unScientific American and Science News are reporting in (this) story that “darwinian debt”s are being generated by over-fishing and the result is that
Fast-growing fish therefore get penalized evolutionarily because they quickly become large enough to get caught…
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this nothing more than an exagerated example of dog-breeding (except with fish, of course)?
Question: What sort of scientific discovery will win the war for ID?
Answer: Something that will bring healing to the sick and make money for the biotech industry.
Here are some thoughts from Bill Dembski.
Keynote Address at RAPID (transcript courtesy IDEA UCSD)
Steganography
Finally, we come to the research theme that I find most intriguing. Steganography, if you look in the dictionary, is an archaism that was subsequently replaced by the term “cryptography.” Steganography literally means “covered writing.” With the rise of digital computing, however, the term has taken on a new life. Steganography belongs to the field of digital data embedding technologies (DDET), which also include information hiding, steganalysis, watermarking, embedded data extraction, and digital data forensics. Steganography seeks efficient (that is, high data rate) and robust (that is, insensitive to common distortions) algorithms that can embed a high volume of hidden message bits within a cover message (typically imagery, video, or audio) without their presence being detected. Conversely, steganalysis seeks statistical tests that will detect the presence of steganography in a cover message.
Consider now the following possibility: What if organisms instantiate designs that have no functional significance but that nonetheless give biological investigators insight into functional aspects of organisms. Such second-order designs would serve essentially as an “operating manual,” of no use to the organism as such but of use to scientists investigating the organism. Read More ›
Move over Eric. Paul Myers sees your images of ebola killing 90% of humanity and raises you visions of ethical infanticide. Says Myers on his blog: I’m in favor of voluntary late term abortions (where premature birth would impose severe economic hardship, for instance), and can even consider situations where infanticide is ethically tenable. Funny thing is Myers didn’t get a standing ovation. It’s all in the delivery, Paul.
Cornell is considered by some to be among the top 12 universities in the world, and Cornell has an IDist in their biology department! John Sanford is a very successful professor of biology at Cornell and is inventor of the Gene Gun. In his testimony at the Kansas Hearings in May 2005, he revealed he was once a naturalistic evolutionist before becoming an IDist.
Sanford was so successful in developing genetic technologies and receiving patents he was able to retire early. To my knowledge, he still is a courtesy professor at Cornell. Crevo pointed out that Sanford even has a pro-ID book Genetic Entropy: The Mystery of the Genome.
A reviewer writes of Sanford’s book: Read More ›
The study by Bridgham et al (2006) published in the April 7 issue of Science is the lamest attempt yet — and perhaps the lamest attempt that’s even possible — to deflect the problem that irreducible complexity poses for Darwinism…
This continues the venerable Darwinian tradition of making grandiose claims based on piddling results.
— Michael Behe
Baylor U. Denies Tenure to Intelligent-Design ProponentBy PAULA WASLEY, THOMAS BARTLETT, and AISHA LABIFrom the issue dated April 14, 2006 TENURE DENIED: Controversy is brewing at Baylor University, where Francis J. Beckwith, a prominent and widely published Christian philosopher and legal scholar, was recently denied tenure — some say for his conservative religious views. Mr. Beckwith, 45, an associate professor and associate director of Baylor’s J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies, joined the faculty of the Baptist university in 2003. Since his appointment, there have been rumblings on the campus about Mr. Beckwith’s affiliation with the Discovery Institute, an intelligent-design think tank, and his writings promoting the teaching of intelligent design in public schools [[Beckwith’s writings argue that teaching ID Read More ›
Dr. Kenneth R. Summy attended the Texas Academy of Science speech by Professor Eric Pianka. Dr. Summy sent an unsolicited letter to the President and the Board of Directors of the Texas Academy of Science that specifically states Forrest Mims did not misrepresent Pianka’s keynote address. =-=-=-=- Subj:Petition Date:4/10/2006 Time: 1:49:37 PM CST To: President and Board of Directors of the Texas Academy of Science Attached is a response I sent to Dr. Kathryn Perez regarding the allegation that Forrest Mims misrepresented the content of the keynote address at the recent TAS meeting. A lot of the cc’s listed in Dr. Perez’s original message failed to get through, so I am resending. Forrest Mims did not misrepresent anything regarding the Read More ›
Climate of Fear Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence. BY RICHARD LINDZEN Wednesday, April 12, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT There have been repeated claims that this past year’s hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes? The answer has much to do Read More ›
In the comments here someone tried to say that RM+NS only applies after DNA and ribosomes have already appeared on the scene. This is nonsense. Read More ›
Take the test!
The “correct” answers (according to the test’s answer key) follow marked with a + sign. Read More ›
Here is another course which discusses ID: Genes and Genesis by Dr. Kevin Redding, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biological Sciences. I think the course tries to be somewhat even handed. (Thank you to Paul Nelson for alerting me to this course!) Interestingly, almost without any fanfare, in 2001 a plasma physicist and professor at University of Alabama in Huntsville taught Honors 399 : Physics, Philosophy and Fundamentalism which made an excellent survey of ID, physics and religion. The lectures used to be online, and regrettably, they are no longer. I would hope the course is offered again.
In response to my previous post here, great_ape made the following comments:
On the one hand, we must concede–we should concede, at least–that it boggles the mind how observed biological complexity can emerge from such a inherrently blind trial and error approach (BWM) [blind watchmaker]. Then again, given the timescale involved, the sequence/mutational space involved, the geographic scale involved–I do not even rule out interplanetary scale–well, those factors are also difficult to fathom as well.
I have yet to see a compelling argument–beyond “gee wiz, that’s sure a lot of complexity to generate”–that has convinced me the RM+NS [random mutation plus natural selection] process is *not* capable of generating observed complexity. Thus, I default to uniformitarianism, which holds that the forces in the past are effectively the same as those we see occurring today (i.e. RM+NS).
There are some key issues in these observations that I thought deserved a new thread, so here goes.
Read More ›
I was just over at Panda’s Thumb and saw that Tara Smith had put up a post informing her readers of a documentary about the Scopes trial to air on The History Channel tomorrow night. It also looks like they will say a little about intelligent design. Will they give ID a fair shake? Tune in to find out.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a large percentage of research scientists admit to fabricating or manipulating data because of a sense of “being wronged.” Reporter Lila Guterman explains that The Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics will report that “perceived injustice” and scientific misbehavior are linked. From the article: Raymond G. De Vries, an associate professor of medical education at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and three colleagues last year reported surveying more than 3,000 scientists about whether they had ever engaged in misbehavior, such as changing a study because of pressure from a source of funds, or failing to present data that contradict one’s own research. One-third of the scientists acknowledged they had Read More ›
Forrest Mims did not Misrepresent Prof. Eric Pianka’s Statements by James Redford