Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Why I ruthlessly edit comments on this blog

Here’s an email from someone I banned from this blog. If you can’t see why I’ve lost all patience with people like this, then you need to be spending your time elsewhere in cyberspace. William, Is there the slightest possibility you might ‘open’ your ID forum to dissenting views? You have some very dedicated apostles stroking your online ego, and insulating these young scientists from the ‘Borg’ is very Christian of you indeed; however, to many of us on the ‘outside’ your questionable editing practices suggest little more than self-aggrandizing censorship. You are a curiosity, your theory a religious oddity, and your ‘designer’ is wearing your hat. Respectfully, [snip] As for this blog’s commenting policies, go here and here.

KU’s New Class — Creationism, Intelligent Design and Other Religious Mythologies

[Updated links 30nov05:
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/nation/13286369.htm
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Creationism_Class.html]

[From a colleague:] The University of Kansas is flexing its anti-religion muscle again, this time by announcing the introduction of a new course in the Religion department: “Creationism, Intelligent Design and Other Religious Mythologies.”

To be taught by a professor of religion, no scientists allowed. God forbid that the students would hear both sides of a controversy presented in their strongest terms by experts.

When protestations arise from those who sense a somewhat disengenuous linking of ID (or creationism) with Mythology, the Provost self-righteously says, “The course title is not meant to offend any religion or belief, KU Provost David Shulenburger said Tuesday. He explained in a written statement that “myth” and “mythology” are common in the academic study of religion.” Read More ›

Interview with Christian Renewal

Not much new here except for some observations about my time at Baylor, observations I was finally in a position to share, not being on the Baylor faculty anymore. –WmAD

William Dembski: An Intelligent Voice in the Design Debate
An interview by Glenda Mathes
(appeared in the 28sep05 vol24, no2
issue of Christian Renewal)

Dr. William A. Dembski is one of the most articulate and productive proponents of intelligent design theory. With advanced degrees in mathematics, philosophy and theology, Dembski’s intellectual arguments are making inroads within the scientific community while a more general audience finds his writing understandable.

An astute debater and prolific author, Dembski has written, co-authored and edited several books including: The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design, No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence, Intelligent Design: The Bridge between Science and Theology, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities, The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems, Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe, Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing and Signs of Intelligence: Understanding Intelligent Design.

Dr. Dembski is the Carl F. H. Henry Professor of Theology and Science at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, and the executive director of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design.

Christian Renewal recently had the opportunity to interview him via email.

CR: Dr. Dembski, you write in The Design Revolution: “Intelligent design is not creationism and it is not naturalism. Nor is it a compromise or synthesis of these positions. It simply follows the empirical evidence of design wherever it leads. Intelligent design is a third way” (pp. 26-27). Can you briefly explain for Christian Renewal readers how intelligent design differs from creationism and naturalism and what it offers as a “third way”? Read More ›

Harvard Crimson on ID

FAVORITE QUOTE: “Edwards says conservative evangelicals are responsible for the framing of the intelligent design debate. ‘Evangelicals thrive on being embattled­—their identity is tied up into being attacked and their defending principles,’ Edwards says. ‘Being attacked by science only validates their position.'”

Let me just add that being attacked by theologians like Edwards further validates my identity and position.

INTELLECTUAL CURRENTS: Intelligent Design Finds Few Sympathizers at HDS
Published On Tuesday, November 29, 2005 2:16 AM
By SARAH E. F. MILOV
Crimson Staff Writer

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=510153

When Harvard was founded in 1636, the University was charged with educating ministers in creationism and other central tenets of Christianity.

Three hundred and sixty-nine years later, in the midst of a national debate about God’s place in the classroom, even the University’s divinity faculty—the heirs to that theological mission—reject the latest argument for God’s role in creation: “intelligent design.” Read More ›

Rosine Chandebois on the Blind Watchmaker

[From a colleague and friend:] D’aucuns disent aveugle l’horloger qui a concu la vie, mais c’est son horologe qui nous frappe tous de cecite: les uns aveugles par tant d’intelligence, les autres etant les pires aveugles parce qu’ils n’en veulent rien voir. [Some call blind the watchmaker who conceived of life, but it is his watch that strikes all of us blind: some are blinded by so much intelligence, others are blind in the worst way because they do not wish to see it at all.] —Rosine Chandebois, Pour en finir avec le darwinisme [To Be Done With Darwinism] (Editions Espaces, 1993). (Chandebois is an experimental embryologist at the University of Marseille.)

