September 2010

Cornell Geneticist John Sanford argued that Darwinism is wrong because the rate of genetic deterioration is so high that natural selection could not arrest it. If natural selection cannot arrest genetic deterioration, how then could it be the mechanism for evolutionary improvement? Sanford predicted through his research that human genome is deteriorating. This was a daring scientific prediction, and now Michael Lynch of the elite National Academy published on the topic for his inaugural paper. The NAS has now made the paper available to the public free of charge. Read it, and weep, literally: Rate, Molecular Spectrum, and Consequences of Human Mutation Unfortunately, it has become increasingly clear that most of the mutation load is associated with mutations with very Read More ›

 We have this report today about an earth sized planet orbiting a nearby star.  An excerpt:  An Earth-size planet has been spotted orbiting a nearby star at a distance that would makes it not too hot and not too cold — comfortable enough for life to exist, researchers announced Wednesday. If confirmed, the exoplanet, named Gliese 581g, would be the first Earth-like world found residing in a star’s habitable zone — a region where a planet’s temperature could sustain liquid water on its surface. And the planet’s discoverers are optimistic about the prospects for finding life there. “Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the Read More ›

I have recently come across the work of Michael Sudduth on Natural Theology. This very interesting book is published by Ashgate The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754661757 Looks like essential reading for those concerned about intelligent design and Reformed theology. Reviews by Richard Swinburne, Alister McGrath and Alvin Plantinga  (Although it is not cheap).

Over at First Things Joe Carter considers whether naturalism can ever account for valid belief. “To have trustworthy convictions, we have to have properly functioning noetic equipment (i.e., a brain, spinal cord, sensory apparatus, etc., that recognize reality). But can a strictly materialistic, non-teleological, evolutionary process produce such reliable equipment? The philosopher Alvin Plantinga, one of the greatest thinkers of our era, thinks the answer is ‘no.’”

The Michael Reiss saga should not be quickly forgotten. His enforced resignation as the Royal Society’s Director of Education in September 2008 was a blot on the history of the Royal Society (see here and here). Yet, after two years, few changes are apparent: Reiss continues to publish his “worldview” perspective on handling creationism in science education (see here) and Royal Society Fellows have continued to talk about irresolvable conflicts at the science/religion interface. It is encouraging, therefore, to find Sylvia Baker formulating a coherent analysis of the conflict and proposing a research agenda to inform future discussion of the issues. “The controversy, resulting as it did in such serious consequences, raises many issues and concerns. This article will seek Read More ›

Richard Dawkins takes Ray Comfort out of context: Dawkins says he doesn’t debate Creationists, yet he debates what Creationists say quite often. Should Dawkins avoid debating Creationists when they are the subject of his lectures and speaking engagements?

Here and here, historian of Nazi Germany Richard Weikart responds to yet another whitewash of Darwinism’s role in helping to create a particularly malignant type of racism, this time by Darwinist Michael Ruse:

Last November at a conference on Darwinism I conversed with a graduate student in philosophy who embraced Ruse’s position on the evolution of ethics, which is not all that unusual among evolutionists. He told me he believed that morality is a biologically innate response shaped by evolutionary processes. It has no independent, objective, or universal existence. I pressed this graduate student, asking him how far he was willing to take his ethical relativism. Upon his affirmation that he subscribed to it completely, I asked him if he thought Hitler was morally evil. After explaining that he personally found Hitler’s views repugnant, he admitted that he had no basis for condemning Hitler and finally he conceded, “Hitler was OK.”

I doubt Ruse would be comfortable saying that Hitler was OK, because Ruse’s (and Darwin’s) political views are miles apart from Hitler’s. However, Ruse’s worldview (and Darwin’s own) does not, as far as I can see, provide any objective basis for opposing or condemning Hitler (or Stalin or Mao).

