So junk DNA turns out to be “junque” DNA? You know the scenario – it was junk to the guy cleaning out his attic, but the dealer he sold it to for $3.00 got $10K from a collector. And all legal too. A perfect snapshot of the theistic evolutionist.

Over at ENV, Casey Luskin reflects on how Francis Collin’s slam dunk arguement for Darwinism (junk DNA) is “pushed Into Increasingly Small Gaps in Scientific Knowledge” (May 2, 2011), observing: Read More ›

In the University of Houston alumni mag Parameters (Spring 2011) , vision researcher Haluk Ogmen says: Computers beat the brain in many tasks, like large number multiplication and database searches,” he said. “But there are other tasks that no computer even comes close to what we can do. In the area of navigation, the most powerful supercomputers cannot even match insects. So what’s missing are the engineering design principles that capture the fundamentals of biological information processing. That’s my goal as an engineer, to reverse–engineer vision, memory, and cognition and see how our brains and minds work. Design principles in vision? See “Biologist goes to war against language” for the correct Darwinspeak protocols currently in force.

The controversial textbook, The Design of Life came up recently. (Did an origin of life researcher actually read it? Stunner.)

Instead of the approved textspeak about how hardworking scientists are slowly piecing together the origin of life, it contains eye-openers like these: Read More ›

While explaining how he believes complex biochemical information just happen to arise through random processes, Brown University’s Ken Miller dismisses Mike Behe’s mousetrap, introduced in Darwin’s Black Box. To show that it is not an example of irreducible complexity that points to design, he recounts a childhood recollection of a pupil using a mousetap to fire spitballs, which showed that the mousetrap could be used for something other than killing mice (pp 54-57). That is how Miller, who has just won the Stephen Jay Gould award for promoting Darwinism,  knew that ID biochemist Behe was wrong.

Ralph David Westall, an IS prof at California Polytechnic University, Pomona*, contacted Uncommon Descent to say, Read More ›

Douglas Axe has posted a response to criticisms of his work from Arthur Hunt and Steve Matheson, regarding his 2004 JMB paper, on the Biologic Institute website. In August of 2004 I received an email inquiry from plant biologist Art Hunt. He had written a draft for a blog piece aimed at reviewing a research article of mine that had just appeared in the Journal of Molecular Biology [1], and he wanted to know whether he had understood my work correctly. He clearly aimed to refute claims that were beginning to surface that my paper supported intelligent design, but he also wanted to make sure he wasn’t misconstruing my work in the process. He didn’t expect me to oblige—“I will understand Read More ›

Some wonder. A friend of Uncommon Descent wrote recently to say that

In a lecture (November 2008) at Case Western University, prominent origin of life researcher Robert Hazen, author of Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life’s Origin, essentially admits that the burden of proof is on those who oppose ID, not those who propose it.

Some attribute such admissions to the dead stall of origin of life research for 150 years – except that popular media perpetually conflate bright ideas with concrete findings.

Here are some quotations from the transcript: Read More ›

Sunrise over the Dead Sea seen from Masada, Israel. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

I’ve written previously about Christopher Hitchens’ challenge: “Name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever.” Professor Jerry Coyne has come up with a new challenge of his own: “Tell me exactly what ‘knowledge’ religion has provided that is not derivable from secular reason.”

I’d be happy to oblige. I’ll submit two statements. The first is known to everyone. The second is taken from Professor Coyne’s own blog.

1. The sun will rise tomorrow.
2. Killing an unarmed man who does not resist arrest in a way that endangers his captors is murder and therefore wrong, even if that man happens to be Osama bin Laden.

For the record, I think Professor Coyne is right about the second statement, and I applaud his courage for making it. While I’m quite sure that Osama bin Laden got his just deserts, he should have also gotten a trial, if it was possible to capture him alive.

Now, Professor Coyne seems to be quite sure about the second statement, so I presume he would count it as “knowledge.” So my reply to Professor Coyne’s challenge is: can you derive either of the above two statements from secular reason?
Read More ›

The most recent Stephen Jay Gould prize has been awarded to anti-ID Catholic biochemist Ken Miller of Brown University:

Through his writings, teaching and appearances in court, Dr. Miller has proved an eloquent and passionate defender of evolution and the scientific method.