The Designer’s “Skill-Set”

In September, Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show devoted several programs to the topic of evolution (“Evolution, Schmevolution — Who’s Right, Who’s Full of It”). What’s more, I appeared on one of those programs (go here and here). In those programs, Stewart & Co. had some lines that were not only funny but also memorable. The one that sticks out poked fun at ID: “We’re not saying that the designer is God, just someone with the same skill-set.” That line is now being reused on the debate circuit, with Eugenie Scott, for instance, deploying it this November at a debate at Boston University (go here). Although the line is funny, it is not accurate. God’s skill-set includes not just ordering matter Read More ›

Software is Eternal

Benjamin Franklin realized that software is eternal two centuries before Alan Turing came to that realization. As a young man in 1728, Franklin composed his own mock epitaph, which read: The Body of B. Franklin Printer; Like the Cover of an old Book, Its Contents torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies here, Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be wholly lost: For it will, as he believ’d, appear once more, In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and Amended By the Author. He was born on January 6, 1706. Died 17__

“Science Wars” — transcripts now available

The transcripts for the American Enterprise Institute’s October 21, 2005 shindig on ID (“Science Wars: Should Schools Teach Intelligent Design?”) are now available here: http://www.aei.org/events/filter.all,eventID.1169/transcript.asp.

“Ode to the Code”

[From a colleague:] There’s an interesting article in the American Scientist from last year that is worth revisiting. It examines whether the genetic code is optimized for reducing the impact of point mutations. Apparently it is according to the author. Given that there are exponentially large numbers of potential codon usages, if the genetic code really is the product of arbitrary events, anti-ID scientist face a serious problem, namely, how is it that this “frozen accident” just happens to be the best code for minimizing point mutations. Favorite quote from the article: “It seems hard to account for these facts without retreating at least part of the way back to the frozen-accident theory, conceding that the code was subject to Read More ›

Molecular Motors at the Limits of Nanotechnology

Ask yourself, Why do biological systems exhibit molecular machines at the smallest level permissible by the properties of matter? “Evolution” provides less and less a convincing answer.

Molecular motors
9 November 2005

http://www.iop.org/EJ/news/-topic=1009

A new special issue of Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter edited by Joseph Klafter and Michael Urbakh contains invited papers from some of the world’s greatest experts on molecular motors.

Macro-scale thermodynamic engines convert the random motion of fuel-produced heat into directed motion. Such engines cannot be downsized to the nanometre scale, because thermodynamics does not apply to single atoms or molecules, only large assemblies of them. A great challenge for the field of nanotechnology is the design and construction of microscopic motors that can transform input energy into directed motion and perform useful functions such as transporting of cargo. Today’s nanotechnologists can only look in envy at the biological world, where molecular motors of various kinds (linear, rotary) are very common and fulfil essential roles. Read More ›

The Former President of Cornell — Also a Darwinophile

I’ve reported on this blog about the current president of Cornell, Hunter Rawlings, and his recent diatribe against ID (search under “Rawlings” on this blog). Interestingly, the past president of Cornell, Frank Rhodes was very much in the same mold. I heard him speak at a C. S. Lewis Foundation event at Cambridge in 1994 (“Cosmos and Creation: Chance or Dance”). Rhodes is a classic theistic evolutionist, whose theism means absolutely nothing with regard to this scientific understanding of biological evolution. To see this, check out the following note by him, which is now twenty years old: go here. Given the power of Darwinism to delude otherwise worthy intellects, it is unsurprising that even a world renowned scholar at the Read More ›

ID on Paula Zahn Now

[From a colleague:] Last night CNN devoted almost 45 minutes to the ID controversy. CNN’s Religion and Values correspondent Delia Gallagher did the segment on Paula Zahn Now. Most of the show consisted of the usual spin, but Mike Behe got lots of air time and came across well. My favorite part came after interviews with his Lehigh University colleagues made it clear that he was in hot water there, and Mike was asked whether he felt ostracized. He burst into a jovial belly-laugh and said “Sure.” He asked what the point would be in arguing for something everyone already agreed with, and he explained that the history of science is filled with controversies like this. The other highlight of Read More ›