Weikart is repeatedly accused of saying things he does not say, principally, one suspects because the things he does say and can demonstrate are so damning that the only alternatives are acknowledgement or obfuscation.

Here’s an interview I did with Weikart on how he got interested in Darwin and Hitler anyway (not how you might think).

Also just up at Access Research Network: Read More ›

The Fibonacci post has generated a longer comment thread than anything else I’ve written. I was just digging a little dirt and must have hit a power line. The question I tried to address, was “is there any physics in Fibonacci, or is it just a mathematician’s curiosity?” Here’s the physics that came back: a) AJ Meyer has looked at the galactic rotation curves, and pointed out that “rigid-body” rotation which is observed, can be obtained by having a mass which increases with radius. Now since we can look at galaxies from the side, and they don’t get thicker with radius,  it would seem that this increase in mass must be due to something else. Gallo argues that it could Read More ›

Earlier this year, the work of Nir Goldman and colleagues was noted (here). Using sophisticated computer modeling tools, it was concluded that cometary impacts could generate C-N bonded oligomers that subsequently break apart to form a glycine-containing complex. This research has now been published in Nature Chemistry, resulting in a new flurry of discussion about the shock synthesis of life. It is known from Stanley Miller’s experiments that amino acids can be synthesized in a reducing atmosphere. However, the evidence for such an atmosphere has become less convincing with time – and even a neutral atmosphere means the Miller route for generating amino acids is unproductive. Cometary impacts, however, can make this point irrelevant, as is explained by John Timmer Read More ›

Many members of the ID community will no doubt have been relieved to see the back of 2009. The secular establishment took the opportunity provided by the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, to launch a defence of their hero’s largely discredited theory. The popular science bookshelves were crammed with the uncritical, credulous hagiography that is the hallmark of the evolutionary genre, with their hysterical denunciations of ID inadvertently providing a fascinating insight into life on the wrong end of a paradigm shift. However, a careful scrutiny of those bookshelves would also have revealed a slim volume by the British science journalist, James Le Fanu, entitled Why Us? Read More ›

In recent years, the development of Intelligent Design has been associated largely with the USA. This week marks the launch of the Centre for Intelligent Design UK (website here). The Centre brings ID back to its roots, which can be traced right to the early developments of science in the UK and wider Europe. Many of the early pioneers of modern science held the view that the natural world was intelligible because it was itself the product of a rational mind. The new Centre is set up by a network of volunteers across the UK, with a variety of areas of expertise and professional interests – as diverse as medicine, science, education, business, and law. It exists as a non-profit organisation and Read More ›

The Fibonacci sequence is one of those math marvels that even elementary students can appreciate. Like the discovery of the √2, it possesses this element of mystery that makes Pythagoras‘ harmonic series look like a rubber-band shoe-box next to a concert grand. Pythagoras famously drowned the fellow who discovered that √2 was neither even nor odd. It went against his religion. Fortunately for Gödel, the Pythagoreans did not control peer review when he demonstrated that unprovability was a whole lot worse than irrational numbers, but all math was  “incomplete” and unable to exclude ambiguous theorems. But if we don’t demand that math obey our ideas of God, we can sit back an enjoy it. Here’s a YouTube video marvelling at Read More ›

This isn’t new, but I think it is pretty revealing of how the academic establishment deals with intelligent design. An Educator’s Guide to Dealing With Intelligent Design

Help me out here: are these simple but accurate descriptions of where each school of thought stands? (a) Naturalism (evolutionism) says that matter just happens to have the properties to sometimes spontaneously lead to life, life that can improve itself through evolution. (b) Theistic evolution says that God designed matter to have the properties to sometimes spontaneously lead to life, life that can improve itself through evolution. (c) Intelligent design says that matter does not have the properties to spontaneously lead to life, and that it is entirely unclear whether life can improve itself through evolution. It is more likely, perhaps even evident, that evolution can make, at most, only minor changes. Does this briefly describe each school of thought? Read More ›