“Boy, were we wrong!”

So says a highly placed spokesman inside the Discovery Institute who prefers to remain anonymous.


“We now know beyond a shadow of a doubt,” says the spokesman, “that Darwinian evolution is a fact. There is overwhelming evidence that all living things are descended from a common ancestor by accidental mutations and unguided natural selection. Intelligent design is wrong, wrong, wrong!”
The anonymous spokesman says that this remarkable turn of events is due to recent scientific breakthroughs in paleontology, embryology, experimental selection, evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), and molecular phylogeny.
First, paleontology: Berkeley dino-bird expert Kevin Padian has just purchased the last missing link from a Chinese fossil dealer–thereby providing us with an unbroken record of ancestors and descendants from the Big Bang to the present.
Second, embryology: University of Chicago fruit fly geneticist Jerry Coyne and his colleague, historian Robert Richards, have declared a Scientific Consensus that vertebrate embryos really are most similar in their earliest stages–thereby proving once and for all that human embryos are just fish.
Third, experimental selection: Distinguished bacteriologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University has observed after more than fifty thousand rounds of artificial selection that E. coli are still E. coli–thereby convincing himself and Even-More-Distinguished philosopher Robert Pennock that natural selection has the unlimited power to create new species, organs and body plans.
Fourth, evo-devo: Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researcher Sean B. Carroll has announced that mutations affecting insect wing patterns account for all human diseases–thereby persuading HHMI that his research actually has something to do with medicine.
Finally, molecular phylogeny: Retired Oxford bird behaviorist (and living legend) Richard Dawkins has asserted yet again that all molecules yield the same evolutionary tree–thereby earning himself a place in Guinness World Records for denying reality more times than Baghdad Bob.
The final triumph of Darwinism will be officially celebrated at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, on April 27, 2011–the 140th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s historic Nature article on “Pangenesis.” In that work, Mr. Darwin defended his theory that “gemmules” scattered throughout the body explain the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Although long derided by religiously motivated followers of Roman Catholic priest Gregor Mendel, pangenesis is currently enjoying a renaissance among Darwinists, who are confident that everything written by The Greatest Scientist Who Ever Lived will ultimately be proven true.
Meanwhile, there are rumors that the National Center for Science Education and the American Civil Liberties Union will share the Nobel Peace Prize later this year for promoting Darwin-only education and thereby saving civilization from the forces of darkness.

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Evolution News & Science Today (EN) provides original reporting and analysis about evolution, neuroscience, bioethics, intelligent design and other science-related issues, including breaking news about scientific research. It also covers the impact of science on culture and conflicts over free speech and academic freedom in science. Finally, it fact-checks and critiques media coverage of scientific issues.

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