While we’re at it, note that Cornelius Hunter is both a propagandist, and a bit of a coward. Truth wins in a fair fight, so Hunter can’t afford to allow a fair fight to break out in the comments section of his blog.
I don’t know what his readership is, but were he to open his blog to comments, he could learn a lot. As it is, he’s spreading false information a lot. Let’s hope his readership is small, as are his arguments against science.
Seriously: Does he really believe in point #1 that DNA does not demonstrate family relationships? Or is this just his subtle way of saying no one is legitimate, trying desperately to avoid the “b” word?
The blog is an embarrassment to Christians.
Oh, but now I see why. He’s a fellow at Discovery Institute. It’s normal for those who can’t be embarrassed by their own errors.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Hey, Bryan, why not go post that information at Neil Simpson’s place, here in the appropriate spot?
http://4simpsons.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/roundup-68/
Simpson argues he doesn’t like people telling falsehoods, so he should be aghast at Hunter’s actions.
Let us know how it goes.
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Further, Emma Young is the source of the other quote. She’s only identified as an “evolutionist” in the epigenetics discussion. Other than being the author of several articles in New Scientist, some of which address evolution, I’m not finding any evidence that she’s actually a scientist, let alone an “evolutionist”. Given that Dr. Eric Richards, the other source, is also labeled an “evolutionist”, I would expect some similar academic background.
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Ten minutes of research by me, not a scientist, revealed the quote mining that underlies Hunter’s most recent post. Read his post about Kammerer, then follow the link to “findings that contradict evolutionary theory”, then read the section on epigenetics, including the two quotes, then go to the sources of those quotes (only which of which has a link). You’ll find that
As one evolutionist admitted, “The really heretical thing to say is that the environment could be pushing the epigenetic information in a direction that is beneficial … that raises the hackles.”
turns into
“But from a molecular biology point of view there is a mechanism to do soft inheritance, and epigenetic inheritance can be construed as a form of soft inheritance. That’s all I’m saying. The really heretical thing to say is that the environment could be pushing the epigenetic information in a direction that is beneficial. This is the more extreme variation of soft inheritance that raises the hackles.”
Further down the article can be found
“These studies do not demonstrate inheritance between generations, but they do show that the early nutritional environment in the mice and early behavioral environment in the rat studies can change the DNA packaging on the genome, and that that is ‘remembered’ in the cell divisions that make the rest of the organism, ” Richards says. “But this is not from one generation to another. No one has shown that yet.
“To get to the issue of the more extreme variations of soft inheritance, it has to be determined whether the environment can induce an epigenetic change in an organism that can be inherited in subsequent generations. Certainly, nobody has shown that an epigenetically induced beneficial or adaptive change has been inherited. Mechanistically, there is no reason to discount epigenetic inheritance. The biochemical nuts and bolts are there to support it. The big questions to resolve are how many epigenetic changes are induced by the environment, what types of phenotypes result from these changes, and how many of these epigenetic changes are inherited.”
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What a coincidence… Our favourite snotty accountant linked to that place just recently; one might almost detect a pattern!
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