through rock at a rate, of say, 1 mm per 10 years. If we then observe that a river is in a gorge that is 100 meters deep, we might infer that the river has been cutting that gorge for 100,000 years. (1 year/mm * 1000 mm per meter * 100 m = 100,000 years.) So, by observing present day causes -- that a river cuts through a gorge at 1 mm per year -- we can infer that it cut through the entire gorge, and that it took 100,000 years for that to happen.

Darwin used similar reasoning when he made a case for evolution by natural selection in Origin of Species. Darwin observed present-day populations and observed that they contain variations, and that some variations allow organisms to survive and reproduce better than others. He then theorized that if this process went on deep into the past, it might create lots of variation over long periods of time -- even new species. So he used present-day observations to try to explain past events.

Click HERE to continue reading

Who is the one moral teacher

that every worldview has a special place for?

Who is the one man that every world religion

has a unique, important view of?

Jesus of Nazareth. 

5 Reasons the Christian Worldview is Unique: 
 Reason #3 - It is CENTRAL:


(Part 3 of 5)  In this short video teaching, I investigate another aspect of the Christian worldview and philosophy that makes it absolutely unique amongst all 25 or so world religions, the fact that it is CENTRAL.  In other words, while virtually all worldviews and philosophies have a special place for the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth (even atheistic Humanism), Biblical Christianity has the person of Jesus at it's very core. 


Since every system has a place of prominence for the Nazarene, it makes good sense to investigate the worldview that focuses on Him as the CENTRAL foundation of it's belief and doctrine.


A true student of history and a sincere seeker on a quest for spiritual truth, would be wise to take this to heart.


- Pastor J.

What is the Law of non-contradiction

The Law of non-contradiction is one of the basic laws in classical logic.  It states that something cannot be both true and not true at the same time when dealing with the same context.  For example, the chair in my living room, right now, cannot be made of wood and not made of wood at the same time.  In the law of non-contradiction, where we have a set of statements about a subject, we cannot have any of the statements in that set negate the truth of any other statement in that same set.  For example, we have a set of two statements about Judas. 1) Judas hung himself.  2) Judas fell down and his bowels spilled out.  Neither statement about Judas contradicts the other.  That is, neither statement makes the other impossible because neither excludes the possibility of the other.  The statements can be harmonized by stating: Judas hung himself and then his body fell down and his bowels spilled out.

In order to make the set of statements contradictory, we would have something like: 1) Judas hung himself.  2) Judas did not hang himself.  Since either statement excludes the possibility of the other, we would then have a contradiction since both could not be true.  However, to say that Judas hung himself and Judas fell are not contradictory since both could occur.

Ravi Zacharias addresses a packed audience at Penn State University and answers a question about the law of non-contradiction and the Trinity.

Atheism, Feminism, and the Bible

Ravi Zacharias responds to a student's question about atheism, feminism, and the Bible at Penn State University. Ravi asks, "When someone denies the existence of God, what are they affirming in its place?" Watch as Ravi exposes how some atheists borrow from a Judeo-Christian worldview to debunk it.

Was Christ a Divine-Human Person? Question of the week by Dr. Craig

Dear Dr. Craig

I have read many of your books, regularly listen to your podcasts, and have heard you speak in-person. I am trying to untangle a question, and I need your help.

I need clarification about the person of Christ, so I can effectively answer unitarian theists such as Moslems and resolve my own confusion.

In Christ, we find a unique person who is fully God and fully man. So we might represent this in an equation as follows: God + man = Christ.

We know from the Bible that we are to worship God alone, yet the person of Christ accepts worship from Thomas and is addressed in prayer by Stephen.

But how can this be, since Christ is not God alone but forever the God-man? As a Christian, I am not worshiping Christ's human body, but I am worshiping his person. And that person is not solely God but also man. Does this not violate the scriptural principle of worshiping God alone?

Please help me untangle my thinking, so I can effectively communicate to others. Thank you.

