2010

Some have wondered whether Noam Chomsky was a friend to Darwinism. A friend in linguistics kindly writes, Chomsky made many anti-Darwinian comments, as in his “Language and Mind,” and his critique of B. F. Skinner’s “Verbal Behavior” made quite an impact. Chomsky also collaborated with Marcel-Paul Schützenberger who I believe was anti-Darwinian. But he’s distanced himself from ID-his anti-ID screed was noted. [ … ] Chomsky started out positive, as with his demand for explicitness and his model of transformational grammar, but his regime was dictatorial, he would take ideas and rename them never acknowledging their source, and so eventually he fell out of favor in linguistics. In linguistic circles it is said that his prestige issued from his radical Read More ›

I once met a fellow who was an aficionado of, believe it or not, flashlights. It seemed rather mundane until I saw all the neat designs using LEDs (light emitting diodes). These semiconductor devices have been greatly improved in recent years and are finding a wide range of uses. But as is so often the case, these technological advancements were there all along in the biological world. In this case, certain butterfly species have their own elaborate optical emission system in their wings. As one researcher put it, “Who knows how much time could have been saved if we’d seen this butterfly structure 10 years ago.”  Read more

Check out this lecture by Michael Behe about his book, The Edge of Evolution. Two questions posed by members of the audience were of interest to me. Sean Carroll criticized Behe in a review of The Edge for not considering cumulative, sequential mutations, and Carroll used a specific example. Behe points out in the lecture that this specific example was addressed in his book, and that the subject of cumulative selection was addressed in detail. Behe goes on to speak about the resistance of “science” publications to print his rejoinders to his critics, and that the editors often say something like, “Your response would not be of interest to our readers.” Really? Pointing out flagrant misrepresentations — might I even Read More ›

Warning:  This post is intended for those who have an open mind regarding the design hypothesis.  If your mind is clamped so tightly shut that you are unable to even consider alternatives to your received dogma, it is probably better for you to just move along to the echo chamber of your choice.  Today, for the sake of argument only, let us make two assumptions:  1.  First, let us assume that the design hypothesis is correct, i.e., that living things appear to be designed for a purpose because they were in fact designed for a purpose.  2.  Second, let us assume that the design hypothesis is not a scientific hypothesis, which means that ID proponents are not engaged in a Read More ›

In Christian Darwinism: Why Theistic Evolution Fails As Science and Theology (Broadman and Holman, November 2011), mathematician Dembski and journalist O’Leary address a powerful new trend to accommodate Christianity with atheist materialism, via acceptance of Darwinian (“survival of the fittest”) evolution. This trend includes “Evolution Sundays” at churches and endorsements by high administration officials like Francis Collins. Dembski and O’Leary say it all just doesn’t work. How can we accommodate self-sacrifice as the imitation of Christ with “altruism is just another way you spread your selfish genes!” How can we accommodate monogamy as the image of Christ and his church – for which he gave himself up – with “The human animal was never meant to be monogamous!”? In the Read More ›

This UD post got me to thinking. I do that from time to time.

On the subject of computational intelligence I have some minor credentials, including a Silver Medal at the first Computer Olympiad in London, sponsored by David Levy of chess fame. You can access the final results of my research and efforts in computational artificial intelligence (AI) here:

If you have a computer with sufficient memory and disk space you can explore the only perfect-play endgame algorithm ever invented for the game of checkers (known as draughts in the UK).

It was my exploration into computational AI that initially caused me to have doubts about the creative powers of the Darwinian mechanism, which I now consider to be a transparent absurdity as an explanation for almost anything of any significance, and certainly not as an explanation for human intelligence.

Here’s why.
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This started in the combox on a post below, but … xxxxxx, I do not get your point. Eugenics was not science; it was nonsense. Nonsense firmly founded in Darwin’s own beliefs. Remember, Darwin was a guy who thought that black people were closer to gorillas than white people. Darwin has always been protected by professional Darwinists from the normal social consequences of such antisocial beliefs. I am not letting the matter go because it cannot be let go until the belief is formally renounced. I am not interested in what “whackjobs” or “dopes” think (who is?).  Can’t they just yell in the cell block or mental home? The use of such terms is classically how Darwinists like yourself avoid facing Read More ›

In the first half of the 20th century, the U.S. 60,000 sterilized Americans, to which California contributed a very robust 20,000. One of the more haunting features of an excellent new cable documentary coming out this summer, What Hath Darwin Wrought?, is the setting where many of its interviews with scholars were conducted: the grounds of the old Stockton State Hospital in Stockton, California.

