Poker players don’t lose with bad hands, they lose with great hands. I once saw a player dealt a four of a kind while the other player was dealt a full house. Those are the second and third best hands in poker, but the fellow dealing the cards had a royal flush—the highest hand in all of poker. If you have four of a kind or a full house, then you are supremely confident, and by the time those cards were dealt everyone had all their pennies on the table. It was a complete loss for those two players and an illustration of the dangers of a great hand. If you have a bad hand, then you won’t make losing Read More ›

As we go into the holiday weekend, it may be worth the while to reflect on how design thinking and key associated ideas — here, especially the von Neumann self-replicator — could help play a role in transforming education, industry and agriculture. Details, here . . . A happy Christmas and a prosperous new year to all! END

It seems to me that they do, and that they are. I made the following comment in vjtorley’s thread here: Something that must be kept in mind is that, if proponents of the creative power of the Darwinian mechanism are correct, every aspect of every biological system in every living thing that has ever existed — from functional proteins, to the flagellum, to the human mind — must be approachable in a step-by-tiny-step fashion through the accumulation of random errors. This should strike reasonable people as belief in something that can only be described as a miracle. One can easily get lost in the obfuscation and misdirection of Darwinists, with endless claims that one must read endless “peer-reviewed scientific papers” Read More ›

Professor Moran has graciously replied to my recent post, “Will this do, Professor Moran?” (18 December 2011) in which I attempted to flesh out the argument that irreducible complexity requires an Intelligent Designer. I would like to thank him for taking the trouble to write a detailed rebuttal of my argument. Since Professor Moran is a respected biochemist, I won’t be contesting his claim that the citric acid cycle evolved in a Darwinian fashion. What I’ll attempt to show is that it fails as a counter-example to my argument. “Unlikely” is not the same thing as “impossible” Before I address Professor Moran’s scientific arguments, I’d like to draw his attention to one brief but important passage in my post: Note: Read More ›

Earlier, I responded to remarks made by PZ Myers at the recent Skepticon 4 conference. His subject: “Junk DNA.” On his Sandwalk blog, University of Toronto biochemist Larry Moran has posted a response to my article. Since the post is relatively civil (unusually for Moran, he refrains from calling me an “IDiot”) and offers some scientific criticisms of what I wrote, I will offer a rebuttal. Click here to continue reading>>>

Readers may recall my encounter with developmental biology professor PZ Myers earlier this year. In that brief interaction, I came to appreciate Myers’s ability to charm his adoring fans and followers irrespective of the scientific robustness of his claims, or the accuracy with which he represents the views of those with whom he disagrees. Click here to continue reading>>>

Ivan Schwab’s new book on the evolution of vision systems is a vivid reminder of our blindness. Recently we reviewed how minor changes such as viruses mutating and allele frequency dynamics are, according to evolutionists, proof texts of evolution. Now in Schwab’s new book we have an example of how comparisons of various designs, again according to evolutionists, show howevolution occurred. Like the ancient myths, it is difficult to believe that anyone actually believes these things.  Read more

Key ID figures measure the impact of the Discovery Institute. Also, Steve Meyer on new developments in the UK.

In a recent post, entitled, Barry Arrington Explains Irreducible Complexity, Professor Laurence Moran sought to discredit the argument that irreducible complexity requires an Intelligent Designer. Let me state up-front that I am a philosopher, not a scientist. However, I believe in arguing rigorously, so I have attempted to state the argument from irreducible complexity in a rigorous fashion. I’d appreciate hearing from Professor Moran thinks of this argument, as a biologist. What is irreducible complexity? I’d like to quote a passage from an online paper entitled, Irreducible Complexity Revisited (version 2.0; revised 2/23/2004) by Professor William Dembski. The basic logic of IC [Irreducible Complexity] goes like this: A functional system is irreducibly complex if it contains a multipart subsystem (i.e., Read More ›