Kerry

United States

Click HERE to read Dr. Craig's answer

From Apologist to Atheist

This is a review of Why I Rejected Christianity: A Former Apologist Explainsby John W. Loftus (Victoria, British Columbia: Trafford Publishing, 2007), a 278 page paperback. The book has four parts: Part 1: My Changing Years; Part 2: The Cumulative Case; Part 3: What I Believe Today; Part 4: Appendices of published writings and a photo of Loftus and two former professors, Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. James Strauss.

Introductory Appreciation 

So that my evaluation of the book does not obscure my appreciation of it, let me briefly point out some of the values of this book. First, it is an honest and open account of how a Christian became an atheist. Seldom are unbelievers so candid and open. Second, every Christian–let alone Christian apologists – can learn some valuable lessons from it on how to treat wayward believers. Third, it is a thoughtful and intellectually challenging work, presenting arguments that every honest theist and Christian should face. Indeed, some of his criticisms are valid. In particular I would single out his critique of the subjective argument from the alleged self-authenticating “witness of the Holy Spirit” by Loftus’ former teacher William Lane Craig (in chap. 15).

An Exposition and Evaluation of the Book 

The book is too long to cover every argument contained in it. Since the vast majority, if not all of them, have been treated elsewhere in our writings (seeBaker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics ), we will be content to highlight some important points Loftus made. The first part is best summarized by selecting the author’s own words. 

Part 1: “My Changing Years” is an open and illuminating account of how he became an atheist. This is best reported in his own words. “I was born in 1954 and grew up in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, in a Catholic home. . . . I never experienced true faith growing up, but I did learn that whenever I was in need I should call out to God. And that’s exactly what I did at 18 years old when I felt I had nowhere to turn for help. I was not always a good boy, being a middle child in a home with three boys. . . . I seemed to be in almost every fight in the household. . . . They [his parents] thought it would be good for everyone if I considered attending Howe Military School . . .” (9). “I was a problem teenager. . . . I spent many weeks in the Wood Youth Center, in Ft. Wayne. I dropped out of school. Most of my law breaking occurred during the time my mother and father were separated and divorced. . . . I was arrested six different times as a juvenile offender for various offenses!” (10). “Eventually I began to feel as if I was possessed by some demonic being. So one night . . . I went over to see a woman named Cathy . . . who had earlier spoken to me earlier [sic] about Jesus. She led me to accept the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross for my sins. . . . I felt free and forgiven for the first time in my life” (11). 

After being baptized in a Church of Christ, “by the fall of that year, I had read completely through the Bible twice!” (12). After graduating from Great Lakes Bible College (GLBC), Loftus attended Lincoln Christian Seminary (both Church of Christ schools). Then he notes, “I attended Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS), and graduated in 1985 with a Th.M degree, under the mentoring of Dr. William Lane Craig . . .” (7). Subsequently, “I was in the [Church of Christ] ministry for about fourteen years, or so. . . . I am now an atheist” (7-8). 

Loftus summarized, “There are three major things that happened in my life that changed my thinking. They all happened in the space of about five years, from 1991-1996. These things are associated with three people: 1) Linda, 2) Larry, and 3) Jeff. Linda brought a major crisis in my life. Larry brought new information in my life. Jeff took away my sense of a loving Christian community. . . . In the midst of these things, I felt rejected by the Church of Christ in my local area. For me it was an assault of major proportions. If I still believed in the devil, I would say it was orchestrated by the legions of Hell” (emphasis in original, 20-21).


Click HERE to continue reading

Does Christianity Match Up With Reality??

Would you surrender your Worldview, 

if it didn't match up with reality?

Do you have to leave parts of your Worldview behind, 

as you go throughout your day?

What would it take for you 

to decide you needed a new philosophy on life?

(Part 2 of 5) In this short teaching, I continue the five part series demonstrating 5 absolutely unique features of the Christian Worldview. These 5 reasons should encourage any genuine truth-seeker to investigate Christianity before any other system of religious/spiritual belief. 


The particular aspect of uniqueness addressed in this video is that the Christian Worldview is uniquely COMPATIBLE with reality around us, through an examination of historical, archaeological, scientific, and prophetic evidence. 


