In the spirit of adding a little levity to this blog, I discovered “Intelligent Design” in the title of a sports column. This is an indication that the once obscure phrase “Intelligent Design” is now becoming a part of American culture. Intelligent Design At Work This also gives me an opportunity to thank William Dembski and DaveScot for allowing me to be a contributor.
Monday, 1.23.06 Program: “The Case for Intelligent Design,†by William A. Dembski, 7 p.m., Lied Center, Kansas University. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek will deliver a speech titled “The Universe is a Strange Place,†7:30 p.m., Spencer Museum of Art auditorium, Kansas University. Free, public event. http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/jan/19/lawrence_datebook/?city_local
Study: MicroRNA fine-tunes brain synapses BOSTON, Jan. 18 (UPI) — Scientists at Children’s Hospital Boston say they’ve found the first evidence that microRNAs have a role in the functioning of synapses in the brain. http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20060118-21395400-bc-us-synapses.xml The researchers believe microRNAs fine-tune cognitive function, and may be relevant to mental retardation and autism. The scientists explained that non-coding regions of the genome — those that don’t have instructions for building proteins — are now known to include important elements that regulate gene activity. Among such elements are microRNAs — tiny, recently discovered RNA molecules that suppress gene expression. Increasing evidence indicates a role for microRNAs in the developing nervous system, and the Children’s Hospital Boston researchers have demonstrated that one microRNA affects Read More ›
I’m a bit aghast that some people here and elsewhere are offended that I will moderate commenters based on their behavior outside the Uncommon Descent blog.
http://www.metanexus.net/conference2005/pdf/staune.pdf
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The Vatican Forum
is pleased to invite you to a lecture and discussion on
Intelligent Design, Evolution, and the Church
with
Mark Ryland
Vice President, The Discovery Instituteand
Fr. Rafael Pascual, LC
Director, Science and Faith Institute, Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0601/articles/schonborn.html
Design for Living
A theoretical physicist weighs in on a hot-button topic
by Geeta DayalVillage Voice
January 10th, 2006Many high-profile critics in the raging debate over “intelligent design” have, understandably, been evolutionary biologists. Legendary Oxford professor Richard Dawkins regularly appears on British TV to talk up Darwin and lash out against ID between books. Harvard emeritus prof E.O. Wilson has edited a hefty new 1,700-page anthology of Darwin’s collected works, with the fighting title From So Simple a Beginning.
They’re generally not people like Leonard Susskind, a renowned physics professor at Stanford and a prime architect of string theory. His new book, his first for a general audience, has the provocative title The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design (Little, Brown). It’s not the term “cosmic landscape,” trippy as it sounds, that’s drawing the attention. Nor is it the words “string theory” – even though “string theory” is, admittedly, one of those futuristic-sounding 10-dollar terms, like “chaos theory” or “complexity theory” or “quantum gravity,” that get the layperson daydreaming of The Matrix and cybernetic implants. The words that are causing double takes – and in some cases, drawing ire – are “intelligent design,” and the word that precedes them, “illusion.” Read More ›
Let’s accept the fault line between faith and science
By Edward O. Wilsonhttp://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-01-15-faith-edit_x.htm
If the perennial culture war between science and fundamentalist Christianity about evolution seems insoluble, the reason is that it is insoluble. Read More ›
http://www.uctv.tv/library-human.asp?series=show&summary=show&seriesID=Focus_on_Origins&sort=
In Ron Kotulak’s article below, he interviews Carl Woese about the latter’s skepticism concerning the monophyly of life on Earth. “Woese next went after a big stumbling block in classical evolution,” writes Kotulak. “Darwin’s doctrine postulated that all living things eventually could be traced back to a single founding cell.” Woese says No — life could have started “millions of times,” and no single cell was ancestral to all organisms on Earth.
THE COSMIC CONVERSATION
How can lifeless particles evolve into living things? They basically
talk themselves into it, a group of scientists say.By Ronald Kotulak
Chicago Tribune Read More ›
John A Davison
A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis
1. Introduction
2. The Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis
3. The Indirect Evidence
4. The Direct Evidence
5. Conclusion
Abstract. I propose that phylogeny took place in a manner similar to that of ontogeny by the derepression of preformed genomic information which was expressed through release from latency (derepression) by the restructuring of existing chromosomal information (position effects). Both indirect and direct evidence is presented in support of the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis.
Our server seems to have hiccuped and lost a whole bunch of woctor’s comments. The management apologizes for this unfortunate event. 🙁
The details of the lawsuit:
http://www.au.org/site/DocServer/Final_Complaint.pdf?docID=541 Read More ›
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2006-01-03-infidelity-study_x.htm
Some men cheat on their partners. So do some women. Now researchers say it is more than a wandering eye that might cause a woman to stray.
This conclusion was based on two studies of college men and women using questionnaires where the test group was asked how they felt (how scientific) about other men/women outside of their steady relationships. Read More ›