Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

The Real Conflict Between Science and Religion

The supposed conflict between science and religion is not only bad history, it also goes unsupported by on-going polls of the religious beliefs of scientists. As the story goes, empirical science uncovers inconvenient truths that religious people resist in a losing battle. But if there was a conflict between science and religion, and furthermore if science has uncovered findings inimical to religion, then one might expect a small and dwindling fraction of scientists who are religious. But a recent poll showed that a majority of scientists (51%) say they believe in God or a higher power. And that is up from the 42% who responded similarly almost a century ago in 1914.  Read more

Just Whose Science Is Todd Wood Stopping?

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Yours? His? Theirs? Anyone’s?

I’ve known Todd since we were graduate students in the 1990s, and have a hardbound copy of his UVA dissertation (Theory and Application of Protein Homology, 1999) sitting on my office shelves. Todd knows more evolutionary biology than many evolutionary biologists. Yet, perversely, or inexplicably, in the eyes of his critics and growing number of blog readers, Todd is also a young-earth creationist (YEC). What’s up with that?

But he’s not much of an admirer of ID. Think about it this way.

Suppose you visit Stonehenge with a group of “Stonehenge is naturally caused” theorists, who vigorously dispute that ancient humans built the monument. No intelligence was involved, they say; some yet-to-be-discovered evolutionary scenario did the building. Stonehenge-is-natural research (or science) thus consists of looking for the unknown natural mechanisms or processes, which shaped the monoliths, caused them to aggregate into a circle, and so on. No “intelligence of the gaps” need apply.
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Primordial soup is “well past its sell-by date”

It is well known that Darwin speculated on what might happen in “some warm little pond”. But it was not until 1929 that J.B.S. Haldane developed a testable hypothesis involving a “prebiotic broth, or primordial soup”. He proposed that organic compounds were made when methane, ammonia and water reacted as a result of energy supplied by ultraviolet radiation. The reaction products were suggested to have accumulated in a “hot dilute soup” in the primeval earth. In this scenario, further reactions led to macromolecules, protocells and then life. “Backed up by Stanley Miller’s (1953) inorganic synthesis of organic molecules in the laboratory, it seemed to generations of scientists that Haldane’s narrative was basically right, and all that was left was to Read More ›

GATA-1: A Protein That Regulates Proteins

Proteins are the cell’s special machines that perform a variety of tasks. Some of them help to regulate the production levels of other proteins by influencing the transcribing of the DNA genes that code for the proteins. New research is investigating how one such transcription factor, GATA-1, works and, as usual, it isn’t simple.  Read more

The Infinite Headaches Of The Adjacent Impossible

Santa Fe Institute economist Brian Arthur believed that much of what we see in global economic patterns can be explained by a process of ‘locking in’ of historical events (1).  Notably, the success of the QWERTY keyboard or the increased sales of the VHS video system over its arch rival Beta Max did not depend so much on any inherent better quality of the winning system but rather on small details in the history of innovation that, over time, lead to the establishment and the overwhelming success of particular technologies (1).  Once such winning technologies became wide-spread, they became a locked and established part of our culture.   

Arthur undoubtedly received much of his insight from long conversations that he had with biophysicist Stuart Kaufman as the two of them thrashed out the concepts of biology and economic policy in an attempt to reconcile both under the umbrella of their unifying theory of complexity (1).  It was clear that a great number of parallels could be drawn between these two otherwise distinct areas of research. 

From an origin of life standpoint, Kauffman has long been unconvinced by the usual crop of prebiotic synthesis experimentsThere is after all no basis upon which to suppose that amino acids and nucleotides could randomly form long polymer chains with specific functions such as we see in the cell (2).  Following such a realization Kauffman became enthralled by the idea that maybe there was a self-organizing process through which compounds could come together in an autocatalytic cycle- a closed cycle of catalysts that converted one molecule to another in a self sustaining fashion (3).  What was interesting about Kauffman’s idea was the manner through which he reached it- a multidisciplinary environment, such as the Santa Fe Institute with economists, political analysts and archaeologists coming together to look for a common thread uniting the emergence of complexity in lost civilizations, economically autonomous states and ultimately life’s biochemistry. Read More ›