I hope you get blessed by knowing that we have a uniquely COMPATIBLE worldview and philosophy of life - Chrisitianity.


- Pastor J.

Christianity is uniquely VERIFIABLE.

What makes Christianity so special anyway?

Is there any reason that sets Christianity apart from other Worldviews and philosophies?

Are there good reasons why a truth seeker should begin their investigation of Worldviews/Philosophies, 

with the Christian worldview?

In this short teaching, I begin a five part series demonstrating the 5 absolutely unique features of the Christian Worldview. These 5 reasons should encourage any genuine truth-seeker to investigate Christianity before any other system of religious/spiritual belief. The aspect of uniqueness addressed in this video is that the Christian Worldview is uniquely VERIFIABLE through an examination of historical, archaeological, scientific, and prophetic evidence. (Part 1 of 5)


I will be posting the text version/notes of this short teaching soon.  I hope you get blessed by knowing that we have a uniquely VERIFIABLE worldview and philosophy of life - Chrisitianity.


- Pastor J.

ARE YOU ON "INTELLECTUAL NEUTRAL"?

".....Christian students have not been able to rise above the dark undertow in our educational system at the primary and secondary levels. This level of ignorance presents a real crisis for Christian colleges and seminaries.
But then an even more terrible fear began to dawn on me as I contemplated these statistics. If Christian students are this ignorant of the general facts of history and geography, I thought, then the chances are that they, and Christians in general, are equally or even more ignorant of the facts of our own Christian heritage and doctrine. Our culture in general has sunk to the level of biblical and theological illiteracy. A great many, if not most, people cannot even name the four Gospels—in a recent survey one person identified them as Matthew, Mark, and Luther! In another survey, Joan of Arc was identified by some as Noah's wife! The suspicion arose in my mind that the evangelical church is probably also caught somewhere higher up in this same downward spiral.
But if we do not preserve the truth of our own Christian heritage and doctrine, who will learn it for us? Non-Christians? That hardly seems likely. If the Church does not treasure her own Christian truth, then it will be lost to her forever. So how, I wondered, would Christians fare on a quiz over general facts of Christian history and doctrine?
Well, how would they? I now invite you to get out a pen and paper and take the following quiz yourself. (Go on, it'll only take a minute!) The following are items I think any mature Christian in our society ought to be able to identify. Simply provide some identifying phrase that indicates that you know what the item is. For example, if I say, "John Wesley," you might write: "the founder of Methodism" or "an eighteenth-century English revivalist."

GENERAL CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE QUIZ:

1. Augustine
2. Council of Nicea
3. Trinity
4. Two natures united in one person
5. Pantheism
6. Thomas Aquinas
7. Reformation
8. Martin Luther
9. Substitutionary Atonement
10. Enlightenment

How did you do? If you're typical of the audiences to whom I've given this quiz, probably not too well. If that is the case, you might be tempted to react to this quiz defensively: "Who needs to know all this stuff anyway? This junk isn't important. All that really counts is my walk with Christ and my sharing Him with others. Who cares about all this other trivia?"
I truly hope that will not be your reaction, for that will close you off to self-improvement. This little exercise will have been of no profit to you. You will have learned nothing from it.
But there's a second, more positive reaction. You may see, perhaps for the first time in your life, that here is a need in your life for you to become intellectually engaged as a Christian, and you may resolve to do something about it. This is a momentous decision. You will be taking a step which millions of American Christians need to take.
No one has issued a more forceful challenge to Christians to become intellectually engaged than did Charles Malik, former Lebanese ambassador to the United States, in his address at the dedication of the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton, Illinois. Malik emphasized that as Christians we face two tasks in our evangelism: saving the soul and saving the mind, that is to say, not only converting people spiritually, but converting them intellectually as well. And the Church is lagging dangerously behind with regard to this second task. Our churches are filled with people who are spiritually born again, but who still think like non-Christians. Mark his words well:

"I must be frank with you: the greatest danger confronting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind in its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough. But intellectual nurture cannot take place apart from profound immersion for a period of years in the history of thought and the spirit. People who are in a hurry to get out of the university and start earning money or serving the church or preaching the gospel have no idea of the infinite value of spending years of leisure conversing with the greatest minds and souls of the past, ripening and sharpening and enlarging their powers of thinking. The result is that the arena of creative thinking is vacated and abdicated to the enemy......."  

