Shall we play a game? Recall Hugh Ross' fictional tale about the "team of physicists" that remade molecular genetics. Ross claimed, falsely, that: The biological truth is the opposite: amount of DNA, "junk" or otherwise, is so uncorrelated with other aspects of biology that the situation was termed a paradox when it was first uncovered. Well...let's see the paradox in living color.

Can you tell which of the authors quoted above won a Pulitzer? Heh. Back to the big lie about "junk DNA" as told by anti-evolution propagandists. The first theme in this cesspool of creationist folk science, as I described in the first installment of this series on "junk DNA", is this: that "junk DNA" is functional and therefore that evolutionary claims regarding its origin are mistaken.

Now this is interesting. I can think of plenty of interesting Shakespearean scenes involving conflict and disputation. [Takes a bow] But I couldn't recall the word 'disagree' anywhere in, say, Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, or even Macbeth.

I suppose I should report on the activities I mentioned in last week's sampler. Phil Keaggy was fun: the first set was a complete – and, I'm told, "verbatim" – rendition of the 1978 instrumental album The Master and the Musician. I'm neither an audiophile nor a musician, but I liked Keaggy's guitar and especially liked the band behind him. The second set included a little too much Christian pop for my taste.

"Junk DNA" is a very popular subject among anti-evolution commentators. At the Discovery Institute (DI) and Reasons To Believe (RTB), as well as other creationist outlets, you can find ample discussion of "junk DNA" and why it matters to Christians who don't like evolution.

One of the most common refrains of anti-evolutionists is the claim that evolutionary mechanisms can only degrade what has already come to be. All together now: "No new information!" It's a sad little mantra, an almost religious pronouncement that is made even more annoying by its religious underpinnings, hidden or overt. But it's a good question: how do new genes come about?

Evolutionary science is so much bigger, so much deeper, so much more interesting than its opponents (understandably) will admit. It's more complicated than Michael Behe or Bill Dembski let on, and yet it's not that hard to follow, for those who are willing to try. The best papers by evolutionary biologists are endlessly fascinating and scientifically superb, and reading them is stimulating and fun.

UPDATE: answers posted at the end. Which of these plant specimens doesn't belong? (Images will be properly credited in a forthcoming article which will explain why they're so interesting.) The images are all the same magnification, but have been colorized so that the color won't give you any clues. Focus on the structure of each specimen, and pick one that doesn't belong with the others.

Long before Richard Dawkins topped the charts with his recent entry into the folk-religion genre, he was reviled by Christian culture warriors as a Public Enemy, an ayatollah of atheism, the embodiment of the evil that ensnares all who embrace Darwin's Dangerous Idea ^TM . His revivalistic fervor, combined with his, um, expertise in handling the media, makes him a near-perfect spokesperson for unbelief, and consequently he is credited

Well, first of all, I wanted to get "My kingdom for a horse" into the title, but I couldn't think of anything that made any sense. The title instead comes from this nifty exchange, which I found by searching for the relevant term in the Oxford Shakespeare: Horse evolution has been ricocheting through the blogosphere recently, because the author of Laelaps (who claims to be an individual human being;