Monthly Archives: October 2007
Orwellian world an inevitable outcome of materialist philosophy
| October 31, 2007 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Following up on Grant Sewell’s interesting discussion of consciousness as a hard problem for Darwinism, and my response: In “Brave Newark World”, law prof and columnist Mike S. Adams exposes an Orwellian world of reprogramming inside the dorms at the University of Delaware: Presently, students are actually pressured or even required to take actions that […]
Low Probability is Only Half of Specified Complexity
| October 31, 2007 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
In a prior post the order of a deck of cards was used as an example of specified complexity. If a deck is shuffled and it results in all of the cards being ordered by rank and suit, one can infer design. One commenter objected to this reasoning on the grounds that the specified order […]
Darwinism’s biggest (and least discussed) problem
| October 31, 2007 | Posted by Granville Sewell under Intelligent Design |
The biggest problem of all with Darwinism, in my opinion, is one that is almost never discussed by either side. In my Dec 2005 American Spectator article (updated version here) I tried to express the problem as follows: “When you ask [the modern scientist] how a mechanical process such as natural selection could cause human […]
Behe vs. Mothra (no MRSA)
| October 31, 2007 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
In a prior post DRG wonders how could Behe’s EoE inform the development of drugs that fight antibiotic resistant bacteria? Today’s WSJ, for example, describes the problem of MRSA and other superbugs that defy existing antibiotics. Given the expense of the pharmaceutical development process, an ID-oriented research program ought to reduce the cost of development by […]
Today’s Class Project
| October 30, 2007 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
Alex Tee Neng Heng and David C. Green think they have demonstrated that the “monkeys typing” hypothesis is true here. The class is assigned the task of identifying their blunder.
Darwin Didn’t Get God Off the Hook
| October 30, 2007 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
As Michael Behe discusses in the article I linked in my last post, Darwinists Kenneth Miller and Francisco Ayala reject ID, because they believe it makes God (if one assumes God is the designer) culpable for all of the pain and misery in the natural world. Ayala goes so far as to suggest that ID […]
Behe Outs Miller as ID Proponent
| October 30, 2007 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
See here: www.amazon.com/gp/blog/A3DGRQ0IO7KYQ2/…
Antony Flew — Still with his head in the game!
| October 30, 2007 | Posted by William Dembski under Philosophy, Religion, Science |
A friend of mine and I have been reading Antony Flew’s new book THERE IS A GOD. Flew had been the English-speaking world’s most prominent atheist until Richard Dawkins assumed that role. A few years ago, Flew announced his conversion to theism (though not full-blown Christianity). This caused a stir at the time, but true […]
Cambrian Math
| October 29, 2007 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
I was looking at some numbers concerning the Cambrian explosion. The results were quite stunning to me. Simple life, we are told, emerged 3.8 billion years ago, and the Cambrian Explosion occurred 550 million years ago. In a single 10 million year period (taking the longest estimate), 95% of the animal phyla appeared. The math: For the […]
Genetic Entropy and Malarial Parasite P. falciparum
| October 29, 2007 | Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design |
The two most recent books I’ve read are Biochemistry Professor M.Behe’s Edge of Evolution and Cornell geneticist J.Sanford’s Genetic Entropy. Edge of Evolution I found to be amazing. It presented a case history of a eukaryote (P.falciparum) that has replicated billions of trillions of times within a span of a few decades. More importantly this […]
Warming Revives Flora and Fauna in Greenland
| October 29, 2007 | Posted by Dave S. under Global Warming |
HT to Phil Johnson for giving me the link. As I’ve been saying, Global Warming isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Check this out… Warming Revives Flora and Fauna in Greenland By SARAH LYALL October 28, 2007 The New York Times NARSARSUAQ, Greenland — A strange thing is happening at the edge of Poul Bjerge’s forest, […]
Atheism: An Intellectual Revolt or Pelvic Rebellion?
| October 29, 2007 | Posted by Dave S. under Humor |
This is just too funny to pass up. As a preemptive strike against any commenters who feel a need to say “Aha! ID is all about religion” put a sock in it. I filed this under “Humor”. HT to Jon Wells for giving me the link to this article. Atheism: An Intellectual Revolt or Pelvic […]
Prebiotic Information Crisis
| October 28, 2007 | Posted by idnet.com.au under Intelligent Design |
Package models and the information crisis of prebiotic evolution Daniel A. M. M. Silvestre, Jos´e F. Fontanari http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0710/0710.3278v1.pdf The coexistence of different types of templates has been the choice solution to the information crisis of prebiotic evolution, triggered by the finding that a single RNA-like template cannot carry enough information to code for any useful […]
Darwinism seen as old-fashioned materialism
| October 27, 2007 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
In a recent column, Marvin Olasky observes New York Times columnist John Tierney recently offered a materialist version of “intelligent design”: All of us are actually characters in a computer simulation devised by some technologically advanced future civilization. Fanciful to the extreme, sure, but the growing number of such theories — life comes from the […]
Who Says Darwinists Don’t Make Predictions
| October 27, 2007 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
. . . so long as the predicted event is safely 100,000 years in the future: Human race will split into two different species The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist. 100,000 years into the […]
Retracting a 52-year old scientific paper — Scientists getting into the business of historical revisionism
| October 26, 2007 | Posted by William Dembski under Evolution, Science |
Below is a fascinating report in the NYTimes about a long-retired professor who found that his work was being cited by “creationists” and THEREFORE decided to retract it. But, as an attorney friend points out, the very concept of “retraction” is inapplicable here. A retraction is something the original author is entitled to do ONLY […]
What exactly is the “design” part of “intelligent design”?
| October 25, 2007 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Bill Dembski asked about design vs. mechanism , and quite a long thread ensued. I thought I’d post my own thoughts here, to break up the thread a bit. Here are five things I know that may be useful to someone:
An Object Cannot Rise Above Itself
| October 25, 2007 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
In my last post I referred to Richard Dawkins’ assertion that a state organized according to Darwinian principles would be a fascist state. In response some of the commenters alluded to Dawkins’ statement that he is “anti-Darwinian” when it comes to politics. Dawkins, the commenters said, believes we can “rise above” our Darwinian impulses. The […]
Effects of Elevated CO2 and Temperature on Rice Crops
| October 25, 2007 | Posted by Dave S. under Global Warming, Off Topic |
In the ISCID Brainstorms forum Emeritus Professor of Biology John A. Davison challenged my assertion that atmospheric CO2 increases are a good thing for plant growth. He said while it might apply to trees it doesn’t apply to grasses such as rice which don’t yield more grain in an elevated CO2 environment. He then went […]
Dawkins: “Darwinism Leads to Fascism”
| October 24, 2007 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
As irksome as Richard Dawkins can sometimes be, one must nevertheless admire his occasional outbursts of honesty. Over at First Things Fr. Ed Oakes refers to an interview Dawkins gave to an Austrian newspaper, Die Presse (July 30, 2005), in which he said: “No decent person wants to live in a society that works according to Darwinian laws. . . […]