- Dr. William Lane Craig (http://www.reasonablefaith.org)

Does the Higgs Boson prove that religion is wrong?

After the discovery of the "God particle" many scientists believed that they have proven that there is no God, or even go back before the "Big Bang". Here is a clip from Dr. Craig about this topic. Listen how the "scientists" play with words.

What Are the Top Ten Problems with Darwinian Evolution?

A few months back I gave my top three criticisms of Darwinian evolution that I think should be taught in public schools. But the problems with Darwinian evolution run much deeper. Here are my top ten problems with biological and chemical evolution:

1. Lack of a viable mechanism for producing high levels of complex and specified information. Related to this are problems with the Darwinian mechanism producing irreducibly complex features, and the problems of non-functional or deleterious intermediate stages. (For details see: "The NCSE, Judge Jones, and Bluffs About the Origin of New Functional Genetic Information," "Do Car Engines Run on Lugnuts? A Response to Ken Miller & Judge Jones's Straw Tests of Irreducible Complexity for the Bacterial Flagellum," "Opening Darwin's Black Box," or "Can Random Mutations Create New Complex Features? A Response to TalkOrigins");
2. The failure of the fossil record to provide support for Darwinian evolution. (For details, see "Punctuated Equilibrium and Patterns from the Fossil Record" or "Intelligent Design Has Scientific Merit in Paleontology");
3. The failure of molecular biology to provide evidence for a grand "tree of life." (For details, see: "A Primer on the Tree of Life");
4. Natural selection is an extremely inefficient method of spreading traits in populations unless a trait has an extremely high selection coefficient;
5. The problem that convergent evolution appears rampant -- at both the genetic and morphological levels, even though under Darwinian theory this is highly unlikely. (For details, see "Convergent Genetic Evolution: 'Surprising' Under Unguided Evolution, Expected Under Intelligent Design" and "Dolphins and Porpoises and...Bats? Oh My! Evolution's Convergence Problem");

Click HERE to continue reading

The "Ancestor of All Dinosaurs" Might Have Had Dinofuzz (Updated)

See below for an update about the quote from Witmer's paper, "Fuzzy origins for feathers," on Caudipteryx, a fossil (which was a bird, not a dinosaur) that did have true pennaceous feathers.

The media that loyally serve Big Science are at it again, overstating the finds of a scientific paper to promote an evolutionary icon. This time, the icon is feathered dinosaurs, representing the purported ancestral relationship between dinos and birds. A recent article in Science News claims, "All dinosaurs may have had feathers," because a newly discovered fossil dinosaur supposedly "sports long, fine plumage." Looking at the find, however, shows that it's nothing more than a classic example of what critics affectionately call "dinofuzz." This is all-but-admitted in the technical paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which states:

Here we report an exceptionally preserved skeleton of a juvenile megalosauroid,Sciurumimus albersdoerferi n. gen., n. sp., from the Late Jurassic of Germany, which preserves a filamentous plumage at the tail base and on parts of the body. These structures are identical to the type 1 feathers that have been reported in some ornithischians, the basal tyrannosaur Dilong, the basal therizinosauroidBeipiaosaurus, and, probably, in the basal coelurosaur Sinosauropteryx.

(Oliver W. M. Rauhut, Christian Foth, Helmut Tischlinger, and Mark A. Norell, "Exceptionally preserved juvenile megalosauroid theropod dinosaur with filamentous integument from the Late Jurassic of Germany," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2012))

But of course these "type 1 feathers" aren't really true birdlike feathers. As one paper in Naturenoted, they are hairlike structures sometimes called "dinofuzz":

And indeed, Tianyulong doesn't have true pennaceous feathers. It has long filaments, very similar to what have been called "protofeathers" or, more non-committally, "dinofuzz." These filaments are evident in some theropods such asCaudipteryx that have true pennaceous feathers, but are also found in a range of other theropods that lack definitive feathers, such as the basal coelurosaurSinosauropteryx, the therizinosauroid Beipiaosaurus and the basal tyrannosauroidDilong.

