2008

As of tomorrow (Friday, November 14th), Barry Arrington assumes the leadership of UD. After more than three years at the helm, I’m finally stepping down. I expect I’ll still be posting here occasionally, but my energies will go more and more into technical ID research. Robert Marks and I continue to crank away at papers and have finally cracked the peer-review barrier in the information sciences with a paper on conservation of information (stay tuned at www.EvoInfo.org for a formal announcement). Barry has organized UD as a non-profit corporation and plans to take UD in some new directions that will increase its readership, sense of community, and impact. Take it away Barry!

I’ve seen this a long time coming: www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2008/11/… Two quotes in particular stand out for me: My reasons have to do with my philosophical opposition to the ID movement’s acquiescence to the modern idea that an Enlightenment view of science is the paradigm of knowledge. [Comment from WmAD: Showing that the Enlightenment view of science fails on its own terms is hardly the same as acquiescing to it.] My point is to provide my reader with an intellectually respectable way to reject Dawkinian [sic] atheism without having to embrace ID. [Comment from WmAD: Why not simply present an intellectually respectable way to reject Dawkinsian–period? Why does he have to put his own preferred method of combating Dawkins explicitly in opposition Read More ›

In “Atheists Pick on God” (Sydney Morning Herald, November 2, 2008), Simon Webster explains:

LONDON buses will carry the slogan “There’s probably no God” next year, in a campaign paid for by an atheist organisation. Transport chiefs say it would never work in Sydney, where commuters wait at bus stops for so long that they eventually die and go to heaven, where God tells them: “There’s probably no bus.”

The British Humanist Association and prominent atheist Professor Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, are paying for the ads. They believe God is nothing but a figment of the human imagination, much like the T-Card and the North West Rail Link.

The news comes at a time when record numbers of Sydneysiders say they have lost their faith: despite all the promises of a second coming, there never will be an extension to the light rail network.

Premier Nathan Rees has called on them to find it again quickly: if Sydney Ferries is privatised it may be necessary for commuters on the less popular routes to learn to walk on water …

The rest here. The campaign would never work in Toronto either. Here, once you give up waiting for the bus and call a taxi, the bus turns the corner just as the taxi pulls up – which proves that the atheist’s explanation of the universe cannot be quite right.

Also just up at The Mindful Hack Read More ›

The language in the following paper is hilarious. Basically the researchers are saying “We know this looks like an engineered feedback control loop. We analyzed it and found it statistically impossible to have come about through a stochastic processs. But we will strenuously object to anyone calling it evidence of design.” ROFLMAO

“Chakrabarti and Rabitz analyzed these observations of the proteins’ behavior from a mathematical standpoint, concluding that it would be statistically impossible for this self-correcting behavior to be random, and demonstrating that the observed result is precisely that predicted by the equations of control theory. By operating only at extremes, referred to in control theory as “bang-bang extremization,” the proteins were exhibiting behavior consistent with a system managing itself optimally under evolution.

The scientists do not know how the cellular machinery guiding this process may have originated, but they emphatically said it does not buttress the case for intelligent design, a controversial notion that posits the existence of a creator responsible for complexity in nature.

Evolution’s new wrinkle: Proteins with cruise control provide new perspective
by Kitta MacPherson · Posted November 10, 2008; 10:00 a.m.

The rest of the paper is below the fold or at the link above.

Read More ›

Our universe is perfectly tailored for life. That may be the work of God or the result of our universe being one of many. by Tim Folger Discover published online November 10, 2008 A sublime cosmic mystery unfolds on a mild summer afternoon in Palo Alto, California, where I’ve come to talk with the visionary physicist Andrei Linde. The day seems ordinary enough. Cyclists maneuver through traffic, and orange poppies bloom on dry brown hills near Linde’s office on the Stanford University campus. But everything here, right down to the photons lighting the scene after an eight-minute jaunt from the sun, bears witness to an extraordinary fact about the universe: Its basic properties are uncannily suited for life. Tweak the Read More ›

My friend Forrest Mims, survivor of Darwinist thug attacks, has recently been named one of the “50 best brains in science” by Discover Magazine (December 2008, page 43). The cover story informs us, “there may be no amateur scientists more prolific than Forrest Mims.” It is not on line yet.

The Discover article classes Mims as an Outsider and reads, in part, “There may be no amateur scientist more prolific than Forrest M. Mims III, 64, of south central Texas. He has published in major scientific journals such as Nature as well as countless general-interest publications. Mims began teaching himself science and electronics at age 11 and says he never received any formal training apart from a few introductory college courses in biology and chemistry.” I am told the list includes some other relative unknowns, as well as Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking (on the cover), Michael Griffin (head of NASA), James Hansen (global warming guru), E. O. Wilson (sociobiologist and evolutionist), Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google founders), Neil deGrasse Tyson (PBS Nova), Harold Varmus (NIH), and J. Craig Ventner (human genome).

