Dave Jarvis offers an interesting variant of the suboptimality anti-design argument at http://joot.com/dave/writings/articles/design.shtml. His variant is based on the recent finding that mammals under certain conditions can regenerate organs previously thought unregenerable. I responded to this line of objection in The Design Revolution, chapter 6 (“Optimal Design”). Here is a relevant portion of that chapter:
Month: September 2005
“Just Say No to ID”
For anti-ID paraphernalia (including buttons, T-shirts, coffee mugs and more), go here.
Life After Dover
Before the Dover trial concludes, I want to offer some remarks about what I take will be its long-term significance. I want to do this now so that critics won’t be in a position to accuse me of spinning or rationalizing the outcome of the trial once it is reached (of course, they’ll still find […]
Dover Expert Witness Reports Available Online
Last spring The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) hired me as an expert witness in the Dover area school district case regarding ID (Kitzmiller v. Dover). That case went to trial this week (26Sep05). Because the focus of that case and trial is a book titled Of Pandas and People and because I am the […]
Reply to the “Wiesel 38”
Authors of Proposed Changes to Kansas Science Standards Dated March 29, 2005 September 27, 2005 To: Members of the Kansas State Board of Education Re: Letter from THE ELIE WIESEL FOUNDATION FOR HUMANITY dated September 9, 2005, signed by Elie Wiesel and 37 other Nobel Laureates
ID-Phobia Goes National
Exhibit 1: Letter by 6 Nobel laureates et al. to all 50 governors of the United States — go here. Exhibit 2: DEFCON’S top 10 Places Where Science Education is Under Threat — go here. As these exhibits indicate, the other side is pulling out all the stops. It makes you wonder whether they’ve got […]
Missense Meanderings
MISSENSE MEANDERINGS IN SEQUENCE SPACE: A BIOPHYSICAL VIEW OF PROTEIN EVOLUTION Mark A. DePristo, Daniel M. Weinreich and Daniel L. Hartl “Taken as a whole, recent findings from biochemistry and evolutionary biology indicate that our understanding of protein evolution is incomplete, if not fundamentally flawed.”
Computational Intelligence Society
The Evolutionary Computation Technical Committee of the Computational Intelligence Society recently recently drafted the following statement at its Montreal meeting (go here for the full report; note that the minutes of this meeting will eventually appear here):
Hysteria in Iowa
Guillermo Gonzalez, ID theorist extraordinaire, spoke last night (9/28) at University of Northern Iowa (UNI). He was invited to speak there by the local chapter of Sigma Xi back in August. When the biology professors there caught wind of it in mid-September, they organized a petition statement very similar to the one organized by Hector […]
So who does set the ground rules for science?
Rob Pennock, as the witness of the hour in the Dover case, is citing me shamelessly. According to the local paper (go here), the quote of the day is: “So long as methodological naturalism sets the ground rules for how the game of science is to be played, (intelligent design) has no chance (in) Hades.” […]
Noah Riner
CHURCH/STATE AT DARTMOUTH By William F. Buckley Jr. Tue Sep 27, 8:06 PM ET The whole business of whether public schools can permit “intelligent design” to be acknowledged as an alternative to Darwinian evolution in explanation of human life will begin democratic exercises in a courtroom in Pennsylvania this week. There are regular flashpoints on […]
Religion (especially the type that rejects evolution) may be bad for your health
Societies worse off “when they have God on their side” By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent September 27, 2005 The Times RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today…. [For rest of article, go here.] By the way, Gregory Paul, the […]
University of Kansas Chancellor Speaks Out!
From today’s Chronicle of Higher Education. And just remember, those are our tax dollars with which he is going to indoctrinate our kids and oppose intelligent design. Here’s a novel thought: Let chancellor Hemenway and his colleagues come up with their own support that does not require the government establishing a secular religion based on […]
Open Letter by Kenneth Miller
From: Kenneth Miller [mailto:Kenneth_Miller@Brown.edu] Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 2:17 PM Subject: Re: Some other questions… Dear Friend, You are one of scores of people who have written messages to me as a result of my scientific testimony at trial in Harrisburg, PA. I hope you will forgive the fact that I cannot possibly reply […]
Chuck Asay Hits the Nail on the Head
Colorado Springs Gazette on the Dover case, Tuesday’s edition (9/27/05).