I work for a great company. I frequently ask for permission to be sent away for training in state-of-the-art computational technology — computer simulations that involve finite element analysis (FEA), Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian/Fluid Structure Interaction (ALE/FSI), and Navier-Stokes Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Today I spent the day with a group of brilliant students and a great instructor in a CFD class. What one learns with hands-on experience with such technology is the following: You can’t just make stuff up. You can’t assume stuff, write a computer program based on those assumptions, and expect to get a valid result. In fact, if such an approach is pursued, a totally invalid, and most likely a catastrophically invalid result is guaranteed. An intimate Read More ›

Jonathan Wells has already drawn our attention to a recent paper by Vandenberg et al. in the journal Developmental Dynamics. The authors make the startling and innovative discovery that bioelectrical signals are essential for the proper formation of the head and face in frog embryos. Physorg.com reports, Click here to continue reading>>>

Dr Moran, sorry for the delay. Other responsibilities intervened for a bit. Certainly the sequence in DNA is driving reactions. (And there are many varieties) In your comments you refer to the use of the term “information” within nucleic sequences as a useful analogy, and you say that there is no expectations that it should “conform to the meanings of “information” in other disciplines.” I certainly agree with you that it conforming to other meanings would be a telling turn of events. And I assume your comment suggests that the nucleotide sequence isn’t expected to share any of the same physical characteristics as other forms of information – given that we live in a physical universe where information has physical Read More ›

In a comment to my last post T.lise picked up on another Darwinist strawman argument.  He quotes Denis Alexander saying:  “Many people impressed . . . of the huge improbabilities involved in biochemical systems coming into being ‘by chance’.  But what the reader might miss easily is that the calculations are based on the whole system self-assembling all in one go . . . But this is tilting at windmills.  No scientist believes that this is the way evolution works.”  No ID theorist has ever argued that evolution is impossible because complex biochemical systems cannot self assemble “all in one go.”  This is an absurd caricature of the argument from irreducible complexity (IC).   The basic logic of IC goes like Read More ›

Earlier today the News desk posted a video of Brown University biochemist Ken Miller’s takedown of ID. This is a fascinating video and it is worthwhile to post a transcript for those readers who do not have time to stream it. The video is excerpted from a BBC documentary called, with scintillating journalistic objectivity, The War on Science. BBC Commenter: In two days of testimony [at the Dover trial] Miller attempted to knock down the arguments for intelligent design one by one. Also on his [i.e., Miller’s] hit list, Dembski’s criticism of evolution, that it was simply too improbable. Miller: One of the mathematical tricks employed by intelligent design involves taking the present day situation and calculating probabilities that the Read More ›