Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Design Detection Reported on CBS’s 60 Minutes

This evening the CBS News show 60 Minutes reported on an impressive example of design detection in the on-line poker world.    Online gambling has grown in a few short years to a 16 billion dollar a year industry, and a big part of that growth has come from internet poker.  Recently several professional gamblers at one of the larger internet poker sites, Ultimatebet.com, noticed that some of their opponents were playing extremely poorly, yet winning consistently.  They suspected cheating.    One of the professionals obtained tracking data on one of the suspected cheaters, and after running the numbers determined that the suspect’s winning hand percentage was 13 standard deviations away from the mean percentage.  This is equivalent to winning Read More ›

Judge Jones and the double standard

In the Kitzmiller vs. Dover decision the honorable Judge Jones writes (or rather, to be more accurate, regurgitates from the complainants): While supernatural explanations may be important and have merit, they are not part of science. This self-imposed convention of science, which limits inquiry to testable, natural explanations about the natural world, is referred to by philosophers as “methodological naturalism” and is sometimes known as the scientific method. Methodological naturalism is a “ground rule” of science today which requires scientists to seek explanations in the world around us based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify. If only this was true. If this were the true ground rule of modern science then how is it that the chance Read More ›

Stuff that should be a joke, but Brit toffs are fronting it, so …

Jennifer Gold reports for Christian Today (November 24, 2008) that The results of a new poll out today by faith-based think tank Theos have revealed that eight in 10 people in Britain are unaware that 2009 marks two major Charles Darwin anniversaries. Across the country, special events and celebrations are being planned for next year to mark the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth on 12 February and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species on 24 November. Yet the results of the ComRes poll out today reveal that only 21 per cent of the population are aware of the two anniversaries. The publication of the results coincides with the unveiling of a programme of major events Read More ›

Children are born with a belief in God

Researchers from Oxford’s Centre for Anthropology and Mind have found evidence that children are predisposed to believe in God or a supreme being. This is because of a natural assumption that everything in the world exists for a purpose and was therefore created. Dr Justin Barrett was reported in the UKs Daily Telegraph as saying that young children appear to have an inherent faith even when it has not been taught to them by family or school. Even children raised on a desert island without any external infuence would start out with a belief in God. Commenting on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he said “The preponderance of scientific evidence for the past 10 years or so has shown Read More ›

Anthropology: It’s now down to Darwinism vs. humanism – does mind matter?

Get a load of this: Today, anthropology is at war with itself. The discipline has divided into two schools of thought – the social anthropologists and the evolutionary anthropologists. The schism between the two is simple but deeply ingrained. Academics in the subject clearly align themselves with one side or the other; once that choice is made it defines their career. The division lies in the question of whether or not anthropology is a science, and if it accepts that Darwinian evolutionary theory guides research into human behaviour and the development of societies. In other words, Darwinism is once again spreading its malign influence into some hapless discipline. Personally, I would ask one single, simple question of anyone who wants Read More ›

Now Materialists Are Trying to Turn Occam’s Razor On Its Head

 Give me a break will ya.  In their feverish efforts to prop up the teetering materialist paradigm, to justify the unjustifiable, our materialist friends have now resorted to saying, essentially, black is white.  In a recent post a commenter turns Occam’s Razor on its head when he states:

 

It is a common misconception among ID supporters that scientists deliberately defy Occam’s Razor and pursue multiverse theories simply because they are uncomfortable with the idea of a designer.  This is false.

 

The commenter cites physicist Aurélien Barrau in support.  In this article Barrau states:

 

In any case, it is important to underline that the multiverse is not a hypothesis invented to answer a specific question.  It is simply a consequence of a theory usually built for another purpose. Interestingly, this consequence also solves many complexity and naturalness problems.  In most cases, it even seems that the existence of many worlds is closer to Ockham’s razor (the principle of simplicity) than the ad hoc assumptions that would have to be added to models to avoid the existence of other universes.

 

The sheer presumption, the overweening fatuity, of these statements (both the commenter’s and Barrau’s) beggars belief.  One must conclude that either they simply have no idea what Occam’s Razor means or they are deliberately trying to distort its meaning to support their conclusion.  I suspect the latter.

 

So, to set things straight, we will discuss first, what the Razor means, and secondly how it applies to the multiverse. Read More ›

More ridiculous Darwin hagiography …

Darwin was a classic Brit toff of his generation – crumpets and tea and genteel unbelief sat well with administering the parish church. Indeed. British physicist David Tyler tells us,  In an informative essay, Janet Browne reflects on three Darwin commemorations: his funeral in Westminster Abbey, the 1909 centennial and the 1959 celebration. Each grasped the “opportunity to push an agenda, and even to adapt the past, so telling us what we like best to hear”.  For sure. I defy anyone to read this ridiculous hagiography, and not realize that something is fundamentally wrong with the Darwin picture. Are people really expected to sit through this in museums? (I guess so. But if they walk out, good for them!) Still, don’t Read More ›

Peppered Moth Idolatry

The venerable peppered moth (Biston betularia) has popped up a couple of times in recent posts.  It seems that some of our Darwinian commenters (see, e.g., qwerty017 in comment [2] here) have not gotten the memo – the peppered moth myth has been completely exploded.  Don’t take our word for it.  Uber-Darwinist Jerry Coyne says in the November 1998 edition of Nature:  “For the time being we must discard Biston as a well-understood example of natural selection in action.”  Why else would the popular school text Biology pull its discussion of Biston as an example of “evolution in action”?

