Must read for Richard - a magnus opus defense of Darwinism (including; history, examples, criticism and defense) ID theory (origins, politics, and a look at the merit of it's claims) written by Coyne for the New Republic (via Panda's Thumb)
One caution, its big. I could 'money quote' from it till the rapture. I probably will too.
Money Quote:
"Recent studies of the human genome provide more evidence that we were not created ex nihilo. Our genome is a veritable Gemisch of non-functional DNA, including many inactive "pseudogenes" that were functional in our ancestors. Why do humans, unlike most mammals, require vitamin C in our diet? Because primates cannot synthesize this essential nutrient from simpler chemicals. Yet we still carry all the genes for synthesizing vitamin C. The gene used for the last step in this pathway was inactivated by mutations forty million years ago, probably because it was unnecessary in fruit-eating primates. But it still sits in our DNA, one of many useless remnants testifying to our evolutionary ancestry."
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