Some Miller comments:

The argument for intelligent design basically depends on saying, ‘You haven’t answered every question with evolution,’… Well, guess what? Science can’t answer every question. – Kenneth MillerThe new strategy is to teach intelligent design without calling it intelligent design. – Kenneth Miller

There is no controversy within science over the core proposition of evolutionary theory. – Kenneth Miller

Bradley Monton, atheist philosopher and author of Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design (Broadview Press, 2009), who thinks carefully about intelligent design, has some thoughts on Miller’s arguments:

Now, Miller thinks that naturalism is an essential part of science. He holds that if one drops the constraint of methodological naturalism, then science will stop, because one can imply appeal to God as an explanation of any scientific phenomenon. Miller writes:

A theistic science … will no longer be the science we have known. It will cease to explore, because it already knows the answers. Read More ›

Look, it’s the armchair, okay? It’s got to go. There are real philosophers out there, besides which great scientists have taken the philosophy of science very seriously.

Undeterred by that history, Stephen Hawking recently dismissed philosophy in The Grand Design (with Leonard Mlodinow). In his view, philosophy did not contribute to knowledge compared with science. His view garnered a good deal of disapproval. The Economist sniffed,

There are actually rather a lot of questions that are more subtle than the authors think. It soon becomes evident that Professor Hawking and Mr Mlodinow regard a philosophical problem as something you knock off over a quick cup of tea after you have run out of Sudoku puzzles. Read More ›

At Slate , reporter David Dobbs muses (May 2, 2011) on the Marc “but the monkeys talk to ME!” Hauser research scandal, which he covered:

First, let’s recall that “scientific misconduct” in this case does not mean sloppy work; it means, by the NIH definitions Harvard uses in such investigations, either plagiarism (not on the table here) or the manipulation or fabrication of data. Extremely serious charges. I covered this heavily last year here at Neuron Culture and in a wrap-up at Slate.

Given the seriousness of those findings from Harvard, many wondered if Hauser would be fired. Harvard has kept its cards close, however, probably for a mix of legal and strategic reasons, and probably too because a federal investigation is apparently underway, Read More ›

It would seem Dawkins and BCSE have kissed and made up – well a small truce at least. How sweet. Dawkins asks people to sign the BCSEs petition that seeks to ban creationism and ID from being presented with any integrity (i.e. as being real and scientific) in the school classroom in British (English) schools. http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/620663-please-sign-this-anti-creationist-petition This is both regretable and ironic. They have clearly lost the battle to convince a large section of the population of the truth of Darwinism so resort to the law to enforce it. In so doing they seek to restrict freedom to think through the scientific evidence. A bit like a child who can’t win a game of footy, so he picks up the ball and goes home and spoils the Read More ›

Here at “Does Darwinism depend on evidence?”, Richard Dawkins’ has said we must, because it is the only plausible theory of evolution.

But Fodor responds that being a materialist atheist like himself,  his co-author Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, and Dawkins has nothing to do with needing to believe Darwinism.

Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini respond in What Darwin Got Wrong (London: Profile Books, 2010), that physicalism (the basic assumption they share with Dawkins, that everything is ultimately physical = bottom up, not top down) requires no such thing: Read More ›

Oxford is hiring a mathematician to try to rescue Darwinism. Because it was the math that got Darwinism into trouble in the first place:

The concept of fitness optimization is routinely used by field biologists, and first-year biology undergraduates are frequently taught that natural selection leads to organisms that maximize their fitness. Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene (1976) promoted a conceptual integration of modern evolutionary theory in which genes are viewed as optimising agents, which is extremely influential and widespread today and encompasses inclusive fitness theory and evolutionarily stable strategies as well as general optimality ideas. However, mathematical population geneticists mainly deny that natural selection leads to optimization of any useful kind. Read More ›

Agnostic Warwick U sociologist Steve Fuller, author of Dissent over Descent (2008) offers:

One wishes that the US legal system exercised the same diligence in authenticating people’s religious beliefs s their scientific beliefs. Ayala, Miller and Collins claim that their scientific inquiries are driven by their faith in God. Yet, as they are the first to admit, the science they do is indistinguishable from those who do not share that faith.One might reasonably wonder: how exactly does their faith influence their science, especially given the enormous import of their religious commitments? Would it not be reasonable to expect their Christian beliefs, assuming they have some cognitive content, to colour the theories they propose and the inferences they draw from the evidence? If not, why should we think that their Christianity has any impact on their science whatsoever – simply because they say so? Read More ›

When first reported, this hominin was given the name Zinjanthropus boisei. He was considered to be a human ancestor and was portrayed as an upright hairy apeman. Later, he was renamed Australopithecus boisei, but then was moved to a separate genus, receiving the name Paranthropus boisei. He still appears in some presentations of human ancestry. What makes him memorable are his magnificent teeth: “For decades, scientists thought that the large, heavy teeth the primates had were used in cracking open hard foods such as nuts. The common name for Paranthropus was “Nutcracker Man” for this very reason.” [. . .] [The take-home message:] Nutcracker Man is a notable example of how morphology was wrongly interpreted for decades and only recently Read More ›