Christianity Today, Week of April 24 The Other ID Opponents Traditional creationists see Intelligent Design as an attack on the Bible. by Rob Moll | posted 04/25/2006 09:30 a.m. This week, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary named creationist Kurt P. Wise to replace outgoing Intelligent Design proponent William Dembski. The theological and scientific differences between Dembski and Wise are deep and wide. Intelligent Design and creationism are not co-conspirators trying to overthrow Darwinian evolution. . . . MORE: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/117/22.0.html

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Pat Hayes of Red State Rabble has composed a rather prolix essay in which he sings the praises of Barbara Forrest and her monumental role in exposing ID as repackaged Creationism. Naturally, Pim van Muers at Panda’s Thumb and Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars are chiming in.
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… Or is Ebert just another clueless bonehead whose imagined expertise is in exact disproportion to his actual knowledge … Dr Dembski, Below is a letter to the editor from today’s Boulder Daily Camera (www.dailycamera.com) regarding a panel discussion at the recent University of Colorado at Boulder’s annual Conference on World Affairs. Roger Ebert has been a regular at the conference for decades, and in recent years has been serving on panels beyond his noted area of expertise (in the style of Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect”, they will toss together a mix of panelists from many backgrounds to make things interesting). Still, reading that Ebert was defending Darwinism with such confidence was a big surprise to me. (Note “Boulder High” Read More ›

For those who haven’t seen it, check out this episode of The Root of all Evil. Note the editorial comments about the persecution of the “rational atheist minority,” Christian fascism, atheists suffering career damage, and the McCarthy era. What irony.

When IDists hypothesize that the bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex they explain that the hypothesis may be falsified by a detailed and plausible pathway whereby random mutation and natural selection could have built it up. We don’t ask that it be proven that’s how it happened only that it be demonstrated it can happen that way. Charles Darwin himself in The Origin of Species, chapter 6, anticipated this argument against his theory and acknowledged it would spell doom for his theory:

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.

150 years later Darwin’s critics believe they have found a complex organ, the bacterial flagellum, which could not possibly have been formed via numerous, successive, slight modifications.

This is all well and good and certainly does not prove Darwin’s theory is wrong because, as even Darwin must have known, proving a negative is impossible. We can never, ever know that no Darwinian pathway is possible. All we can know is that no proposed pathway can explain it. Fortunately for IDists science doesn’t require proofs. According to our most widely accepted philosophy of science what science does require in cases like these is a method of falsification. In science one needn’t prove a negative if there exists a way to falsify the positive. This is what separates pseudo-scientific theories that explain everything, and thus explain nothing from real scientific theories.

This takes us back to the beginning where I explained that the hypothetical irreducible complexity of the flagellum may be falsified by showing any possible and plausible Darwinian pathway. The hypothesis that the flagellum is irreducibly complex is good science.

Now for the challenge. I had challenged a commenter here (Tiax) to explain to me a scientific method by which the theory that the bacterial flagellum evolved via random mutation plus natural selection could be falsified. My challenge was met with the sound of crickets chirping. Therefore I am putting this challenge in a more prominent position.

If no scientific method of falsfication can be provided then the so-called evolution of the flagellum is nothing but pseudo-science. My position is that Dembski’s design detection theory is indeed science and that it is the only falsification method by which hypothetical flagellum evolution can be rescued from the pseudo-science trashheap. If design detection isn’t science then neither is any theory of the flagellum evolving. Maybe Judge Jones needed to dismiss more than just design detection as “not science”, eh?

Who can provide for me a scientific method by which the theoretical Darwinian evolution of the bacterial flagellum can be falsified?

Fair warning: I’m not allowing any comments here that do not propose a scientific method of falsifying Darwinian evolution of the flagellum so don’t waste your time composing anything else.

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Larry Fafarman makes many excellent points and was banned at Panda’s Thumb for making them too often. He and I are fellow outcasts. I invited him to become an author here but he turned me down because he’s strongly against comment moderation and I’m just as strongly in favor of not allowing trolls to ruin the commenting environment for everyone. Anyhow, you can find the things I was hoping he’d write about for us at his new blog http://im-from-missouri.blogspot.com/ and I invite you all to give it a look.

If Miller ever makes an appearance in a public event to criticize ID, during the Q&A session, IDers should call him into account for why he misrepresented Michael Behe’s ideas under oath in Kitzmiller vs. Dover.

Casey Luskin, IDEA co-founder and attorney at the Discovery Institute, exposed the misrepresentations which Miller used in the trial. These misrepresentations were used by Judge Jones to unjustly criticize Michael Behe and Scott Minnich’s testimony.

Here is the link: Do Car Engines Run on Lugnuts?

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An essay that employs Newcomb’s paradox to show how natural evil can be a consequence of human sin in a world where natural evil nonetheless exists before the advent of humanity: http://www.designinference.com/documents/2006.04.christian_theodicy.pdf.

When they came for the creation scientists, I remained silent; I was not a creation scientist. When they locked up the abortion protesters, I remained silent; I was not an abortion protester. When they came for the intelligent design theorists, I did not speak out; I was not an intelligent design theorist. When they came for the strongly religious, I did not speak out; I was not strongly religious. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

Exercising a Native Intelligence Metric on an Autonomous On-Road Driving System The intelligence of artificial systems is well quantified by the amount of specified complexity inherent in the system representation, provided we have tools to measure it. Some may generally agree with this claim, but argue that it is simply intractable to successfully and accurately measure the specified complexity of any system, no matter how it was represented. We respond to this important and substantive criticism by performing a computation required by our intelligence metric on an example problem. We have chosen autonomous on-road driving, a problem that has already been solved by “systems” that are known to be both complex and specified, namely, humans. We will begin with a Read More ›

You must not miss this: http://cartagodelenda.blogspot.com/2006/04/great-debate.html

No matter whether we find randomly composed, unoptimized structures or whether we find super-optimized digital genetic codes, NeoDarwinian Evolution did it! There’s nothing it can’t do! Oh hold it… why does the phrase “because it explains everything, it explains nothing” come to mind right now? Read more about the theory of everything here.

The authorities in Pensacola, Florida are trying to bulldoze Kent Hovind’s Dinosaur Adventure Land over a building permit dispute. The buildings are all up to code, inspected and found sound, and have stood since 2002 through some of the worst hurricanes Florida has seen in decades. What is WRONG with everyone? I don’t believe people and dinosaurs lived together like the Flintstones but I sure as heck don’t think a theme park that purports that they did should be shut down because of how fashionalbe it is to bust chops on Christian young earth creationists. This really sucks. I can hardly believe this is the same country I defended in the Marine Corps 30 years ago. I’ve been to Disneyland Read More ›

This is an oldie but a goodie. It’s John Rennie, editor-in-chief of Scientific American, describing a dinner he attended with captains of industry such as Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel, and more than a dozen university presidents. He took the opportunity to harangue them about the sad state of affairs regarding the Kansas science standards and declining respect for the “fact” of NeoDarwinian theory. Their reaction was to politely tell him to go away as they had more important concerns about science education in America and those concerns had nothing to do with evolution. Rennie’s petulant reaction is just precious. SciAm Perspectives April 05, 2005 Cowardice, Creationism and Science Education: An Open Letter to the Universities Click here to read Read More ›