For some reason, Arts and Letters Daily, which I often visit, is always publishing materialist stuff, whether it is well sourced or not, but almost never non-materialist stuff.
Anyway, here’s a really silly piece from CSICOP – a group of unidirectional materialist skeptics – denying that prayer works. Read More ›
It is evident by the fact that Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Ken Miller, Sean Carroll, and Michael Ruse have written book reviews of Michael Behe’s book, The Edge of Evolution, that the best evolutionary biologists think about intelligent design. That only makes sense because Darwin himself wrote much about intelligent design and devoted an entire book, The Origin of Species, in a failed attempt to refute intelligent design.
We see peer reviewed literature by Zuckerkandl, Ayala, Koonin, and others referencing intelligent design. Here is a peer-reviewed article by 3 scientists from MIT in the journal of Molecular Systems Biology: The intelligent design of evolution where the authors assert:
The debate between intelligent design and evolution in education may still rage in school boards and classrooms, but intelligent design is making headway in the laboratory…
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Intelligent design, however, may be here to stay.
In preparing another thread, I came across the photograph of one of the most famous evolutionary biologists, John Maynard Smith. The photograph above was of Maynard-Smith when he was a bit younger. The photograph below is one of the last photographs of Maynard-Smith published, and it appeared in a memorial article written by Richard Lewontin in the prestigious Journal Science in 2004 [see: Retrospective: In Memory of John Maynard Smith (1920-2004)]
Look at the close up of the book on his shelf:
It’s none other than Michael Behe’s, Darwin’s Black Box, right beside Charles Darwin’s autobiography.
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In this UD post I suggested that the facts (in particular, those presented by Michael Behe in The Edge of Evolution) speak for themselves. I was challenged by a commenter with: “If the facts speak for themselves, why does Behe need to write a book-length argument to make their case?”
My response is that the facts have to be presented before they can speak for themselves, and Behe presents lots of facts of which I was not aware. One of the most telling facts is that since widespread drug treatments first appeared, more than 10^20 malarial cells have been born, and no new protein-protein interactions have evolved. Furthermore, the broken genes that confer chloroquine resistance disappear once drug therapy is removed. My claim is that these facts certainly do speak for themselves, and they say that Darwinian claims about the creative power of random mutation and natural selection are bogus.
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Access Research Network (ARN) is a great place for serious ID enthusiasts. In fact, even Darwinists like Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross give their endorsement:
ARN [Access Research Network]….offers a host of resources, many of which may be downloaded without cost….
ARN is a treasure trove of ID materials…a vital arm of the Wedge…
Forrest and Gross,
Creationism’s Trojan Horse
Thus, I’m pleased to announce that ARN has just recently loaded 62 video clips available on YouTube. Feel free to check out these 62 wonderful ID clips.
In a UD post below, Salvador comments on Ken Miller and his reference to a paper in Science. Ken is a master of the art of literature bluffing, and you’ll be seeing a lot of this from Darwinists concerning Behe’s The Edge Of Evolution. It works like this: Claim that “such and so has been conclusively refuted…” or “the author ignores research that has demonstrated…” or “this issue was addressed and resolved long ago…” and then cite a publication.
Those using this tactic know that very few people will actually check out the references. However, in cases like that of hostile reviews of Behe’s new book, it would be wise to do so. You will most likely discover that the “refutations, demonstrations and resolutions” are nothing of the kind, but are fanciful storytelling, speculation, misrepresentation, or wildly imaginative extrapolation from the trivially obvious.
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Ken Miller just published a review of Michael Behe’s book, Edge of Evolution. Here is Miller at his best:
but Behe has built his entire thesis on this error. Telling his readers that the production of so much as a single new protein-to-protein binding site is “beyond the edge of evolution”, he proclaims darwinian evolution to be a hopeless failure. Apparently he has not followed recent studies exploring the evolution of hormone-receptor complexes by sequential mutations (Science 312, 97–101; 2006),
Ken Miller
Falling over the edge
Miller falsely accuses Behe of not following the Science (2006) paper, yet it’s hard to imagine that Miller missed the widely available public response by Behe of that very study. How could Miller accuse Behe of not following the study, when Behe said:
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
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In this latest post at PhysOrg, it seems that Darwinism hasn’t helped, but instead hindered the fight against cancer.
Dr. Peter Duesberg, a molecular biologist at Berkeley,
proposed in 2000 that the assumption underlying most cancer research today is wrong. That assumption, that cancer results from a handful of genetic mutations that drive a cell into uncontrolled growth, has failed to explain many aspects of cancer, he said, and has led researchers down the wrong path.
