Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Letter to thinking Christians (and other theists)

Writing letters to a broad public is all the rage nowadays, so I thought I would try my hand at it too:

Dear thinking Christians/theists/non-materialists,

Some people have expressed deep concern over the sudden surge in anti-God/anti-spiritual activists, opposed to traditional spiritualities.

Yes, it is a good idea to keep an eye on these anti-spiritual movements, but – based on decades of watching social trends and covering controversies – I do not think that these people should be our main concern. They are acting out of desperation. The materialism they espouse is simply not confirmed by evidence and not working in society either. Worse, even the most generous and favorable media attention has not made them look or sound attractive. More publicity will only deepen the hole they are digging themselves into.

In my experience, a far more serious concern is the gutting of a spiritual tradition from within. Along those lines, be on the lookout for the following trends, whether in your church mosque, synagogue, or whatever: Read More ›

Interview With Freeman Dyson

Rebel with a Cause: The Optimistic Scientist
By Benny Peiser, TCS Daily, 10 Apr 2007

Excerpts follow.

Editor’s note: Freeman Dyson is professor emeritus of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 2000 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for progress in Religion. He is the author of a new book, “The Scientist as Rebel.” Benny Peiser of Liverpool John Moores University recently interviewed Dyson about his views on science, hope and the future.

A great, respected, accomplished scientist. But we all knew that already, right?

Read More ›

Proteins, Warrants, and Design Inferences

At the request of others I’m reproducing a recent comment as an article.

UD member Fross writes:

I understand that the ID position is that the protein itself had to have been designed, not the variations that can occur through mutation.

DaveScot replies:

Proteins don’t automatically warrant a design inference. It depends on the function of the protein and interdependencies on other proteins. A signalling protein could easily get a random mutation that slightly modifies a biologically active site making it more or less able to bind with a target and that can change a whole downstream cascade of events with large scale ramifications. I think I read recently that such a site has been implicated in whether a dog turns out to be a large or small breed, for example, as the cascade result is how much growth hormone is produced. It’s not the sole determinant though as you can cross a large breed sire with a small breed bitch and the puppies never turn out so large the mother can’t bear them.

Read More ›

Is Photosynthesis Irreducibly Complex?

From Nature this week. “Knowing how plants and bacteria harvest light for photosynthesis so efficiently could provide a clean solution to mankind’s energy requirements. The secret, it seems, may be the coherent application of quantum principles. Roseanne J. Sension doi:10.1038/446740a Full Text 

Photosynthesis provides the primary energy source for almost all life on Earth. One of its remarkable features is the efficiency with which energy is transferred within the light harvesting complexes comprising the photosynthetic apparatus. Suspicions that quantum trickery might be involved in the energy transfer processes at the core of photosynthesis are now confirmed by a new spectroscopic study. The study reveals electronic quantum beats characteristic of wavelike energy motion within the bacteriochlorophyll complex from the green sulphur bacterium Chlorobium tepidum. This wavelike characteristic of the energy transfer process can explain the extreme efficiency of photosynthesis, in that vast areas of phase space can be sampled effectively to find the most efficient path for energy transfer. Read More ›

Friday the 13th in Africa

A rare glimpse of natural selection in action was captured today. Look at the bright side: At least the poor creature didn’t suffer, and the lions got an easy meal.

Is ID Really Rooted in Science?

Given that the most spectacular documented successes of natural selection are: changing the color of the peppered moth and the length of the beak of the Galapagos Finch, and the development of resistance to antibiotics by bacteria, and that even these trivial examples are now all in dispute, and that no competing natural explanation for evolution has ever been taken seriously by more than a small band of scientists, where is the “overwhelming” evidence that the development of life is due to natural (unintelligent) causes alone? There are, in fact, some fairly persuasive reasons to believe that the development of life was due to natural causes, but when we honestly analyze them, they all reduce to the argument “this doesn’t Read More ›

The Pope Circling Around ID

It will be interesting to see where this debate is in the Roman Catholic Church by the time we get to Darwin’s bicentennial in 2009.

Pope puts his faith in the Book of Genesis, not Darwin
Richard Owen in Rome
From The Times, April 13, 2007

His predecessor appeared, on balance, to favour the scientists. But the present Pope may have tipped the scales the other way in the argument over which is the truer account of the Creation: On the Origin of Species or the Book of Genesis.

Pope Benedict XVI has stepped into the debate over Darwinism with remarks that will be seen as an endorsement of “intelligent design”.

The Pope did not explicitly back intelligent design or creationism. He praised scientific progress but said that the Darwinian theory of evolution was “not finally provable” because: “We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory.”

