On the one hand . . . “Vanity, vanity, says the teacher, all is vanity. . . So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:17 “To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune, Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep No more; and by a sleep, to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks That Flesh is heir to? ‘Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To Read More ›

What on earth does the title of a famous Good Friday Sermon have to do with the ID controversy? (Even, come Easter Sunday morning . . . ) A lot. Sadly. As I was reading and thinking about Dr Torley’s latest amazing UD series and some of UD’s ever so fascinating comments [one of the best features of UD is comments], I was led to look at the Dr Townes story, and related matters. One of the findings is how Dr Townes, a Nobel Prize holder for physics, turns out to be a cosmological design thinker who actually supports intelligent design in an evolutionary framework [i.e. pretty similar to Wallace, co-founder of modern evolutionary theory], but sees ID as anti-evolutionism. Read More ›

(Part two of a series of posts in response to Zack Kopplin.) The Seven Sages, depicted in the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493. Image courtesy of Wikipedia. Zack, in your poker challenge to Congresswoman Michele Bachmann on May 24, 2011, you declared: Congresswoman Bachmann, you claim that Nobel Laureates support creationism. Show me your hand. If you want to be taken seriously by voters while you run for President, back up your claims with facts. Can you match 43 Nobel Laureates, or do you fold? Actually, what Congresswoman Bachmann said was that “There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design.” (Bachmann-Wetterling-Binkowski candidates’ debate. October 7, 2006. Voter’s Choice Candidate Forum, sponsored Read More ›

Left: 2006 World Series Of Poker main event table. Right: Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Images courtesy of http://www.lasvegasvegas.com, The United States Congress and Wikipedia. (Part one of a series of posts in response to Zack Kopplin.) Hi, Zack. I’ve been following your very well-organized campaign to repeal the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA). In 2011, at the age of 17, you managed to persuade no less than 43 Nobel Laureate scientists to sign a petition urging that the act be repealed, and your most recent list now has 74 signatures from Nobel Laureate scientists, plus one endorsement by Dr. John Sulston (2002 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine), making an impressive total of 75 Nobel Laureates who have endorsed the Read More ›

[HT: idnet.com.au] Would an intelligent designer deliberately build a biological system that self destructs. Can something be intelligently designed that is reproductively unfit? Absolutely! But first consider the essay ID’s Broken Watchmaker Analogy, where a Darwinist unwittingly concedes an important point (in an otherwise confused, ignorant and illogical rant): Products of intelligent design typically have capabilities that exceed usefulness and complications that would be profoundly maladaptive in a living system Alexander Nussbaum By that line of reasoning, the existence of humans evidences design. Why? Compared to bacteria, humans are profoundly maladaptive. Darwinists like Bryan Sykes concede the human species might exist for only 100,000 more years. The question then arises, in light of this, why are we here? Why aren’t Read More ›

Should we all pack up and go home with such erudite opponents as this?

Watching Intelligent Design – Alexander Nussbaum Free Enquiry April / May 2012 Volume 32, Number 3 (edited exerpts below)

Watches are a product of intelligent design and are often used as an example of such by creationists in their beloved – and deeply misleading – analogy.

Watches are a poor analogue for living systems, as they bear one characteristic that is common in products of intelligent design but absent from the products of biological evolution. Watches tend to be engineered for performance far beyond what is needed in use. Evolved living systems never display this kind of overdesign except, arguably, in certain characteristics used for sexual selection.

Biological evolution makes use of what is already available and generally produces not optimal design, but rather design just good enough to survive. Biological evolution is a master of jerry-building, of making do, and of overlooking design flaws as long as reproduction is achieved before the system dies.

For the human brain, amazing product of evolution though it is — capable of calculus, creating computers, and even of reaching the Moon — is also a deeply flawed belief machine that is unable to shake itself of delusions like creationism.

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