And, in words that support Behe’s main thesis in “The Edge of Evolution”, Deusberg also adds:
“In this new study and in one published in 2005, we have proved that only chromosomal rearrangements, rather than mutations, can explain the high rates and wide ranges of drug resistance in cancer cells.”
Think of the number of people who die each year of cancer as compared to the number who die from bacterial infection, and one can easily see that all the chest-slapping by the Darwinists about how RM+NS has given us anti-bacterial drugs can know pound their breasts in remorse at the “wrong path” mutational theory has led cancer researchers. This isn’t just a battle between the God-denying and the God-affirming segments of our global society, it’s about good science versus bad science, about reason versus myth.
Jim Kushiner, writes, presumably from the treadmill, to say: In the latest issue of World magazine, editor Marvin Olasky compiles his all-time favorite one-hundred books to read while on the treadmill, “books that exercise my mind while I exercise my body.” Included on the list is Signs of Intelligence, edited by Touchstone publisher James Kushiner and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary professor William Dembski. The book is an expansion of the July/August 1999 issue of Touchstone on Intelligent Design. You can order your copy here, and then head to the gym. Mere Comments, from which this item is swatched, is a most interesting blog of ecumenical Christian interest, the blog of Touchstone magazine.
This is a continuation of a discussion of Teleology and ID in physics, ID-inspired least action principles
Teleologically-inspired Least Action Principles have become very foundational in modern physics. Tipler argues, “teleology is alive and well in physics.” One of my favorite critics, Bob OH, demanded more proof ID inspired a major area of scientific research.
On April 15, 1744, the pioneer of the Principle of Least Action, Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis presented:
Derivation of the laws of motion and equilibrium from a metaphysical principle
Newton states that the uniform motion of the planets reveals an Intelligent Designer…
However, the probability is not zero and, hence, the uniformity of planetary motion is not a necessary proof of an Intelligent Designer.
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There is another consideration. The two alternatives, Intelligent Design versus pure chance, are based on our inability to find a physical cause for the uniformity of planetary motion within Newton’s system. However, other philosophers have hypothesized a fluid that transports the planets or at least regulates their motion; if true, that might explain the uniformity of planetary motion (rather than an Intelligent Designer or pure chance) and would be no more proof of God’s existence than any other motion imposed on matter.
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I gather that the move by the Council of Europe to portray intelligent design theory as a threat to human rights has been put off – for now.
A number of things could be said about the Council of Europe’s move. First that you can be sure that the Council will be back later. Second, no matter what they get, they will want more. They can’t help that. Materialism is failing and there are ever more “enemies” to suppress.
Third, that the Council twists the definition of “human rights” into something straight out of British political journalist George Orwell’s urgent mid-twentieth century warnings: Human rights means being protected by the State from anyone who might challenge your thinking. Read More ›
Last week I reported on the Council of Europe denouncing ID as a threat to democracy (go here). I also asked how long it would be before advocating ID in Europe would be regarded as a hate-crime. We may have to wait no longer: Secularist Europe Silences Pro-Lifers and Creationists From the desk of Paul Belien on Sat, 2007-06-23 18:53 Last week, a German court sentenced a 55-year old Lutheran pastor to one year in jail for “Volksverhetzung†(incitement of the people) because he compared the killing of the unborn in contemporary Germany to the holocaust. Next week, the Council of Europe is going to vote on a resolution imposing Darwinism as Europe’s official ideology. The European governments are asked Read More ›
Here’s an interview I recently gave with the IDEA Center: go here.
Here are the recent additions to this file of columnists’ views on the intelligent design controversy, a useful compendium if you are looking for a range of opinion:
Adams, Mike S. suspects (June 4, 2007) that popular Darwinism is supported mainly as a way of avoiding responsibility for sexual choices. Can this be true? Oh, surely not! <grin>: Read More ›
And what rough beast, his hour come round at last Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born? – William Butler Yeats, “Second Coming” The effort to recast Darwin as a religious man, more religious in fact than the common run of Christians and other believers, in the runup to the bicentennial of his birth is well under way in many quarters: Darwin counted himself an agnostic, but in his reverence for the creative agency of nature we should count him a devoutly religious man. “There is a grandeur in this view of life,” he famously wrote on the last page of The Origin of Species. The grandeur of which he spoke of has more of the divine about it than did Read More ›
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