Top Ten books to read on the intelligent design controversy, 2009 #6

You have heard enough publicly funded nonsense. Why not hear some sense? (Note: These are the key books, not science or media news. The Top Ten Darwin and Design Science News Stories for 2009 are here, the Top Ten Darwin and Design Media News Stories for 2009 are here, and my comments on the latter are here. Also, to get the links, you must go here.) My comments follow. 6. The Darwin Myth by Benjamin Wiker. According to Wiker’s provocative new biography, The Darwin Myth: the Life and Lies of Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin was an honorable and likable man, a family man. He loved his siblings; he was devoted to his wife; he loved his children and grieved deeply Read More ›

Garter Snake Immunity, Sodium Channels, and Evolutionary Expectations Dashed Again

Certain species of garter snake are remarkably immune to tetrodotoxin, a deadly compound that paralyzes and kills. That’s fortunate because the newt, one of the snake’s favorite meals, is loaded with the toxin. The resistance of these lucky snakes is due to tiny adjustments in a protein segment which otherwise is highly conserved across a wide range of animals. This high conservation, and the tiny variations in these snakes, constitute one of the many false predictions of evolutionary theory that lie hidden in journal papers. To understand this evolutionary quandary we first need a quick review of sodium channels.  Read more

Origin of Everything

I would like to direct our wonderful readers here at UD to an interesting new website www.originofeverything.com. Their purpose: “Origin of Everything is dedicated to providing leading viewpoints, evidence and arguments for both Intelligent Design and Scientific theories associated with the origin of the universe, life and related subjects. Origin of Everything is designed to promote critical thinking and evaluation ascribable to the concurrent presentation of relevant content for each topic in the Science and Intelligent Design sections. Convenient links allow researchers to quickly navigate between sections without loosing focus. Like these theories, Origin of Everything is a work in progress and is continually enhanced and updated. If you would like to contribute, please email ooe@originofeverything.com.” Please, take a look Read More ›

QUESTION TO UD READERS: Professors of Highest Caliber Who Are Also Christian

I’m trying to determine which Christian faculty would be regarded as absolutely tops in their respective disciplines but which would also be completely up front about their Christian worldview. Who would be on your top ten list? Of those on the list, how many would be supporters of or at least sympathetic to ID? Please think objectively about these questions. ID is a hot button topic. Leave aside UD’s bias in favor of ID. Please limit your candidates to English-speaking countries. Thanks.

Pius XII would be turning in his grave

I’ve been trying to obtain a full transcript of last year’s Vatican conference on evolution, if only to confirm my fears that it had been hijacked by the ‘Darwin was right but that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t exist’ brigade. So far I have had to make do with a summary of the papers presented to the Conference, and, sure enough, it makes grim reading. Full details are available at www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0902/S000427, but suffice to say that they include contributions by the  likes of Douglas Futuyma and Francisco Ayala. On this evidence, the Pontifical Academy of Culture (which organized the conference) is worryingly unaware of both the latest developments in biochemistry, information theory and cosmology, and the authoritative teaching of Pope Pius XII in this Read More ›

Top Ten books to read on the intelligent design controversy, 2009 #7

(Note: These are the key books, not science or media news. The Top Ten Darwin and Design Science News Stories for 2009 are here, the Top Ten Darwin and Design Media News Stories for 2009 are here, and my comments on the latter are here. Also, to get the links, you must go here.) My comments follow. 7. Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Intelligent Evolution by Michael A. Flannery. Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), co-discoverer of natural selection, was second only to Charles Darwin as the 19th century’s most noted English naturalist. Yet his belief in spiritualism caused him to be ridiculed and dismissed by many, leaving him a comparatively obscure and misunderstood figure. In this volume Wallace is finally allowed Read More ›

A New Evolutionary Mechanism Based on Inefficient Selection

The origin of complexity is a key problem in evolutionary theory. How did the blind process construct so many precise and elaborate biological designs? The evolutionary expectation has always been that Darwin’s process of natural selection is the driving force that creates everything from biosonar to the brain. But new research indicates that much of the complexity found in the higher organisms is due not to natural selection, but rather to limitations on natural selection. It is yet another new evolutionary mechanism in a dizzying list of new, and ever more complex, mechanisms.  Read more