 

My purpose in this post is not, however, to re-hash the vast debunking literature.  Instead, when I did a brief internet search on the subject I was intrigued by an astonishing display of Darwinian “It’s just gotta be” psychology on display in this New Scientist article.  Read More ›

Not just aliens: The multiverse has gotta be out there too!

According to Tim Folger in Discover Magazine (November 10, 2008), “Science’s Alternative to an Intelligent Creator:” is “the Multiverse Theory.”

The staggering challenge is to think of a way to confirm the existence of other universes when every conceivable experiment or observation must be confined to our own. Does it make sense to talk about other universes if they can never be detected?

[ … ]

The credibility of string theory and the multiverse may get a boost within the next year or two, once physicists start analyzing results from the Large Hadron Collider, the new, $8 billion particle accelerator built on the Swiss-French border. If string theory is right, the collider should produce a host of new particles. There is even a small chance that it may find evidence for the mysterious extra dimensions of string theory. “If you measure something which confirms certain elaborations of string theory, then you’ve got indirect evidence for the multiverse,” says Bernard Carr, a cosmologist at Queen Mary University of London.

[ … ]

When I ask Linde whether physicists will ever be able to prove that the multiverse is real, he has a simple answer. “Nothing else fits the data,” he tells me. “We don’t have any alternative explanation for the dark energy; we don’t have any alternative explanation for the smallness of the mass of the electron; we don’t have any alternative explanation for many properties of particles.

“What I am saying is, look at it with open eyes. These are experimental facts, and these facts fit one theory: the multiverse theory. They do not fit any other theory so far. I’m not saying these properties necessarily imply the multiverse theory is right, but you asked me if there is any experimental evidence, and the answer is yes. It was Arthur Conan Doyle who said, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

A story like this leaves me with three key questions:

1. What is the likelihood – given that the article makes clear that so much is speculative – that small amounts of ambiguous data will be over-interpreted and professions of faith in the multiverse demanded – the way Darwinian evolutionists must believe in the Peppered Myth. In that case, the data are ambiguous, but the call to conversion is not.

It is overwhelmingly clear is that most of the people interviewed have an emotional aversion to the idea of design in our universe, which would make them unreliable judges of ambiguous data from the Large Hadron Collider (which is currently out of commission for a couple of months due to a superconductor failure).

2. The mantra “we don’t have any alternative … ” is downright spooky. It sounds like these people are preparing themselves to interpret anything they do find as evidence for what they need to believe.

3. If they do not find anything that even they can interpret as evidence for a multiverse, does that count against the theory or must it be true anyway? (I fear I know the answer to that one. It likely means building an even bigger Collider … )
Note: If you like this and other related posts archived at Colliding Universes, you can vote for Colliding Unverses at the Canadian Blogger Awards, sci-tech division. Vote early, vote often, and vote for me, of course.
 
See also: No escape from philosophy through equations?
Now, remind me again why we need this multiverse theory in the first place …
Letter: Multiverses are nonsense but so is much contemporary physics, plus … Read More ›

Some Thanks for Professor Olofsson

I’m halfway through mathematics Professor Peter Olofsson’s essay titled Probability, Statistics, Evolution, and Intelligent Design which originally appeared in the journal Chance. The first thing I want to thank PO for is stating this early on: Although [religion] is of interest in its own right, in fairness to ID proponents, it should be pointed out that many of them do not employ religious arguments against evolution and this article does not deal with issues of faith and religion. The second thing I’d like to thank him for is describing ID as a valid scientific hypothesis in the discussion of the explanatory filter and the flagellum. PO brings up the same argument I’ve always pointed out when he talks about the Read More ›

Dr. Charles Garner’s Editorial

Charles Garner, Professor of Chemistry at Baylor University served along with Steve Meyer as Expert Reviewer on Texas Science Standards.  (Here is an article from the Austin Statesman covering the issue: LINK.)   Dr. Garner recently wrote the following editorial for the Waco Tribune.

Charles Garner, guest column: It’s not religion; it’s sound, skeptical science

As the Texas Education Agency reviews the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, a controversy has developed about language in the current TEKS, which states:

“The student uses critical thinking and scientific problem-solving to make informed decisions. The student is expected to analyze, review and critique scientific explanations, including hypotheses and theories, as to their strengths and weaknesses using scientific evidence and information.”

This language promotes critical thinking skills. It has been in the TEKS for years. The TEKS guidelines are working fine and Texas students receive some of the best science education in the country.

Nonetheless, some activist groups are protesting the “strengths and weaknesses” language. They assert that teaching “weaknesses” is a “wedge allowing teachers to insert their personal religious views into public science classrooms,” especially pertaining to evolution.

As an appointed reviewer of the TEKS, I investigated this claim. It quickly became apparent that there was no basis for it.

