In the twentieth century evolutionists resisted the idea of a “Big Bang” beginning of the universe. They wanted a universe that had no beginning but the evidence did not cooperate but rather increasingly pointed to the Big Bang model. Now cosmologists, such as Cambridge University’s Lucasian Professor of Mathematics Stephen Hawking, say the Big Bang is no longer a problem to understand. It turns out the universe blasted itself into existence spontaneously,” as one science writer put it. Or as a leading physicist explained, a consequence of general relativity is that “universes are free! It costs precisely zero energy (and zero anything else) to make an entire universe. From that perspective, perhaps it’s not surprising that the universe did come Read More ›

Jonathan Jones has found a new role for Richard Dawkins—as a foil against which to prop up Charles Darwin. Dawkins is strident and clever where Darwin was thoughtful and straightforward.  Read more

This is a multi-part post in response to Merlin’s paper, “Evolutionary Chance Mutation: A Defense of the Modern Synthesis’ Consensus View”. See introduction and table of contents.

Merlin spends a large part of the paper trying to establish what does and does not constitute a directed mutation. Merlin, I think, fails in her attempt to properly differentiate Darwinian and Lamarckian mutations because she has not taken into account the main purpose of Darwinism as described in Part II of this essay. To recap, the entire point of Darwinism was to frame biology as to extricate itself from final causes. Therefore, any mode of genetic adaptation which fails to do so is non-Darwinian.

Explaining Away Apparent Purposefulness

Merlin, it seems, is somewhat aware of this, as she tries to explain away any apparent purposefulness within mutational mechanisms. She says,
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The debate is happening today, Sept. 7th, at the Fixed Point Foundation.

Our next debate features famed atheist Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and Dr. David Berlinski, author of The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions.  The question being debated: What are the implications of a purely secular society?  It promises to be a formidable clash of titans.  In addition to being highly entertaining and witty, these two men have a serious message they want to communicate.

The Does Religion Poison Everything? Debate begins at 7 p.m., September 7.

The luncheon, reception, and debate all take place at the Sheraton Birmingham Hotel:

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A few weeks ago, the NCSE’s youtube channel uploaded a 2002 debate featuring our very own William Dembski and Michael Behe, each of whom presented a short description of their contribution to the science of ID, before being cross-examined by Michigan State University philosopher Robert Pennock, and Brown University biologist, Kenneth Miller. The debate was chaired by the ever-impartial Eugenie Scott, of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE). Miller brought up the traditional arguments which he has become so renowned for, alleging that Behe’s claims regarding irreducible complexity were false on the basis that 10 proteins homologous to a complement of those present in the flagellar system could be found in the Type-III Secretary System. When Behe attempted to Read More ›

Details here.

Late last year, the eminent Christian philosopher and proponent of intelligent design, William Lane Craig, crossed swords in debate with the avid apologist for Darwinian evolution, Francisco Ayala, of the Biologos Foundation. The debate was chaired by philosopher of physics Bradley Monton of the University of Colorado, an ID sympathizer, though a convinced atheist himself. Monton is the author of the book, Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design. A fascinating ID the Future interview with Professor Monton can be downloaded here. Following Dr. Ayala’s opening statement, Dr. Craig commenced his presentation by carefully setting out the definition of ID as the study of legitimate design inferences. Craig stipulated that, were Ayala to attempt to refute the inference Read More ›

There are a number of comments on Hawking’s claim that science disproves the existence of God over at the science and values blog. Plus some further reviews of Dawkins’ UK TV programmes on More4. http://science-and-values.blogspot.com/

This is a multi-part post in response to Merlin’s paper, “Evolutionary Chance Mutation: A Defense of the Modern Synthesis’ Consensus View”. See introduction and table of contents.

Merlin’s paper spends a lot of time dealing with the synthetic theory as defined by its original exponents – as well it should, since modern biology owes many of its intellectual underpinnings to these originators. Merlin described the writings of Fisher, Haldane, Simpson, Dobzhansky, and others as “canonical”, and deservedly so. They were the pioneers of how to marry genetics and Darwinism, and the fact that their work survived so well past the discovery of DNA is a testament to their intellectual power.
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Sometimes I think atheists are simply having arguments with themselves – or, more precisely, with phantoms bred by their own ignorance. It’s easy to see why atheism does not make more headway, even in modern secular society: Once atheists begin to spell out the sort of deity they are rejecting, it becomes clear that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

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As many UD readers know, I was once a classical concert pianist. Although I no longer perform classical piano concerts or record (earning a living has precluded this for many years), I still play the piano every day for myself and still have a passion for classical music. I recently discovered something extraordinary: a pianist by the name of Yundi Li, who grew up in relative poverty in China and became the youngest pianist to ever win the International Chopin Competition at the age of 18. At this youtube link you can listen to and see his performances at the competition. The first two works (Chopin Scherzo No. 2 and Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise Brillante, both of which are Read More ›

This is a multi-part post in response to Merlin’s paper, “Evolutionary Chance Mutation: A Defense of the Modern Synthesis’ Consensus View”. See introduction and table of contents.

How Merlin Validates “Teaching the Controversy”

Many people criticize ID for saying that we should “teach the controversy” about Darwinism. There are two sides to the attack:

1. Darwinism is a made-up word by ID’ers, and
2. There is no controversy

The Merlin paper, on its own, clearly show that both of these ideas are false.
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A paper came out just in the last month defending The Modern Synthesis (aka Darwinism) from attacks by biologists such as Jablonka, Lamb, Wright, Shapiro, and others who opt for including a neo-Lamarckianism into biology. This paper, “Evolutionary Chance Mutation: A Defense of the Modern Synthesis’ Consensus View” (go here if the previous link is down) was published in the journal Philosophy and Theory in Biology. It is very interesting, not only for what it says about Darwinism and its challenges, but also, indirectly, the Intelligent Design movement (ID is never mentioned but directed mutation is a topic close to home for many ID’ers).
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(From In the Beginning … ): For the layman, it is the last step in evolution that is the most difficult to explain. You may be able to convince him that natural selection can explain the appearance of complicated robots, who walk the Earth and write books and build computers, but you will have a harder time convincing him that a mechanical process such as natural selection could cause those robots to become conscious. Human consciousness is in fact the biggest problem of all for Darwinism, but it is hard to say anything “scientific” about consciousness, since we don’t really know what it is, so it is also perhaps the least discussed. Nevertheless, one way to appreciate the problem it Read More ›