Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

More Chimp-Human Genome Problems

One of evidences for evolution that has been strongly touted in recent years is the fact that the genomes of the human and chimpanzee are so similar. About 98.4% of the instructions in our genome match the chimp’s. We must share a common ancestor, so goes the argument which doesn’t worry about how humans and chimps could be so different. With a 98.4% match, evolution must be true. That, of course, is not a scientific argument. But leaving that aside, when we look under the hood we actually find that comparisons of the human and chimp genomes contradict evolution. Read more

Evidence for an early prokaryotic endosymbiosis

Hypothesis Nature 460, 967-971 (20 August 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature08183 James A. Lake Endosymbioses have dramatically altered eukaryotic life, but are thought to have negligibly affected prokaryotic evolution. Here, by analysing the flows of protein families, I present evidence that the double-membrane, Gram-negative prokaryotes were formed as the result of a symbiosis between an ancient actinobacterium and an ancient clostridium. The resulting taxon has been extraordinarily successful, and has profoundly altered the evolution of life by providing endosymbionts necessary for the emergence of eukaryotes and by generating Earth’s oxygen atmosphere. Their double-membrane architecture and the observed genome flows into them suggest a common evolutionary mechanism for their origin: an endosymbiosis between a clostridium and actinobacterium. You’ll have to pay for this Read More ›

PZ Myers Does It Again

PZ Myers has, once again, railed against something that he doesn’t understand at his blog Pharyngula. Hi PZ! Notice that he doesn’t actually address the content of Dr. Dembski and Dr. Marks’ paper, which you can read here: Conservation of Information in Search: Measuring the Cost of Success, published at the IEEE. Given his argument, he doesn’t know how to measure the cost of success, yet claims that Dr. Dembski doesn’t understand selection. A bit of advice PZ, the argument presented by Dr. Dembski and Dr. Marks is very sophisticated PZ, your mud slinging isn’t PZ, you need to step it up PZ. I know this new stuff isn’t ez, but you may want to consider a response that has Read More ›

Metaprogramming and DNA

In informatics metaprogramming is a technique consisting in developing computer programs (sets of instructions) that output other programs. While simple programming means instructions generating data, metaprogramming means instructions generating instructions. In general the prefix “meta” means a thing/cause that stays at a higher semantic/ontological level than another thing/effect (in the case of metaprogramming we have a two-level hierarchy where a parent program creates child programs). For a tutorial introduction to metaprogramming see for example the following Jonathan Bartlett’s brilliant articles:
one, two and three.

DNA contains instructions, biological code for working-out various constructive cellular jobs (making proteins, setting developmental parameters, etc.). Question (inspired by the above ascertainment and readings): does DNA contain also meta-programs beyond simple programs?

Much DNA (outside its coding-for-proteins portions) seems without function (junk-DNA). Is it possible that some junk-DNA is meta-code able to assembly other DNA code? This could be an interesting ID prediction. Many have noted as the information amount contained in the genomes seems really too little to account for the overall complexity of organisms. Metaprogramming would be exactly one of the techniques able to compress the biological information. Read More ›

New Peer-Reviewed Pro-ID Article in Mainstream Math/Eng Literature

William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II, “Conservation of Information in Search: Measuring the Cost of Success,” IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics A, Systems & Humans, vol.39, #5, September 2009, pp.1051-1061. *****For the official listing, go here. *****For a pdf of the article, go here. P.S. Our critics will immediately say that this really isn’t a pro-ID article but that it’s about something else (I’ve seen this line now for over a decade once work on ID started encroaching into peer-review territory). Before you believe this, have a look at the article. In it we critique, for instance, Richard Dawkins METHINKS*IT*IS*LIKE*A*WEASEL (p. 1055). Question: When Dawkins introduced this example, was he arguing pro-Darwinism? Yes he was. In Read More ›

SETI Gets New Toys!

Quest to find life beyond Earth gets technological boosts By Andrea Pitzer, Special for USA TODAY 8/19/09 The search for intelligent life in the universe is still on. Despite the absence of interstellar tourists to date, astronomers at the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) are hoping that we are not alone. And with new spacecraft to locate planets circling nearby stars, as well as more effective listening devices here at home, scientists have more tools at their disposal to find Earth-like planets or signs of other life forms. But the possibility of intelligent life is what interests scientists at SETI. Using SETI’s 42-antenna Allen Telescope Array in Northern California, they can listen in many directions for unusual radio signals Read More ›

Coffee!! Oh, so now Darwinism explains why you think SHE’S beautiful? Where’s my rolling pin?