(Lawrence M. Witmer, "Fuzzy origins for feathers," Nature, Vol. 458:293-295 (March 19, 2009). Note: See my update below for an explanation of why Caudipteryx is irrelevant to understanding this fossil.)

In other words, the fossil structures on this new dinosaur are being compared to those of species that "lack definitive feathers." They are not "true pennaceous feathers," but rather are best viewed as "filaments" or "dinofuzz." So much for the claim that this was a feathered dinosaur. The truth comes out later in the paper:

The protofeathers probably are monofilaments, because no branching patterns are visible in the well preserved, long filaments above the tail; apparent branching patterns in a few places probably are the result of compaction of these structures. Because of the state of preservation, it cannot be established if these structures were hollow.

Likewise, the Science News piece admits at the bottom of the article: "Unlike modern feathers, these 'protofeathers' or 'type 1 feathers' look like simple strands of hair."

Even if this fossil did have feathers, it's still not clear how that would imply "all dinosaurs" might have had feathers. Because this dinosaur comes from a different group from the one that is said to have led to birds, researchers say it "suggests that the ancestor of all dinosaurs might have been a feathered animal." That argument might add up if you make a bunch of evolutionary assumptions -- namely common descent of all dinosaurs in the first place. But this specimen itself is only about 150 million years old -- far later than the time period in which dinosaurs themselves originated. Dinosaurs are thought to have evolved before 230 million years ago, but as a different paper in Science admitted last year, the fossil record doesn't document the evolution of major dinosaur groups:

Click HERE to continue reading

Higgs Boson Discovered!, Question of the week by Dr. Craig

Hello Dr. Craig,

Let me first thank you for all of your work that you have done in philosophy and understanding. Your writings, speeches, and debates, particularly when you debated Peter Atkins recently, and helped my understanding of how God has worked in the universe.

Now, I have read an article claiming the the scientists at the CERN supercollider have actually found the Higgs Boson ("God Particle"). All my atheist friends are now ranting, raving, and, more or less, partying over the fact that now "God has been disproved!" So my question is: assuming that CERN has found this boson, what theological implications does the Higgs boson have?

With many thanks,

T.C.

United States

Click HERE to read Dr. Craig's response 

What Would Disprove Evolution?

For a change of pace, Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True turns his attention to the issue of evolution. In a post titled "What would disprove evolution?," he observes: "If evolution is a scientific theory worth its salt, then there must be some conceivable observations that could show it to be wrong." True!

Two comments on Coyne's list. He writes, "Here are some of those conceivable observations:"

• Fossils in the wrong place (e.g., mammals in the Devonian). If the fossil record were all out of order like this (a single anomalous fossil might not overturn everything, of course, since it could be in the wrong place for other reasons), we'd have to seriously question the occurrence of evolution.

Fossils are found in the "wrong place" all the time (either too early, or too late). Paleontological theory, however, allows for such devices as "ghost lineages" to repair the damage; see ENV's coverage here and here.

• Complete discordance between phylogenies based on morphology/fossils and on DNA. While individual genes can show discordance by lateral transfer -- Click HERE to continue reading

The Limits of Reason, Question of the week from Dr. Craig

Dear Dr Craig

I am an atheist but still a big fan of yours. I always defend you against dumb internet atheists who never bother to read anything yet think they can ridicule a man with two PhD's and two dozen books.

You defend the classic God proofs so well. But I think you are relying on commonsense and intuition too much in this day and age. We are not in an age where we can be confident that the laws of reason are the same as the laws of reality, like people in the time of Aristotle believed. If that was the case, we would never have had to abandon Aristotelian physics. It sounded perfectly intuitive but turned out to be false even on the simple idea of inertia, which is a principle that our brains will just not accept because of how we are wired apparently.

