Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

PZ Myers defends ID-Friendly University Course!

Jerry Coyne has infiltrated a heretofore secret ID operation at Ball State University. Since the secret is now out and in the hands of the Darwinists, I may as well report on it. Ball State University, in Muncie, Indiana, is a public university (i.e., part of the state university system). … The course is taught by Eric Hedin, an assistant professor at Ball State’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. In one of its guises it’s an “honors” course, “Inquiries in the Physical Sciences,” which fulfills the science requirement for students as part of the University Core Curriculum: Science Course at Ball State University Look at the ID sympathetic bibliography: Bibliography of the Syllabus Coyne sounds the battle cry: This has Read More ›

Remembering Alfred Russel Wallace

This year marks the centenary of the death of Alfred Russel Wallace, sometimes portrayed as “Darwin’s goad”. However, as Andrew Berry argues, Wallace should be remembered as a “visionary scientist in his own right, a daring explorer and a passionate socialist”. He was awarded the Order of Merit, the highest honour that could be given by the British monarch to a civilian. He has left a – “- huge scientific legacy, which ranged from discovering natural selection to defining the term species, and from founding the field of evolutionary biogeography to pioneering the study of comparative natural history.” (page 162) For more, go here. Here’s the punchline: Whilst Berry is willing to respect Wallace’s integrity in departing from Darwin in Read More ›

Here is That Fish With Clear Blood

Unlike most areas of science which ask “how?,” evolution, as Ernst Mayr was fond of pointing out, asks “why?” And these days evolutionists are asking themselves why a fish has clear blood. Yes the Ocellated Ice Fish (see the above video) has no hemoglobin. That makes it unique among all the organisms with bones. Hemoglobin is an incredible molecular machine that consists of two pairs of proteins all working together. In humans it transports oxygen from the lungs to the tissues and returns with carbon dioxide to be released. And for evolutionists, hemoglobin has been a textbook example of how the twentieth century’s molecular evidence confirms the fact of evolution. That has always been a problematic claim, but now even more so. Read More ›

20% of biology teachers in Pennsylvania are creationists

There was an interesting poll of biology teachers in Pennsylvania that were given the freedom to respond to more than one choice when given the opportunity to express belief in evolution, creation or ID. If evolution is defined as “change over time”, then even creationists and ID proponents could be said to believe in evolution. That seems to be suggested by the latest poll: Is evolution missing link in some Pennsylvania high schools? Some 20 percent of science teachers in survey say they believe in creationism April 28, 2013 12:25 am …. Ninety percent chose evolution; 19 percent said they believe in creationism, not defined in the questionnaire; 13 percent said they believe in intelligent design; and another 5 percent Read More ›

Creationists Characterized as Gloating over Vandalization of Evolution Center

Arsonists reportedly destroyed a well known Science Center in Naples Italy that promotes Evolutionism. From the pages of the Journal Nature: http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/496169c On the night of 4 March, unknown arsonists destroyed the famous City of Science centre in Naples. This shocking event has been publicly welcomed by some hard-line creationists in Italy, who disapprove of the teaching of evolution at the centre. ….. The conservative commentators who instead seemed to rejoice at the centre’s destruction include the national news paper Il Foglio, which applauded the flames as purification against the sourge of evolutionism — “a nineteenth-century superstition” destined to bring young people to “despair and simian behaviors”. This inflammatory anti-Darwinism has been rapidly amplified on the Internet. …. Italy’s current Read More ›

Can a Darwinist consistently condemn a con man who couldn’t have done otherwise?

