Three geologists stand at the foot of Mt. Rushmore. The first geologist says, “This mountain depicts perfectly the faces of four US presidents, it must be the work of a master sculptor.” The second says, “You are a geologist, you should know that all mountains were created by natural forces, such as volcanos and plate movements, the details were then sculpted by erosion from water and wind. How could you possibly think this was the work of an intelligent sculptor? Only a person completely ignorant of geophysics could think those faces were designed.” The third geologist says to himself, “I don’t want to be seen as ignorant, but the faces in this mountain sure do look like they were designed.” Read More ›

Sometimes, we run across a sleeper that just begs to be headlined here at UD. EA’s short primer on ID, drawn up in Sept 2003, is such a sleeper. Let’s observe: __________ >> Brief Primer on Intelligent Design   Having read a fair amount of material on intelligent design and having been involved in various discussions on the topic, I decided to prepare this brief primer that I trust will be useful in clarifying the central issues and in helping those less familiar with intelligent design understand its basic propositions. This is not intended to be a comprehensive analysis of intelligent design, nor is it intended to respond to criticisms.  Rather, this represents my modest attempt to avoid the side Read More ›

Peter J. Leithart notices Lee Smolin’s The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next And string theory has achieved this dominance without experimental confirmation. Smolin says that if string theory turns out to be right, “string theorists will turn out to be the greatest heroes in the history of science.” But if they are wrong and all those dimensions and symmetries don’t exist, “then we will count string theorists among science’s greatest failures” (xvii). Physicists have worked out an unfortunate “premature consensus” and “despite the absence of experimental support and precise formulation” some believe in string theory “with a certainty that seems emotional rather than rational” (xx). As a result, Read More ›

On a sun-scorched plateau known as Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, California, rocks of all sizes glide across the desert floor.  Some of the rocks accompany each other in pairs, which creates parallel trails even when turning corners so that the tracks left behind resemble those of an automobile.  Other rocks travel solo the distance of hundreds of meters back and forth along the same track.  Sometimes these paths lead to its stone vehicle, while other trails lead to nowhere, as the marking instrument has vanished.  Some of these rocks weigh several hundred pounds. That makes the question: “How do they move?” a very challenging one.  The truth is no one knows just exactly how these rocks move.   No Read More ›

Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture and the Ideas and Arts Task force at University Presbyterian Church are co-sponsoring an event this coming Friday in Seattle. Renowned Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga will be speaking at 7:00 pm at University Presbyterian Church at 4540 15th Avenue NE, Seattle. This will be followed by a response from Jay Richards and an audience Q&A. The event is free-of-charge, but you should register online here. Evolution News & Views reports on the event here.

Once again the “settled science” of climate change turns out to be far from settled.  See here.  

Over at Evolution News & Views, Casey Luskin offers a number of reasons why Stephen Meyer’s new book Darwin’s Doubt is a must-read for anyone interested in the I.D. debate. I strongly second Casey’s positive comments and urge you to preorder the book at the Darwin’s Doubt website. Go here to read Casey’s article.

An article in Ecology letters, entitled: “Eco-evolutionary Dynamics in Response to Selection on Life-history,” deals with research conducted on “soil mites that were collected from the wild and then raised in 18 glass tubes.” The researchers found significant genetically transmitted changes in laboratory populations of soil mites in just 15 generations, leading to a doubling of the age at which the mites reached adulthood and large changes in population size. At Phys.Org, they write: Although previous research has implied a link between short-term changes in animal species’ physical characteristics and evolution, the Leeds-led study is the first to prove a causal relationship between rapid genetic evolution and animal population dynamics in a controlled experimental setting. Further, lead author Tom Cameron Read More ›

Over the weekend, a number of us traveled to Philadelphia for the Westminster Conference on Science & Faith. The two-day event, which was a pack-out with nearly 800 attendees, featured notable speakers including John Lennox, Stephen Meyer, Douglas Axe, Paul Nelson, Vern Poythress, John West, Megan Best and Scott Oliphint. Over the course of Friday and Saturday, participants attended a total of three breakout sessions, with options of attending the science track, the theology and culture track, or the apologetics track. I decided to attend all three of the science breakout sessions, which featured Axe, Meyer and Nelson. Click here to continue reading.

I have been enjoying listening to Professor John Lennox of Oxford University over the weekend at the Philadelphia Westminster Conference on Science & Faith. Readers may be interested to learn that John Lennox has a new website, which you can access here!

In Darwin’s Black Box, Michael Behe writes: Imagine a room in which a body lies crushed, flat as a pancake. A dozen detectives crawl around, examining the floor with magnifying glasses for any clue to the identity of the perpetrator. In the middle of the room, next to the body, stands a large, gray elephant. The detectives carefully avoid bumping into the pachyderm’s legs as they crawl, and never even glance at it. Over time the detectives get frustrated with their lack of progress but resolutely press on, looking even more closely at the floor. You see, textbooks say detectives must “get their man,” so they never even consider elephants. There is an elephant in the roomful of scientists who Read More ›

(previous, here) There has been a recent flurry of web commentary on design theory concepts linked to the concept of functionally specific, complex organisation and/or associated information (FSCO/I) introduced across the 1970’s into the 1980’s  by Orgel and Wicken et al. (As is documented here.) This flurry seems to be connected to the announcement of an upcoming book by Meyer — it looks like attempts are being made to dismiss it before it comes out, through what has recently been tagged, “noviews.” (Criticising, usually harshly, what one has not read, by way of a substitute for a genuine book review.) It will help to focus for a moment on the just linked ENV article, in which ID thinker William Dembski Read More ›

Larry’s ‘reply’ (to my first post) appears to have replicated and evolved into a real reply (to my second post) with some real information. Well, a little information. When I say information, I don’t just mean grammatically correct and unambiguous English text, I mean things that offered ‘surprisal’ and improved my ability to understand the world and to function better in this debate. I learnt three things: firstly, some people have known since the mid 70s that most DNA is transcribed into RNA, but sat on it because apparently they didn’t realise its significance; secondly, where DNA is transcribed but a function is not known, it is generally transcribed only relatively rarely; and thirdly, that RNA polymerase (RNAP) binds at Read More ›

(Prev. : No 16 F/N: 17a, here) *NB: For those new to UD, FSCO/I means: Functionally Specific Complex Organisation and/or associated Information From time to time, we need to refocus our attention on foundational issues relating to the positive case for inferring design as best explanation for certain phenomena connected to origins of the cosmos, life and body plans. It is therefore worth the while to excerpt an addition I just made to the IOSE Introduction and Summary page, HT CR, by way of an excerpt from Meyer’s reply to Falk’s hostile review of Signature in the Cell. In addition, given all too commonly seen basic problems with first principles of right reasoning among objectors to design theory [–> cf. Read More ›