2006

In yesterday’s post on March of the Penguins, I quoted British Darwinist Steve Jones, noting A group of penguins standing upright looks like co-operation, but in fact the ones on the outside are struggling to get in and those on the inside are trying to stand their ground: it’s a classic Darwinian struggle. The idea that the life of a penguin is any more beautiful than that of a malaria virus is absurd. I then noted, Actually, the book narrative and the film do not depict a classic Darwinian struggle. The book states that the male penguins, left alone with the eggs in a harsh climate while the females return to the ocean to feed, spiral in and out of Read More ›

Just as Monty Python’s Black Knight was whittled from a full human to a stump, so evolutionary theory is finally being whittled to its proper size. Where, in the whittling of the Black Knight, is evolutionary theory (stage I, II, III, IV, or V?): Read More ›

Graeme Hunter (a philosophy professor at the University of Ottawa examines Michael Shermer’s recent piece on confirmation bias published in Scientific American: . . . Shermer tells us – or rather science does and Shermer is only its messenger – that opinionated people actually suffer from what is called a “confirmation bias”, which Shermer defines as a condition in which “we seek and find confirmatory evidence in support of already existing beliefs and ignore or reinterpret disconfirmatory evidence.” Members of political parties, it seems, are particularly prone to this disorder. Not Shermer, though, as he tells us in the jocular, self-deprecating manner that makes his article such a joy to read: “Pace Will Rogers, I am not a member of Read More ›

(adapted from: Analogy, Induction, and Specious Arguments.)

Equivocation is a powerful technique if one has an indefensible position. For example, here is a way that one can argue that feathers cannot be dark:

A feather is light.
What is light cannot be dark.
Therefore, a feather cannot be dark.

Around 2003, Shallit and Elsberry put together a paper attempting to refute ID’s claims. They did not succeed in their attempt, but in the process they left behind a legacy in the art of equivocation and bluffing.

ID advocates and Darwinists can look at the same evidence and see different things. The recent National Geographic film March of the Penguins created a minor furore because some thought of it as pro-ID, though the filmmakers denied that. One difficulty is that, denial or not, elements of the penguins’ behavior inevitably raise questions about Darwinism. However, some Darwinists respond to the problem simply by reinterpreting those elements along Darwinist lines. For example, responding to the idea that the male penguins co-operate to share the body warmth, the well-known Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, replies, A group of penguins standing upright looks like co-operation, but in fact the ones on the outside are struggling to get Read More ›

Here is an ID research paper published in PNAS. Note that some important principles of evolutionary theory are criticized in the abstract. This research shows how ID is capable of being applied in biology. Genetics The regulatory utilization of genetic redundancy through responsive backup circuits ( evolution | gene duplications | modeling | systems biology | noise ) Ran Kafri *, Melissa Levy *, and Yitzhak Pilpel Department of Molecular Genetics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel Communicated by Marc W. Kirschner, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, June 12, 2006 (received for review March 6, 2006) http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0604883103v1 Functional redundancies, generated by gene duplications, are highly widespread throughout all known genomes. One consequence of these redundancies is a tremendous increase Read More ›

In his post about the fossil record, Barry raised an important point concerning honesty and integrity in science. Proponents of a scientific theory should consider all the evidence and weigh its overall implications, not choose evidence selectively to support a conclusion that has already been reached. This is a basic axiom in the scientific enterprise. There are mountains of evidence supporting long periods of stasis and sudden emergence in the fossil record, especially where the record is most complete. This is usually ignored. Instead, emphasis is placed on putative, rare (especially in comparison to the entire known record) “transitionals,” with no means of establishing ancestor/descendent relationships except through the use of imagination.

David Berlinski refers to the fossil record as “completely mystifying.” The same could be said of the existence of life’s complexity, functional integration and information content, at least in the absence of design.