Some readers will recall the case of the Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel, former dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Tilburg University, who was publicly exposed in 2011 for faking his data in several dozen published papers about human behavior that had made him famous – and who, after being caught, decided to publish a book about his con, detailing how and why he’d done it. Uncommon Descent ran a story about the case (see here), and another story about how it was exposed (see here), while James Barham discussed it at further length over on his blog, TheBestSchools.org, in an article entitled, More Scientists Behaving Badly. A story about the case appeared in The New York Read More ›

Comparing Evolution to Empirical Observations Such as Gravity

In evolutionary thought there is a stark contrast between its scientific ambiguity and its metaphysical certainty. There are all kinds of problems in explaining how the world could have arisen on its own, and yet at the same time evolutionists constantly assure us that evolution is a scientific fact. For example, while Philip Ball urges his fellow evolutionists to admit that we don’t fully understand how evolution works at the molecular level he simultaneously presents the idea as a fact and bemoans those who doubt this new truth. But how can we be so certain the species originated spontaneously when our best attempts to explain how this could have happened continue to fall short? When I pointed this out an evolutionist rebuked Read More ›

Evolutionist: Let’s Admit it, We Don’t Fully Understand How Evolution Works

Philip Ball’s opinion piece in this week’s Nature, the most popular science magazine in the world, is news not because he stated that we don’t fully understand how evolution works at the molecular level, but because he urged his fellow evolutionists to admit it. On this 60th anniversary of the discovery of the DNA double helix, Ball reviews a few of the recent findings that have rebuked the evolution narrative that random mutations created the biological world. Unfortunately Ball fails to take his own advice and ends up doing precisely what he advises other evolutionists against—whitewashing the science.  Read more

FOR RECORD: AF’s insistent strawman misrepresentation tactics and false accusation of fraud (“CSI is a bogus concept so it would not figure in anyone’s calculations . . . “) exposed . . .

Sometimes, it is necessary to speak for record on rather unpleasant matters. This is one of them, in response to longtime objector AF’s willfully continued misrepresentations and false accusations. Accordingly, I clip 479 in the Oldies thread, with reference to my corrective at 459 and AF’s retort at 465 that compounds the misrepresentations and false accusations AF has made: ________________ >>Over the past few days, AF has unfortunately shown just why after eight years he has made no progress in understanding or soundly interacting with design theory or thinkers. This has come to a head in his remark at 454 above, where he stated: CSI is a bogus concept so it would not figure in anyone’s calculations. That is a Read More ›

John Kerry is All Wet

Secretary of State John Kerry said on April 22, 2013:  “The [climate change] science is screaming at all of us and demands action.” This chart is from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), with annotations by Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit.  It shows that the alarmists’ computer models (the blue line) do not match reality (the red line). In other words, they have failed miserably.   Yes, the science is screaming alright.  It is screaming that the climate change alarmists are simply wrong.  John Kerry’s statement is a classic example of the human capacity to ignore or disregard all contrary evidence once a particular idea has taken hold.

Stephen Meyer To Feature On Michael Medved Show Tomorrow

Dr. Stephen Meyer will feature in the third hour of tomorrow’s Michael Medved show, the first of his new Science & Culture Weekly Update series. Be sure to tune in!

Design, Teleology and Omega Watches

The Omega watch company’s co-axial chronometer  is billed as the most precise mechanical device in the world.  In their video ad featured here, the images associate the intricate design of the cosmos with the design of the watch…a classic teleological argument.  The implication seems to be that the intricate, superb design of the watch is equal to that of the Cosmos itself.  But if you’re a philosophical naturalist, as nearly every ID critic is, then you accept that the watch requires an intelligent design, the forces of matter and energy interacting over eons of time through chance and/or necessity not being adequate to explain a watch.  However, that same ID critic accepts that the Cosmos, and everything in it, which Read More ›

Chance Ratcliff’s video screen and the significance of search spaces

In a comment in the oldies thread on Sunday evening, Chance Ratcliff raised a very instructive case study  for a search space that is well worth being headlined. Let us adjust a bit on the calc of the config space, and reflect: _____________ CR, 111, Oldies: >> An illustration might be of some help. For {{an 8-bit, 256 level}} gray scale image of 1024 [ –> 2^10] pixels squared, there’s a search space of {{  2^20,  256-level elements giving 256^(2^20) = 4.26 *10^2,525,222}} possible configurations. This [strike . . . ] provides a vast landscape of images over which it is possible to traverse. For example, there are a nearly inestimable amount of configurations that could yield a recognizable rendering Read More ›