The selection panel has good reason for its view of Forrest. For a man with little formal science training, Mims has done an astonishing amount of research that has been published in a variety of journals. He has written many popular articles, as well as books. He is probably best known for the books and lab kits on electronics projects that he had developed for Radio Shack over the years. He even has a claim to minor historical fame as a co-founder of MITS, Inc., which introduced the Altair 8800, the first microcomputer, in 1975.

Encouraged by her family, his daughter Sarah Mims had a journal publication while still a high school student.

However, Forrest told me yesterday that when he was first told by a Discover editor to expect his name to come up, he worried that it was a vulgar hit piece, retailing the “Scientific American” affair or the “Eric Pianka” episode. Read More ›

A friend alerts me to this interesting article, “Does Nature Suggest Transcendence?”, by Neil D. Broom in The Global Spiral (a Metanexus publication). Broom is Professor of Materials Science at the University of Auckland New Zealand.

My friend describes the article as “broadly pro-ID” – and I would be inclined to agree, except that I would not want Broom to be assailed by a horde of ass hats demanding that he recant. It’s the sort of article you must read to get the benefit of his careful thought, especially because it is adorned by well-chosen photographs and drawings:

… can natural selection be so easily dismissed as a wholly material, unconscious, purposeless process? I think it is fair to say that at one popular level the expression natural selection serves as a kind of mantra, an almost magical utterance that quickly allays any doubts a skeptic might entertain. It is uttered with power and authority when any kind of biological achievement required to be explained, and in the currency of a wholly material world. My argument is that the claim that natural selection explains the extraordinary (read life processes) while drawing only on the ordinary (read material processes), is not only bad science, it is also contradicted by the very narrative the materialist seems compelled to employ to present his or her story of life.

 
Referencing British biologist’s comparison of natural selection to engineers in a soap factory, he writes, Read More ›

Adam Rutherford from Nature shows he is blinded even to an understanding of the difference between ID  and creationism. In his teacher’s TV rant he calls for the re-education of the 18% of UK science teachers not convinced that Darwinism has, in his words, “withstood all attacks”. Commenting on the same survey, UK Daily Telegraph defines ID as “the theory that the universe shows signs of having been designed rather than evolving” In their failure to even grasp the basic definition of ID, these people are, the words of Richard Dawkins, “either stupid, ignorant or dare I say it, evil.” Teachers.tv video

I’ve been meaning for ages to review the pseudonymous* Mike Gene’s Design Matrix – and yes, I’ll get to it – but for now here is fun post at his blog, summarizing the incontrovertible truth about evolution and irreducible complexity Chris Ho-Stuart: However, Muller’s claim is that this [IC] is an EXPECTED result of evolution. Massimo Pigliucci: there is no evidence so far of irreducible complexity in living organisms. Blue Collar Scientist: Muller’s paper….contains a description of irreducible complexity, along with an explanation of how it comes about through the simplest of evolutionary means. It amounts to a prediction that “irreducible complexity” will actually be found in organisms. Niall Shanks and Karl Joplin: The redundancy we observe today in effect Read More ›

Some kind readers may have noticed that we have been changing things around a bit here at Uncommon Descent. We are retooling the blog to serve you, our community, better, and will let you know of key developments as they come on stream.

Wikipedia’s Intelligent Design article was recommended for review on continuing as a Featured Article on Oct. 15. See the Discussion on Intelligent Design on whether it reaches Wikipedia’s Featured Article Criteria See the previous FAR of 24 July 2007. Specific Suggestions from FAR have been added to the ongoing Discussion on ID. This provides for outside “eyes” to help bring objectivity to the discussion. Note that: “FARs may run as long as several months if work is progressing, so there’s no need to consider “temporary delisting.”” Further constructive comments and editing effort would appear to be welcome. The editor Marskell is now asking for official comments on FARC status. Note the distinction between comments in the FAR section and whether Read More ›

Friend Malcolm Chisholm, who has a wonderful approach to information (= he reads a lot) writes to tell me of a book written by Alfred Russel Wallace (Darwin’s co-theorist) on the question of the habitability of Mars:

It is called “Is Mars Habitable?” It was written in 1907 when Wallace was living in Broadstone, Dorset (where I went to school).

