A federal judge struck down Alaska’s marriage amendment (approved in 1998) on October 12, 2014, effective October 13. And on October 6, the Supreme Court refused to hear a number of cases where five states were trying to protect their amendments, effectively legalizing same-sex marriage in 30 states. On October 7, the 9th district appeals court “overturned marriage bans in Nevada and Idaho.”
On November 6 a federal appeals court upheld the marriage laws of Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Since different federal appeals courts came to different decisions, this may force SCOTUS to take up the issue.
For the previous installments: part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Chapter 14
In principle, a neo-Darwinian explanation of the origin of new body plans can only work if body plans are wholly determined at the genetic level. If sources of information other than DNA are substantially responsible for the formation of body plans, then at best neo-Darwinism is inadequate as a holistic explanation for the diversification of life, and at worst it is simply the wrong explanation altogether.
Once again, modern discoveries in embryological development have discovered that there are many factors other than DNA that play a critical role in embryological development. For example, it’s been shown that in many organisms, you can completely remove the DNA from the developing cells and the embryo will continue to develop up to a certain point. If DNA alone was responsible for embryological development, this should be just as impossible as driving a car without gas. If the car is driving, and there is no gas in the tank, then clearly something other than gas must be powering the car. The same is true of embryological development. While DNA is necessary to embryological development, it is not sufficient in itself. There are sources of power other than DNA that are critical to the development of the organism. Scientists call such sources “epigenetic information,” meaning it is information beyond the genetic information coded in DNA.
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Thinking to Believe 