In “Joke science” (Sunday Spectator, August 2, 2009), David Warren writes, One of the great attractions of popular Darwinism, as a financial investment, is its appeal to what we in the media refer to, in our jaded way, as the “tabloid audience.” That is to say people who, through no fault of their own (lack of education, native dullness, mental injury, etc.) are extremely credulous. You can sell stuff to them that you just couldn’t sell to — you know, “people like us.” From another point of view, it may be a misfortune that our schools and media have been working, for decades now, on expanding this “tabloid audience.” But that has been a subject for many other days. Today Read More ›

The Social Media Revolution

The following YouTube video may seem overdrawn, but the social media described in it may prove critical in disarming Darwinism in the general culture: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8

Theos and Mary Midgley

Nick Spencer of Theos has interviewed Mary Midgley as part of their Rescuing Darwin project. This is written up in a report entitled Discussing Darwin. It would seem though that Midgley is closer to post-modernism and a multi-faith approach to truth, than the type of objective modernism that Darwinists believe underpins their science. Is she really the person to ask to defend science? Both Dawkins and scientific creationists have one point of agreement, that there is such a thing as objective truth.

Discussing Darwin – Mary Midgley

 Science and Values blog

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Another reason to forget Darwinism – especially if you are a Catholic

Friend Casey Luskin writes, “There He Goes Again: Ken Miller misrepresents Behe’s Arguments on the Immune System.” Well, of course he would, wouldn’t he? I’ve read Behe’s Edge of Evolution and Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God, and – to be charitable to Miller – can find no way of even ranking them in the same category. Look, let’s get this part straight: Behe fronts real science, but Miller huffs in favour of “evolution.” The former was NOT invited to the Vatican for the big Pontifical Academy of Sciences meet – even though he, as a Catholic Christian, is one of the few people who has anything worthwhile to say about the topic (I am assuming that sensible persons will discount “All Read More ›

Does Dawkins’ forum evidence “Intelligent Design”?

Consultant Rick Ferguson quipped that the hacking of Dawkins’ website “is proof there’s no “Intelligent Design” on Dawkins’ forum”:
Dawkins’ website forum hacked to send spam: God! What a nuisance By John Leyden

A website forum run by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins was compromised on Monday.
Cybercrooks hacked into the forum to send members an invite to sign up to a warez site. A message on RichardDawkins.net confirms the hack and adds that site admins are working to restore the forum to normal. By Tuesday morning the forum was back, and apparently fighting fit. . . . Read More ›

Understanding the Origin of Life: What Has History Taught Us?

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)--"Darwin's Bulldog"--Caricature by "Ape" in Vanity Fair, July 24, 1869.
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)--"Darwin's Bulldog"--Caricature by "Ape" in Vanity Fair, July 24, 1869.

Reading through some of Huxley’s writings caused me to pause and ask a question: After more than a century of study, trial-and-error, and free-wheeling speculation, what has history taught us about the origin of life? For an exhaustive review of this question, see Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell. But the specific question was prompted by the following passage from Huxley’s Discourses Biological and Geological: Essays (1894):

But though I cannot express this conviction of mine too strongly, I must carefully guard against the supposition that I intend to suggest that no such thing as Abiogenesis  ever has taken place in the past, or ever will take place in the future. With organic chemistry, molecular physics, and physiology yet in their infancy, and every day making prodigious strides, I think it would be the height of presumption for any man to say that the conditions under which matter assumes the properties we call “vital” may not, some day, be artificially brought together. All I feel justified in affirming is, that I see no reason for believing that the feat has been performed yet.

And looking back through the prodigious vista of the past, I find no record of commencement of life, and therefore I am devoid of any means of forming a definite conclusion as to the conditions of its appearance. Belief, in the scientific sense of the word, is a serious matter, and needs strong foundations. To say, therefore, in the admitted absence of evidence, that I have any belief as to the mode in which the existing forms of life have originated, would be using words in a wrong sense. But expectation is permissible where belief is not; and if it were given me to look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time to the still more remote period when the earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions, which it can no more see again than man can recall his infancy, I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm from not living matter. I should expect to see it appear under forms of great simplicity, endowed, like existing fungi, with the power of determining the formation of new protoplasm from such matters as ammonium carbonates, oxalates and tartrates, alkaline and earthy phosphates, and water, without aid of light. That is the expectation to which analogical reasoning leads me; but I beg you once more to recollect that I have no right to call my opinion anything but an act of philosophical faith (pp. 255-257).

Now more than a century later, research into the origin of life has largely proceeded on this basis. Convinced that some form of abiogenesis must be true, its primary motivation has indeed not been “scientific” but rather has proceeded as an “expectation,” an act of philosophical faith. Where, it seems reasonable to ask, has this brand of philosophical faith gotten us?
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Uncommon Descent Contest Question 8: Do the “new atheists” help or hurt the cause of Darwinism?

The prize?:  A free copy of Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009).

Judged: Go here for winner.

You may wish to note this discussion on the new atheists and the problem of evil.

Admin Note: Re contest 7: Endoplasmic Messenger needs to send me a real world address at oleary@sympatico.ca, in order to collect his prize. It will NOT be added to a database for any further purpose.

My own view – and not meant to prejudice yours: Read More ›