2011

From electron microscopes to earth-orbiting observatories, scientists use a variety of instruments to study nature by measuring, observing and yes, rendering. Measurements are graphed and fitted with mathematical models. Renderings, on the other hand, are not so easily quantified. This can make them less useful for the business of building quantitative models and making predictions. But renderings can, in an instant, convey a powerful message. A picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words.  Read more

Dennis Venema, the “heavy hitter” of Biologos when it comes to evolutionary theory — hands up, professors of evolutionary biology at Chicago, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, etc., if you have heard of Dennis Venema — has recently issued some remarks about ID in an interview.  The remarks can be found on the website of Rachel Held Evans, a pleasant and personally engaging writer and former student of English who has in the past served as a sort of lay cheerleader for the Biologos project. In the interview, Venema says: ‘The ID Movement is a “Big Tent” approach for all and sundry who reject at least some part of evolutionary biology. As such, there are Young-Earth Creationists, Old-Earth Creationists, and Read More ›

Here’s a quote from a paper I ran into a few months back. I’ve been meaning to post it. I certainly have Liz Liddle in mind as I do so.

I would ask that you resist your urge to ‘google’ the quote, and simply ask yourself the question: when was this paper published. Then have a gander. It’s a paper by Hampton L. Carson. From the abstract:

The experiments reported in this paper are designed to test the effect of raising
the genetic variance in experimental populations in a different way, namely, by
the use of large doses of X-rays delivered frequently to all the adults in the popu-
lation. The populations were thus closed ones in which the mutation rate was
artificially maintained at a very high level. Under these conditions, the experi-
mental populations represent a sensitive system for the detection of the effects of
newly induced genes that cause increase in fitness, whether these effects may be
manifested in the heterozygous condition, the homozygous condition, or both.
The results clearly show that there is no sustained increase in fitness despite an
increased genetic variance as indicated by an observed increase in genetic load.
There is thus no evidence for single-gene heterosis or for the induction of new
genes having a favorable effect on any of the fitness characters.

Read More ›

I have written this essay in response to a skeptical critic of Intelligent Design, who denies that the cosmos is beautiful in any objective sense. My aim is to defend two propositions: (i) mathematical beauty is an objective reality; and (ii) the cosmos instantiates this kind of beauty, and can therefore be called objectively beautiful. I will then endeavor to show that Intelligent Design is the only hypothesis which satisfactorily explains these truths. In my essay, I shall be quoting liberally from the writings of a number of atheist mathematicians and physicists, some of whom are pictured above: Bertrand Russell, G.H. Hardy, Paul Erdos and Steven Weinberg (with acknowledgements to photographer Larry D. Moore for the image of Professor Weinberg). Read More ›

As you remember from high school biology plants take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, and animals take in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide. But what about the recently discovered loriciferans—tiny animals at the bottom of the ocean where oxygen is hard to come by? The loriciferans, living two miles under the surface of the Mediterranean Sea, apparently spend their entire existence in anoxic conditions.  Read more

You know the drill, scientific findings refute evolution’s everything-is-just-a-fluke expectations, evolutionists are flabbergasted, evolutionists re-engineer their theory for the (n+1)th time, evolutionists sing the praise of Darwin, saying their theory explains the evidence so well, and the findings become yet another proof text for our creation myth. This time the finding is that DNA does more than sit at the center of everything like Jabba the Hutt. Evolution’s geno-centric, DNA-is-king myth expects DNA—which is supposed to hold the keys to the phenotype (remember how DNA mutations were supposed to create the dinosaurs, and everything else?)—to receive care and feeding from its various cyto-servants. Remember selfish and greedy DNA?  Read more