Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

Tell me patiodozer-how many difficult decisions are there for the umpires to make in baseball.

patio-

Are there any when the ball pitches 1/2 a cm outside of an imaginary line drawn from stump to stump which swings in the air,goes the other way off the pitch,takes the finest of tickles on the bat,is deflected off the pads protecting the top of the off stump,is caught close to the ground by 1st slip at 93 mph,while a wasp is buzzing round the umpire's nose and giving "not out" or "out",as a response to outrageous appeals,a split second decision,which the slow motion replays are going to study at great length, and which can change the whole match,the whole series,the destination of the cash and can wreck reputations built up over extended periods of time with maximum exertions in the full glare of the spotlights.

How evolution cooks up life's endless variety
(Gareth Cook, Boston Globe, March 19, 2006)

To understand one of the latest theories in evolution, consider the "Iron Chef" television show.

Dueling chefs are given a featured ingredient and then race to create dishes. They both start with, say, lobster meat, but one might produce a seaweed salad while the other would make corn and lobster dumplings.

Substitute genes for ingredients, and it explains how humans can be so similar to chimpanzees -- sharing more than 98 percent of our genetic code -- and yet so different. In becoming human, people didn't evolve a lot of new genes, scientists believe; they made different use of the ones they had.

In December, researchers at Duke University announced some of the first concrete evidence for this idea. They focused on a gene that makes a protein involved in memory and perception. Although the protein is exactly the same in human and chimpanzee brains, the team found that humans have evolved minute genetic changes that cause brain cells to make, or "express," more of the crucial protein, perhaps helping the human brain to work better. A little more of these proteins here, a little less of those proteins there, and -- voila -- a chimp becomes a human.

The chimpanzee research is part of a profound conceptual shift. Biologists have long suspected that "gene expression" -- the way cells make more of some proteins and less of others -- could be important in answering many biological questions. But now some biologists believe that this process could play a vital role in explaining the way one species evolves into another with sometimes shocking speed.

"What we used to think of as big, complex changes are in fact remarkably easy to achieve" through changes in gene expression, said Gregory A. Wray, a professor of biology at Duke University who led the chimpanzee research. "This is changing the way that we think about evolution."

The new research on gene expression could provide an answer to a puzzle that has confounded biologists since Darwin and that has recently been seized on by proponents of intelligent design: the idea that life is too complex to have happened without the help of a higher being. With the "survival of the fittest," it is easy to see that a lion that runs a little faster will be a better hunter and thus be more likely to survive and pass on this attribute to its offspring. Over time, these improvements accumulate, and lions evolve.

But where do these changes come from in the first place? In other words, how could it be that a single, random genetic change would be able to improve on something so complex as, say, the legs of a lion, with all of their interconnected joints, tendons, nerves, and muscles.

"We need to understand how you get the various kinds of novelty -- the first hand, the first eye, the first brain," said Marc Kirschner at a recent talk at Harvard Medical School, where he is a professor. "It is the variety of life that needs explaining." Kirschner is co-author of a new book, "The Plausibility of Life," about the biological sources of evolutionary change.

The research on gene expression, and particularly an active field called "evolutionary developmental biology," or "evo devo," is now addressing this question, according to Sean B. Carroll, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

In every cell, there are genes that create the proteins that are the building blocks of life. But these proteins can also work as signals, turning on or off other genes. The proteins from these genes may affect still more genes. So a protein from a single gene can set off a cascade of other changes. A study published in Nature last week by scientists at Yale University found that as humans evolved from their ape ancestors, the regulatory genes were more likely to have changed than genes that don't switch other genes.

Changes in gene expression are particularly important during embryonic development. One small, accidental genetic change, Carroll and others say, can cause changes in the expression of many genes, which change how the body of an animal develops before it is born. For example, changing a single gene in the fruit fly will cause it to grow a leg on its head instead of an antenna. In a sense, the mutation has changed the biological signal that means "grow an antenna here" to "grow a leg here." Sometimes, such a genetic change -- and all the physical changes it causes -- will leave the animal better adapted to its surroundings, and evolution takes off.

Biologists widely agree that gene expression is important, but its role in evolution is still very much an open question because researchers only recently began finding clear examples.

To understand one of the latest theories in evolution,

Changes in gene expression are particularly important during embryonic development. One small, accidental genetic change, Carroll and others say, can cause changes in the expression of many genes, which change how the body of an animal develops before it is born. For example, changing a single gene in the fruit fly will cause it to grow a leg on its head instead of an antenna. In a sense, the mutation has changed the biological signal that means "grow an antenna here" to "grow a leg here." Sometimes, such a genetic change -- and all the physical changes it causes -- will leave the animal better adapted to its surroundings, and evolution takes off.

Anybody could learn to say a thing like that.It's intended to sound good.There's no understanding in sight.

How evolution cooks up life's endless variety
(Gareth Cook, Boston Globe, March 19, 2006)

To understand one of the latest theories in evolution, consider the "Iron Chef" television show.

Dueling chefs are given a featured ingredient and then race to create dishes. They both start with, say, lobster meat, but one might produce a seaweed salad while the other would make corn and lobster dumplings.

Substitute genes for ingredients, and it explains how humans can be so similar to chimpanzees -- sharing more than 98 percent of our genetic code -- and yet so different. In becoming human, people didn't evolve a lot of new genes, scientists believe; they made different use of the ones they had.

The new research on gene expression could provide an answer to a puzzle that has confounded biologists since Darwin and that has recently been seized on by proponents of intelligent design: the idea that life is too complex to have happened without the help of a higher being. With the "survival of the fittest," it is easy to see that a lion that runs a little faster will be a better hunter and thus be more likely to survive and pass on this attribute to its offspring. Over time, these improvements accumulate, and lions evolve.

In December, researchers at Duke University announced some of the first concrete evidence for this idea. They focused on a gene that makes a protein involved in memory and perception. Although the protein is exactly the same in human and chimpanzee brains, the team found that humans have evolved minute genetic changes that cause brain cells to make, or "express," more of the crucial protein, perhaps helping the human brain to work better. A little more of these proteins here, a little less of those proteins there, and -- voila -- a chimp becomes a human.

The chimpanzee research is part of a profound conceptual shift. Biologists have long suspected that "gene expression" -- the way cells make more of some proteins and less of others -- could be important in answering many biological questions. But now some biologists believe that this process could play a vital role in explaining the way one species evolves into another with sometimes shocking speed.

The new research on gene expression could provide an answer to a puzzle that has confounded biologists since Darwin and that has recently been seized on by proponents of intelligent design: the idea that life is too complex to have happened without the help of a higher being. With the "survival of the fittest," it is easy to see that a lion that runs a little faster will be a better hunter and thus be more likely to survive and pass on this attribute to its offspring. Over time, these improvements accumulate, and lions evolve.

But where do these changes come from in the first place? In other words, how could it be that a single, random genetic change would be able to improve on something so complex as, say, the legs of a lion, with all of their interconnected joints, tendons, nerves, and muscles.

The newswriter explaining how the findings address issues raised by intelligent design proponents):