So we can just see how reason is limited in understanding physics, then how much more would it be limited in understanding the creation and God. When thinking about the beginning of time and about creation and God our reason actually generates contradictory ideas. It is not satisfied with the idea that the past should be infinite, yet at the same time not with the idea that time has a beginning either. They both sound absurd and we are forced to believe the opposite, yet its opposite is also equally absurd. Furthermore reason demands that the causal chain to the past should not go on forever, but it cannot really make sense of the very idea of a "first cause" either. And also it demands that contingent things must ultimately be explained by a necessary being, but it finds the very idea of a "necessary being" incoherent at the same time. It wants to have God as the creator of time, yet it cannot comprehend the idea that there can be an agent that acts like create, yet has no time dimension of his own, while at the same time in our own experience we can act precisely because we are in time; it is what makes any action possible in the first place.

These examples should be an indicator that we shouldn't really pursue our intuitions to their logical conclusions beyond the limits of the natural world. Because reason wants to follow the train of thought to the end, but apparently it is trying to deal with a realm that doesn't work in human logic after a point. We may feel we are onto something, but that is just an illusion, and we shouldn't take such feelings seriously.

I will admit that atheism comes with its own problems. It is obvious from how we atheists have to either accept positivism or postmodernism and they both have fatal problems. Postmodernism is self-refuting as you explain in your great book Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. And positivism apparently is just logically immature and on its way to postmodernism if one has to be consistent. Like Wittgenstein matured and abandoned his positivism to become a postmodernist. And that is the end of the road.

So it seems the debate between atheism and theism  is a stalemate. But if you still say that I must reject atheism because it ends up in the absurdity of postmodernism and I must therefore adopt its negation that is theism, well, then I will have to remind you of fatal problems in your worldview such as JEDP theories for the origin of Torah and the academic success of Darwinism which demands acceptance.

Best Regards

KS

Turkey

Click HERE to read Dr. Craig's answer

Origins of the Universe - Has Stephen Hawking Eliminated God?

Cambridge October 2011 - William Lane Craig responds in a public lecture to the claims in Stephen Hawking's recent book The Grand Design. Speaking to a capacity audience at St Andrew the Great church, Cambridge, Prof Craig outlined the weaknesses of the central arguments of the book. Rev Dr Rodney Holder, an astrophysicist, responded to Prof Craig.

Is Jesus' life parallel to the story of Osiris and Horus?

Some people say that Jesus and Horus's "story" is basically the same. They both were born on December the 25th, they both had 12 apostles, they both were born form a virgin and the list goes on and on. Watch as Dr. William Lane Craig answer this objection.

Before believing ANYTHING do your own research, including Christianity. Know what you believe and why you hold that believes.

The Gecko's Toes

The gecko is one of the icons of biomimetics. That's the science of taking cues from designs in nature to develop and improve our own designs, an approach that is of now widely recognized use in manufacturing a variety of cool new technologies. This adorable lizard with a sideline in auto insurance uses tiny hairs in its toes to make scaling up or down a sheet of vertical glass look like a breeze. Of course whenever you read about stuff like this, researchers and journalists feel the need to vaccinate against any possibility of their being misunderstood as gesturing to intelligent design. Typically, though not always, they are careful to couch the discussion in terms of "naturaldesign."

In the case of geckos, this defensive posture just got even harder to maintain, when you consider what genetic data appear to reveal about their evolution. A weird thing about gecko toes is that this creature has stumbled upon its unique technology any number of times in the course of its history, then lost it, and then stumbled upon it again, independently in independent gecko lineages. PLoS One has the story ("Repeated Origin and Loss of Adhesive Toepads in Geckos"):