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Recently, National Review‘s John Derbyshire took on George Gilder’s case against Darwinism and for ID. To Gilder’s “Darwinian Theory has Become an All-Purpose Obstacle to Thought Rather than an Enabler of Scientific Advance” (his subtitle, actually), Derbyshire ripostes against ID, After being around for many years, it has not produced any science. George’s own Discovery Institute was established in 1990; the offshoot Center for Science and Culture (at first called the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture) in 1992. That is an aggregate 30 years. Where is the science? (Now, combining the figures in this way to get “thirty” is a bit dodgy. I mean, in the same way, you could combine my age with my two daughters’ Read More ›

I am reading Douglas Futuyma’s Evolution, which, like his previous textbook Evolutionary Biology, will probably become the standard college text on evolution. On pages 48 and 49 Futuyma lists the “proofs” of evolution. I find the list interesting not so much for what it includes but for what it excludes – transitions in the fossil record. If the leading college text on evolution no longer appeals to transitions in the fossil record as proof that evolution occurred, is it safe to say that the case on the fossil record is now closed, and the Darwinists have ceded the field to their victorious opponents? Just asking.

As Bill Dembski noted here, I will be sharing the task of moderation with him. Joining us will be Bill’s research assistant, Joel Borofsky, who can say a bit more about himself in his own posts. Anyone wondering what sort of changes will ensue at UD should note that I am a journalist and my main interest is in promoting a responsible public discussion of ID. I am not qualified to evaluate hypotheses in mathematics, biochemistry, or exobiology. But I am well qualified to study public issues and attempt to pull a discussion back from the abyss. My approach will combine “editor of the Letters section” and “moderator of a discussion group.” In my experience, this approach best serves the Read More ›

This story is utterly implausible since we don’t know who made the quilt maker. The art of quilting By Tanya Foubert Wednesday July 19, 2006 Barbara West stands in front of her quilt called Myths of our Time: Intelligent Design, which won the National Award of Excellence for innovative quilts from the Canadian Quilters Association. Canmore Leader — The story goes that a well-known scientist was giving a public lecture on astronomy. The talk went through the planets and how they orbit the sun and in turn the sun orbits our galaxy. When the scientist, who some say was Bertrand Russell, finished, a little old lady says to him: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really Read More ›

Check out this slide show at Slate.com: http://slate.com/id/2145813. It’s about bio-inspired design. If a system inspires us to design something, is that evidence that the system itself was designed? When or when not?

Too bad that Nobel Prizes are only awarded to people — natural selection deserves dozens of them. Scientists decode how plants avoid sunburn Source: Arizona State University Too much sun – for plants as well as people – can be harmful to long-term health. But to avoid the botanical equivalent of “lobster tans,” plants have developed an intricate internal defense mechanism called photoprotection, which acts like sunscreen to ward off the sun’s harmful rays. “We knew that biomolecules called carotenoids participate in this process of photoprotection, but the question has been, ‘How does this work?’ ” says Iris Visoly-Fisher, a postdoctoral research associate in the Biodesign Institute at ASU. Carotenoids act as “wires” to carry away the extra sunlight energy Read More ›

Faith Project Director The National Center for Science Education, a non-profit organization that defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools, seeks candidates for the post of Faith Project Director. The FPD’s duties will include: **developing materials pertaining to evolution and religion for print and web; **representing NCSE to the faith community, in print and in person; **serving as liaison between NCSE and professional theological societies and religious organizations; **speaking to the press about issues involving evolution education and challenges to it; **counseling teachers, administrators, parents, and others facing challenges to evolution education. Candidates should have either formal academic training in or extensive informal knowledge of theology, particularly as it relates to science. A record of involvement in or Read More ›

The molecular machinery that starts the process by which a biological cell divides into two identical daughter cells apparently worked so well early on that evolution has conserved it across the eons in all forms of life on Earth. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley have shown that the core machinery for initiating DNA replication is the same for all three domains of life — Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya. MORE Given that, according to Carl Woese, the three domains are not descended from a common ancestor (see here), is it plausible that this same switch could have arisen apart from design three times?