Intelligent design (ID) argues that life forms are too complex to have evolved randomly, and must have been created by a higher power. Scientists denounce this as a thinly disguised form of creationism, the view that God created the world literally as described in the Book of Genesis. US courts have ruled that neither should be taught in school science because that would violate the separation of Church and State.

Many of those who back intelligent design will draw encouragement from the Pope’s remarks. Read More ›

Is “Directed Evolution” Darwinian? [with addendum]

I posted a reference the other day to a peer-reviewed paper by two Finnish ID-supporters that I claimed supported ID. The paper highlighted that evolutionary methods work to the degree that they are directed. As is typical with our detractors, whenever a pro-ID paper by pro-ID scientists comes out in a peer-reviewed biology journal, they try their best to show that it doesn’t actually support ID. An example is the following post at PT by Steve Reuland: pandasthumb.org…the_proid_paper In reading Reuland’s critique, try to keep track of “rational design,” “directed evolution,” and “Darwinian methods.” Reuland conflates the last two. In so doing, Reuland completely misses the boat. So let me spell it out: DIRECTED EVOLUTION IS NON-DARWINIAN. DARWINIAN EVOLUTION IS Read More ›

Publishers Weekly Review of Behe’s Forthcoming Book

Denyse O’Leary mentioned this review in one of her posts. Here it is. The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism Michael J. Behe. Free Press, $28 (336p) ISBN 978-0-7432-9620-5 http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6430603.html With his first book, Darwin’s Black Box, Behe, a professor of biology at Lehigh University, helped define the controversial intelligent design movement with his concept of “irreducible complexity.” Now he attempts to extend his analysis and define what evolution is capable of doing and what is beyond its scope. Behe strongly asserts, to the likely chagrin of young earth creationists, that the earth is billions of years old and that the concept of common descent is correct. But beginning with a look at malaria and the Read More ›

And still another way to deal with atheists …

If the direct approach of withholding Christmas presents doesn’t work, here’s a more reasoned approach along the lines of classical natural theology (not to be confused with ID proper):

Pope Benedict’s comments on evolution: Hey, don’t read too much into media spin

There’s been a fair amount of speculation based on media reports. But media reports are almost never a good source of information on Catholic teachings, so let’s wait and see. Most deadtrees see their role as promoting materialism. So even if they understood what the Pope was saying, reporters would feel duty bound to garble it.

Jay Richards, a research fellow at the Acton Institute and co-author of Privileged Planet [remember the Smithsonian uproar? No no, not the one that involved Rick Sternberg, the other one]  offers some thoughts as to why such reports are almost never a useful source of information:

I suspect there’s a translation problem here. Reading between the lines, it looked like Benedict said some pretty strong things. Of course he’s challenging scientism and calling for a broader concept of reason than is contained in experimental science. Read More ›

Global Starvation Begins Due To Whacko Panic Over Global Warming

Well, it started already. Shifting economic priorities from food production to reducing CO2 emission has already started causing significant problems. The environmentalist whackos are at it again. Evidently unsatisfied with derailing nuclear power plant construction in the United States 30 years ago, a whackjob by the whackos that has gotten us into the foreign oil dependency mess we’re in today instead of getting most of our electricity from nuclear power like France, their latest stupid panic is going to lead to the starvation of hundreds of millions of people. I don’t often laud the French but they at least got their ducks in a row with nuclear power and the U.S. could have too if we’d had the good sense Read More ›

NY Academy of Sciences peer-reviewed paper acknowledges ID proponents

Renowned DNA researcher Andras Pellionisz wrote in One Believer’s Junk Is Another Believer’s Treasure; Quest for Predictive Scientific Theories on the Function of ‘junkDNA’

The national debate about Darwinism (D) contra Intelligent Design/Extraterrestrial Intelligence (ID/ET) centers on the nature of predictive and thus refutable scientific theories.

Most Darwinists erroneously predicted that 98.7% of the DNA was devoid of function (“junk”), while the ID/ET theory correctly predicted some yet to be decoded function of junkDNA.

Read More ›

Pope defends Theistic Evolution

“Paris – Pope Benedict, elaborating his views on evolution for the first time as Pontiff, says science has narrowed the way life’s origins are understood and Christians should take a broader approach to the question. The Pope also says the Darwinist theory of evolution is not completely provable because mutations over hundreds of thousands of years cannot be reproduced in a laboratory… ” (go to article) You may recall that shortly after Pope Benedict’s inauguration, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna touched off a fire storm (July 2005) with an op-ed piece in the New York Times questioning Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and appearing to endorse the concept of intelligent design. This brought a quick response from Prof. Kenneth Miller, Read More ›