[Yes, that same California in which, today, stars boast proudly of out of wedlock pregnancies. … Not that I make it my business; I do not pay taxes there, and they do make lots of money, so I assume that deadbeat dads can be brought to justice.]

A leading center for coerced sterilization in that dark era, the hospital today looks quite picturesque as the backdrop to conversations with my Discovery Institute colleagues, political scientist John West and historian Richard Weikart (who teaches at the Cal State University campus of which the state hospital building is now a part). Along with philosopher and mathematician David Berlinski, another Discovery fellow, they do a remarkably lucid and informative job of sketching a side of 20th-century history — the malign cultural and moral influence of Darwinian evolutionary thinking — that tends to get overlooked.

A huge scandal. All worth reading. Read More ›

   Evolution was a known concept before Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859. But Darwin’s work on evolution pushed it from obscurity to a widely known and accepted concept. Part of what helped Darwin in pushing through evolution was the credibility he had acquired from publishing lots of specialized scientific treatments (such as an extended treatise on barnacles) before publicly wading into evolution. Fast forward to the beginning of the 21st century. Robert Marks has built a career establishing his credibilityas a foremost thinker and researcher on the topic of computational intelligence. He has amassed an enviable publication record and huge set of government research grants. No one can question his scientific bona fides. And now, with his Evolutionary Informatics Read More ›

Genome sequencing has allowed families of genes to be mapped across the phyla, and it is presumed that the presence of a specific gene in different animal groups signifies a shared common ancestor. Over the years, it has become apparent that many significant genes are widely shared in the animal kingdom, and this blog is concerned with two more cases recently published. Pax genes are typically linked to eye development, although they have a variety of other functions. Pax-6 is regarded as a master control gene known to turn on eye development in the arthropoda, the mollusca, and the vertebrata. The new work extends the analysis to a jellyfish. “Here we have isolated three Pax genes (Pax-A, Pax-B, and Pax-E) Read More ›

Here’s something worth knowing if you don’t want your kids spending a lot of time on Darwin worship when they could be learning something useful: Last year, during the bicentennial anniversary of Darwin’s birth, Nature released a free online packet titled “15 Evolutionary Gems.” Its subtitle was “A resource from Nature for those wishing to spread awareness of evidence for evolution by natural selection.” It might have been better subtitled ‘A evangelism packet for those wishing to spread the good news about Darwinism.’ After all, when Nature announced the packet, they said they were heeding a prior call which “urged scientists and their institutions to ‘spread the word’” about evolution and “highlight reasons why scientists can treat evolution by natural Read More ›

In a bizarre, perverse inversion of the legitimate goal of science — to find the truth wherever the evidence leads — Darwinists continue to turn things upside down. We are constantly assured that if the unwashed, low-IQ masses could just be “educated,” and become “scientifically literate,” they would embrace the chance-and-necessity Darwinian anti-gospel with open arms and no dissent. The endless, droning mantras about the infinitely creative powers of natural selection, the ubiquitous “scientific consensus,” the “finally discovered fossil that finally proves evolution” news releases that appear every few weeks, and all the rest, have nothing whatsoever to do with scientific literacy. Real scientific literacy about biological systems comes from understanding the discoveries of empirical science in the last half Read More ›

Who would have thought so? Have the Times people actually started connecting with the public again? Here Virginia Heffernan comments on The stilted and seething tone of some of the defection posts sent me into the ScienceBlogs archives, where I expected to find original insights into science by writers who stress that they are part of, in the blogger Dave Munger’s words, “the most influential science blogging network in the world.” And while I found interesting stuff here and there, I also discovered that ScienceBlogs has become preoccupied with trivia, name-calling and saber rattling. Maybe that’s why the ScienceBlogs ship started to sink. Recently a blogger called GrrlScientist, on Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted), expressed her disgust at the Read More ›

Some people have concluded that the hideously complex, functionally integrated information-processing machinery of the cell — with its error-detection-and-repair algorithms and much more — is best explained by an intelligent cause. But this idea is only held by superstitious religious fanatics who want to destroy science and establish a theocracy. That’s the consensus of “scientists” in the academy. The other consensus of “scientists” in the academy is that random errors screwing up computer code can account for everything in biology. Who is thinking logically here? I have no interest in arguing with people who can’t think and don’t want to follow the evidence where it leads, because it’s a lost cause from the outset.