May 2011

From G. K. Chesterton, an early twentieth century Catholic writer, both anti-materialist and anti-Dawinist, in his Orthodoxy: (Courtesy Super flumina )

As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has just the quality of the madman’s argument; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out… You can explain a man’s detention at Hanwell[1] by an indifferent public by saying that it is the crucifixion of a god of whom the world is not worthy. The explanation does explain. Similarly you may explain the order in the universe by saying that all things, even the souls of men, are leaves inevitably unfolding on a utterly unconscious tree—the blind destiny of matter. The explanation does explain, though not, of course, so completely as the madman’s. But the point here is that the normal human mind not only objects to both, but feels to both the same objection. Its approximate statement is that if the man in Hanwell is the real God, he is not much of a god. And, similarly, if the cosmos of the materialist is the real cosmos, it is not much of a cosmos. The thing has shrunk. The deity is less divine than many men… Read More ›

My motorcycle gang (think “Wild Hogs”) planned to ride up to the Black Hills of South Dakota for the Memorial Day weekend, but the forecast was for cold and rain, so we called an audible and headed south through the deserts and mountains of northern New Mexico. On the way down we made a detour to see the motorcycle rally at Red River. Traffic slowed to a crawl as we approached the center of town, which was crammed with literally thousands of motorcycles of every shape and hue and their equally colorful riders. We headed out of Red River along the winding mountain roads towards Taos, and as I glided around a curve a few miles from town I saw Read More ›

From Jason Palmer at BBC News (19 May 2011), we learn, “Protein flaws responsible for complex life, study says.” This time mistakes produce more functional proteins: Tiny structural errors in proteins may have been responsible for changes that sparked complex life, researchers say.A comparison of proteins across 36 modern species suggests that protein flaws called “dehydrons” may have made proteins less stable in water. This would have made them more adhesive and more likely to end up working together, building up complex function. Remarkably, we read, Natural selection is a theory with no equal in terms of its power to explain how organisms and populations survive through the ages; random mutations that are helpful to an organism are maintained while Read More ›

In Scientific American (April 2011), Paul J. Steinhardt asks “The Inflation Debate: Is the theory at the heart of modern cosmology deeply flawed? (April 6, 2011) : Summary Cosmic inflation is so widely accepted that it is often taken as established fact. The idea is that the geometry and uniformity of the cosmos were established during an intense early growth spurt. But some of the theory’s creators, including the author, are having second thoughts. As the original theory has developed, cracks have appeared in its logical foundations. Highly improbable conditions are required to start inflation. Worse, inflation goes on eternally, producing infinitely many outcomes, so the theory makes no firm observational predictions. Scientists debate among (and within) themselves whether these Read More ›

To answer this one, we need to go as far back as Aristotle’s The Rhetoric some 2300 years ago.

In this verbal self-defense classic — as in: “you gotta know what can be done, how, if you are to effectively defend yourself . . . ” —  on what has aptly been called the devilish art of persuasion by any means fair or foul, Aristotle (left, courtesy Wiki, public domain)  found this key answer to the question “How do arguments work to persuade us?” in Book I Ch 2:

“Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker [ethos]; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind [pathos]; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself [logos]. Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible . . . Secondly, persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions. Our judgements when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile . . . Thirdly, persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question . . .”

Now, of course, as clever ad men and smart politicians have long since known, the most persuasive form of argument is the appeal to our emotions and underlying perceptions. Unfortunately, how we feel about something or someone is no more reasonable or accurate than the quality of the facts beneath our perceptions.

But, what does this dusty quip by a long since dead philosopher have to do with science and getting rid of creationists and their dishonest attempts to push in the supernatural into science by the back door?

A lot, and indeed that artfully cultivated and widely spread perception that we are dealing with “a war between religion and science” is at the heart of the problem.

“Seriously, aren’t atheists ashamed of P.Z. Myers, asks Reb Moshe Averick (the “maverick”rabbi and author of The Confused, Illusory World of the Atheist), for The Allgemeiner (May 29, 2011):

One of my mentors, Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg, (of blessed memory), made the following, rather sobering, observation about human nature: “Nobody ever allowed something as trivial as facts and logic to interfere with their agenda. If the facts and logic don’t fit, then the facts and logic will just have to fend for themselves.” Nowhere do we find more glaring examples of the human predilection for intellectual corruption than when we examine the writings and lectures of an ideologue who is driven, not by a burning desire for truth, but by a burning desire to further his or her own agenda.

Having said that, we are now ready to introduce one of the more zealous and outspoken (read: tiresome and obnoxious) advocates of the Darwinian/atheist worldview, P.Z. Myers. Read More ›

Evolutionists say undirected, random events, such as mutations, accumulated to create the entire biological world. An analogy once used for this claim is that of a room full of monkeys pounding away at typewriters and producing Hamlet. Today the analogy needs to be updated from typewriters to computer keyboards, but otherwise remains apropos. When the letters are selected at random, a page (or screen) full of text is going to be meaningless. And the problem is no easier in the biological world. Whether English prose or molecular sequences, the problem is that there are relatively few meaningful sequences in an astronomically large volume of possibilities. Nor does selection help because the smallest sequence that could be selected—such as a small Read More ›