In fact, for several reasons, I doubt if even those who make this claim really believe it.

Whatever problems they have with “strengths and weaknesses,” religious infringement cannot be among them.

The “strengths and weaknesses” language has been in place for a decade. If it had been used to introduce religion or supernatural explanations into the classroom, these groups would have a long list of specific incidents, with names, dates, etc. Read More ›

Help us compose a standard anti-intelligent design disclaimer for research papers!

Friend Malcolm Chisholm writes to say,

Some fascinating research on electron transport chain proteins from Princeton.

These guys say:

“Our new theory extends Darwin’s model, demonstrating how organisms can subtly direct aspects of their own evolution to create order out of randomness.”

Apparently they have self correcting proteins, but they seem to think it goes beyond that to proteins that can find optimal energy levels.

“In this paper, we present what is ostensibly the first quantitative experimental evidence, since Wallace’s original proposal, that nature employs evolutionary control strategies to maximize the fitness of biological networks,”

Oddly, they cite as an inspiration A. R. Wallace, Darwin’s co-founder of the Theory of Evolution through Natural Selection (whose ID views gave Darwin regular heartburn).

They also feel the need to deny the possibility of ID. Apparently no publication in this area is complete without one. Maybe such denials should be turned into a standard disclaimer, like the ones at the bottom of email messages for these guys.

And maybe if William Paley had stubbed his toe on an atomic clock they would still claim it was produced by chance.

That’s an idea! Why not compose a standard disclaimer that all these people can just insert at the bottom of their papers: Something along the lines of “Please rest assured that this intricate machinery is not designed, no matter what it looks like.” But doen up in obfuscated research paper style.

List, can you help?

While we are here, more fun with Chisholm, Read More ›

Atheist philosopher of physics on why ID is a reasonable idea

Below are links to the Discovery Institute’s five podcasts of University of Colorado (Boulder) professor of the philosophy of physics Bradley Monton – who is an atheist – on why the universe might show evidence of design. Monton teamed up with another skeptic of religion, mathematician David Berlinski, against materialist atheist Lawrence Krauss and British theistic evolutionist Denis Alexander, to defend the design of the universe as an intellectually worthy idea (not just some religious schtick).

Here’s more on the debate. And the five pods are linked below.

Well, it’s no secret that the intelligent design debate is more nuanced than legacy media portray it.

I suspect that fewer than 200 journalists in the world actually know what the controversy is about.

How can you tell if they do?

First, they realize that the evidence from science does not support current materialist or naturalist or no-design theory. (Shhhh!)

They are not columnists retailing fatuous lines like “There is no conflict between faith and science!”

or

“No creationism is the schools! Darwin explained it all without God. (But (optionally) you can holler your guts out for Jesus anyway. Maybe it is good for evolution if you do.”

Often, the same columnist is shouting both slogans, at different times.

Good thing too, because there isn’t a 360 degree swivel joint in the human head!

Second, they have actually read and thought about the books written by ID theorists like Mike Behe, Bill Dembski, and Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, which advance a testable thesis.

They have looked beyond the smoke and noise generated by fossil science organizations and the “Christian” scientists who meet with them to plan strategy to prevent consideration of design, purpose, or meaning in the universe. (There is a scandal here, awaiting detailed discovery – rats for me, I am mainly a trade news hack, and may not get in on the best cellar.)

Anyway, here’s Monton on design (audio): Read More ›

Popcorn! Dilbert, give a kiss for me to the talking frog in your pocket!

Dilbert, the date-challenged engineer and his life companion Dogbert discuss evolution here:

There is a history here. Dilbert’s creator, animator Scott Adams attracted a variety of trolls in their natural environment when he started to question “ass hat” Darwinian evolution. Here are some posts detailing his funnyman response:

Dilbert cartoonist: Fossils are bullshit!

Fun for once: Dilbert cartoonist fights back against “ass hat”

Internet Darwinist attacks Dilbert’s creator

Dilbert cartoonist: More opinions on the ID controversy, but that’s all – for now. I thought Adams would make Catbert the Darwinist, but he flagged poor old Dilbert for the position, at least for now. (Catbert could have made a grand human resources scheme out of it … )

Despite his current inability to “get” the fact that there might be a problem with his creed on the origin and development of life, Dilbert is still my favourite engineer. Dilbert, give a kiss for me to the talking frog in your pocket!

The tallking frog in Dilbert’s pocket? Well, here is the story as it was told to me: Read More ›

Questioning the Tree of Life: International Workshop Series

One cause (of many) delaying the completion of On Common Descent, my monograph examining the theory of the universal common ancestry of life on Earth — Darwin’s monophyletic Tree of Life, rooted in LUCA (the last universal common ancestor) — has been the explosion of publication on the topic. In 1998, when I submitted my dissertation, only a handful of researchers openly doubted monophyly, and only generally-known-to-be-crazy philosophers of science, like me, cared much about it. Now an international workshop series on the question has been organized, to culminate in a major meeting in London in July 2010. The first workshop in the series was held on November 7th, 2008, at the Philosophy of Science Association biennial conference, in Pittsburgh. Read More ›