Geckos are well known for their extraordinary clinging abilities and many species easily scale vertical or even inverted surfaces. This ability is enabled by a complex digital adhesive mechanism (adhesive toepads) that employs van der Waals based adhesion, augmented by frictional forces. Numerous morphological traits and behaviors have evolved to facilitate deployment of the adhesive mechanism, maximize adhesive force and enable release from the substrate. The complex digital morphologies that result allow geckos to interact with their environment in a novel fashion quite differently from most other lizards. Details of toepad morphology suggest multiple gains and losses of the adhesive mechanism, but lack of a comprehensive phylogeny has hindered efforts to determine how frequently adhesive toepads have been gained and lost. Here we present a multigene phylogeny of geckos, including 107 of 118 recognized genera, and determine that adhesive toepads have been gained and lost multiple times, and remarkably, with approximately equal frequency. The most likely hypothesis suggests that adhesive toepads evolved 11 times and were lost nine times. The overall external morphology of the toepad is strikingly similar in many lineages in which it is independently derived, but lineage-specific differences are evident, particularly regarding internal anatomy, with unique morphological patterns defining each independent derivation.

Click HERE to continue reading 

Au. sediba: Another Human "Ancestor" Bites the Dust Bark

In our home we're currently trying to settle on a color of bark to lay down on a patch of sloping front yard that needs some sprucing up. For Australopithecus sediba, however, that same bark would make a tasty meal.

Just nine months ago in this space, Casey Luskin was predicting that a much-hyped human "ancestor," Au. sediba, wouldn't hold that title long and would instead soon enough be relegated to the side of the ledger that's filled with ape-like non-ancestors.

The trail of fallen ancestors brings us to the present day, September 2011, when the media has started a new cycle of hype with Australopithecus sediba. If history is a guide, within months or a few years we should expect to see cooler heads prevail in their analyses of this fossil.

Sure enough, the cooling trend is now plainly in evidence, with Nature reporting that the creatures had a very notable characteristic in common with chimps, not humans, that had not previously been recognized: their diet, highlighted by tree bark and wood. This was found thanks to an analysis of tooth enamel and dental tartar and microwear. The NY Times lets its readers down softly:

Click HERE to continue reading

Another Look at the Latest Blow to the Darwinian Tree of Life -- and the Man Who Dealt It

How many times can evolutionists say everything they know is wrong before people start to really believe it?

As Casey Luskin noted here earlier, a news article in Nature tells the tree-shaking story of Kevin Peterson. This whole subject is so delightful it deserves another look.

A molecular paleobiologist at Dartmouth, Peterson never set out to disturb fellow believers in Darwinian theory. He just thought he would try a new method for constructing phylogenetic trees: tracking relationships via micro-RNAs. Peterson thought micro-RNAs would be a good marker of evolutionary relationships:

MicroRNAs, Peterson and [colleague Lorenzo] Sempere discovered, are unlike any of the other molecular metrics that biologists typically use to tease apart evolutionary relationships. DNA binding sites, for example, continuously mutate; microRNAs, by contrast, are either there or they aren't, so their interpretation doesn't require such complex sequence and alignment analyses. And once gained, microRNAs usually remain functional, which means that their signal stays intact for hundreds of millions of years.

But when Peterson tested the conventional Darwinian tree of life for rotifers, his tree didn't match the conventional one. That was only the beginning. He found tree rot all over:

But a chance investigation of microRNAs in microscopic creatures called rotifers led him to examine these regulatory molecules in everything from insects to sea urchins. And as he continues to look, he keeps uncovering problems, from the base of the animal tree all the way up to its crown.

Peterson's observations, first published in a minor journal but now getting notice in Nature andScience, are winning him some vocal critics, but mostly reluctant supporters. His work on the family tree of placental mammals will be his latest unsettling contribution. Peterson had decided to lay it all on the line by testing the family tree of mammals. "We're mammals, so this matters," he said. Sure enough, problems are surfacing there, too.

The data's refusal to cooperate with other Darwinian phylogenies has left Peterson "up a tree," asNature writer Elie Dolgin quips: "At first, Peterson was shocked by his results, which still haven't been published. But he has spent the past year validating his tree with gene-expression libraries and genomic sequences, all of which he says support his findings." He's being extra careful, because "If we get this wrong, all faith that anyone has in microRNAs [for phylogenetics] will be lost," his colleague Philip Donoghue, a palaeobiologist at the University of Bristol, said. "It could well be the end of all our careers."

Click HERE to continue reading