While I was shaving this morning I was thinking about the materialists who are beginning to question the evolutionary mechanisms proposed by the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis (e.g., Lynn Margulis and James Shapiro). All of a sudden a great irony struck me. No doubt many of my readers have already picked up on this, but I can be slow on the uptake and it was kind of a stunner to me. The irony is this: Even among materialists Neo-Darwinian Evolution is beginning to crumble under the cumulative weight of the many absurdities it requires its adherents to accept. Yet just as the theory is beginning to fall apart among honest materialists, we have the theists at Biologos feverishly trying to prop up Read More ›

In recent days, the UD “Engineer says . . . ” thread has become an extended discussion on the design inference and its justification. It has already led to another ID Foundations post, on the significance of Mignea’s simplest self-replicator model for the design inference from FSCO/I in life. Today, it is worth excerpting and adapting a recent summary post in the thread on the significance of inferring on signs that design is the best causal explanation for certain phenomena in the natural world. To set context, it is useful to first pause and remind ourselves from the online New World Encyclopedia, what design theory, at core, is about: Intelligent design (ID) is the view that it is possible to Read More ›

For the next installment of the Engineering and Metaphysics Conference Videos, we have a talk on setting up a testable line between physical and non-physical causation, as well as how one can integrate non-physical causation into models of cognitive processes.

Read More ›

Now and again, over at Why Evolution Is True, Professor Jerry Coyne issues challenges that are too easy to resist. In a recent post entitled, “Zeuglodon” on free will at the RDF site, Professor Coyne issued one such challenge relating to the notion of responsibility, when he wrote: I’m not aware of any incompatibilist—those who claim that determinism and free will are incompatible (I’d add that the indeterminism of quantum mechanics may not do much to give us free will)—who claims that determinism absolves us of responsibility. Though it absolves us, I think, of moral responsibility, we still must hold people responsible for their actions for the good of society. For holding people responsible can deter others from actions we Read More ›