Arguing with Darwinists is like trying to teach calculus to people who have not yet mastered arithmetic. kairosfocus has an excellent presentation here. This is the kind of stuff Darwinists dismiss with a shrug of the shoulder while proclaiming that the Darwinian mechanism could have done it, and furthermore must have done it, because there is no other alternative. My AI checkers program is approximately 65,000 lines of C code, with more lines than that required to compute the endgame databases. (By the way, it’s the coolest checkers program ever, and it’s available for free. You can even download the mega-version if you have enough bandwidth and patience. In addition, you can download a paper I and my colleague wrote Read More ›

In “Scientists Issue Letter Supporting Louisiana Science Education Act” (Evolution News & Views, May 27, 2011), John West tells us that 15 PhD scientists signed a letter saying that it’s okay for Louisiana teachers to discuss problems with Darwinism. The Louisiana Senate agrees:

yesterday the Louisiana Senate Education Committee voted down a bill that would have repealed the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA). Louisiana College biology professor Wade Warren gave testimony in favor of the LSEA and opposed the repeal, and also distributed to the Committee a letter from 15 Ph.D. scientists supporting academic freedom. The letter (available as a PDF here) also challenges the ideological motives of many of the scientists who have opposed the LSEA.  Read More ›

Which shows how number sense evolved? Forget them. In “Geometry skills are innate, Amazon tribe study suggests,” (BBC News , 24 May 2011), Jason Palmer reports ,

Tests given to an Amazonian tribe called the Mundurucu suggest that our intuitions about geometry are innate.Researchers examined how the Mundurucu think about lines, points and angles, comparing the results with equivalent tests on French and US schoolchildren.

The Mundurucu showed comparable understanding, and even outperformed the students on tasks that asked about forms on spherical surfaces.

It got better: Read More ›

Image courtesy of Hans Hillewaert and Wikipedia.

The recurrent laryngeal nerve of the giraffe is one of Professor Jerry Coyne’s favorite pieces of evidence for evolution. It is also the topic of a recent post of his on Why Evolution is True. Professor Coyne is certainly right about one thing: the recurrent laryngeal nerve of the giraffe is relevant to the debate on Intelligent Design. However, Professor Coyne’s argument (which has also been recently made by Professor Richard Dawkins) that the recurrent laryngeal nerve of the giraffe is poorly designed has already been dissected and thoroughly refuted by Casey Luskin here, here, here, and here, and by the geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lonnig in his online article, The Laryngeal Nerve of the Giraffe: Does it Prove Evolution? so I will not comment any further on it here.

In today’s post, I’m going to briefly outline the evidence for intelligent design in the giraffe.
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In “Critics take aim at NASA ‘arsenic life’ study” (May 27, 2011), CBC News tells us

Eight articles questioning a controversial study claiming that some bacteria can use the normally toxic substance arsenic to build DNA have been published in the journal Science.The study, published last December in Science, was led by NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe-Simon and claimed that bacteria from a lake in California were able to substitute arsenic for phosphorus, normally an essential ingredient in DNA, fats and proteins.

At issue was a new strain of a new strain of Halomonadaceae bacteria from Mono Lake, Calif., that seemed to use arsenic instead of phosphorus, which is essential for DNA, fats, and proteins. This fact, if it is a fact, was immediately drafted as an origin of life theory. Then, in an unusual move, scientists began to ask questions as if an OOL theory deserved to be taken seriously. At which point … Read More ›

No, as a matter of fact. In “Winners, losers – and revenge” (Britain’s The Sunday Times, May 25, 2011), David Hawkes, reviewing a book, tells us, “The echoes of revenge drama, from Iago to Charlie Sheen, can still be heard today”and manages to discuss the subject meaningfully, precisely because he isn’t pretending to tell us what great apes think or how revenge evolved. He goes so far as to offer an interesting thesis: Read More ›

When Michael Behe visited the UK, back in November, the Humanist Society of Scotland and the British Center for Science Education wrote up a list of “10 + 1 Questions For Professor Behe” which they subsequently distributed to their ranks of faithful followers. I responded, at the time, fairly thoroughly to the arguments made therein here (to which the BCSE retaliated fairly viciously here).

Since PZ Myers has been invited to visit Glasgow next week (one week from today to be specific), to lecture on the embryological evidence for Darwinism, I took it upon myself to draw up this list of “10 + 1 Questions For Professor Myers”. If you happen to be in the area, and are anticipating attending this event next Monday (which will take place in the Crystal Palace, 36 Jamaica Street, from 7pm), feel free to use the following questions as inspiration for the Q&A session which will follow the talk.

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Dr Liddle, commenting on the Cambrian Robot thread (itself a takeoff on the Pre- Cambrian Rabbit thread), observes at comment no 5:

the ribosome is part of a completely self-replicating entity.

The others aren’t.

The ribosome didn’t “make itself” alone but the organism that it is a component of was “made” by another almost identical organism, which copied itself in order to produce the one containing the ribosome in question.

It is probably true that the only non-self-replicating machines are those designed by the intelligent designers we call people.

But self-replication with modification, I would argue, is the alternate explanation for what would otherwise look like it was designed by an intelligent agent.

I don’t expect you to agree, but it seems to me it’s a point that at least needs to be considered . . .

The matter is important enough to be promoted to a full post — UD discussion threads can become very important. So, let us now proceed . . .

In fact, the living cell implements a kinematic von Neumann Self Replicator [vNSR], which is integrated into a metabolising automaton:

Fig. A: A kinematic vNSR, generally following Tempesti’s presentation (Source: KF/IOSE)

Why is that important?

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