Wallace takes on Percival Lowell, a supreme icon of American astronomy. Lowell thought there were Martians and they used canals etc. Wallace blows up this theory, ending the book with the statement:

“Mars, therefore, is not only uninhabited by intelligent beings such as Mr. Lowell postulates, but is absolutely UNINHABITABLE.”

Remember that Wallace has been derided for his beliefs in ID and spiritualism. Yet he was obviously not afraid to go against the scientific speculative spirit of the age.

Indeed. The introduction to the 1907 edition, scanned online, editor Charles H. Smith notes,

For many years one of Wallace’s least remembered books, Is Mars Habitable? is increasingly being recognized as one of the first examples of the proper application of the scientific method to the study of extraterrestrial atmospheres and geography–that is, as one of the pioneer works in the field of exobiology.

Here is Wallace’s conclusion: Read More ›

What think you?

P.-M. Binder of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Hawaii at Hilo
thinks that David Wolpert, writing in Physica D (Wolpert, D. H. Physica D 237, 1257–1281 (2008) has demonstrated “that the entire physical Universe cannot be fully understood by any single inference system that exists within it”:

In proving his theorems,Wolpert defines U as the space of all world-lines (sequences of events) in the Universe that are consistent with the laws of physics. He then defines strong inference as the ability of one machine to predict the total conclusion function of another machine for all possible set-ups. Finally, he uses ‘Cantor diagonalization’ (Box 1) to prove, among others, the following two statements:

(1) Let C1 be any strong inference machine for U. There is another machine, C2, that cannot
be strongly inferred by C1.
(2) No two strong inference machines can be strongly inferred from each other.

The first of these statements posits that there is a portion of ‘knowledge space’ (that inferable by C2) that is not available to any C1 machine. The second is a statement about the non-equivalence of inference machines; it implies that, at most, only one machine at one instant in time can infer all others. The two statements together imply that, at best, there can be only a ‘theory of almost everything’.

Memo to LaPlace’s demon: Get a job, Mr. Know-it-all.

Citation: Nature 455, 884-885 (16 October 2008) | doi:10.1038/455884a; Published online 15 October 2008
Abstract:

A provocative contribution to the logic of science extends the theorems of Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing, and bears on thinking about prediction, the standard model of particles, and quantum gravity. (paywall)

Also just up at Colliding Universes: Read More ›

The Vatican apparently seeks to understand biological evolution, as long as speakers do not address the issue of origins whether advocates of Intelligent Design, Creationists, or Evolutionists. That appears to a priori exclude the foundational issue of causation. It also appears to assume that papers on “biological evolution” do not have any unstated assumptions on mechanisms or causes. It will be interesting to see the papers and results from this conference. See following articles and Dembski’s previous post: The Pope Circling Around ID:
——————————————–
“Intelligent design” not science: Vatican evolution congress to exclude creationism, intelligent design

Speakers invited to attend a Vatican-sponsored congress on the evolution debate will not include proponents of creationism and intelligent design, organizers said.

The Pontifical Council for Culture, Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana are organizing an international conference in Rome March 3-7 2009 as one of a series of events marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species.” Read More ›

A few days ago, a friend alerted me to an interesting development: In its Perspectives section, New Scientist – the National Enquirer of popular science magazines – had published a hit piece on the non-materialist neuroscientists, including Mario Beauregard, my lead author on The Spiritual Brain. (“Creationists declare war over the brain” Amanda Gefter, 22 October 2008)

Non-materialists, essentially, think that your mind really exists; it is not simply an illusion created by the buzz of neurons in your brain. In fact, your mind is one of the key factors that shape your brain. On the medical side, non-materialist neuroscientists use this fact to alleviate illnesses such as obsessive compulsive disorder and phobias. They have good evidence for their case, and that is addressed here in an introduction to a recent symposium at the UN in New York. This post, however, will focus on the hit piece.

For me, the New Scientist piece was a gift. I sometimes teach non-fiction news writing. And it struck me as an excellent teaching opportunity (“the structure and function of the irresponsible hit piece, unpacked”). Of course, I mean to discourage my students from investing time or energy in such enterprises.

This piece is especially useful for two reasons: As Beauregard’s co-author, I happen to know about non-materialist neuroscience already. So I need no research project to uncover the misrepresentations. Second, this piece is a very conventional example of the “hit” genre. That means I don’t need to keep stopping and saying, “But, students, please note that this particular feature is rare.”

Best of all, if I unpack this story now for interested Mindful Hack readers, I can save time in June by just dusting it off for Write! Canada. So, let’s have a look.

Sections
1 Scare their pants off before they even start reading: The art of the panic headline Read More ›