Carl Sagan once responded to an evolution skeptic with a response that Sagan obviously had given some thought to. You can listen to the question and Sagan’s summary beginning at the [0:24] mark:  read more

HT: JGuy In a science journal Icarus, a journal dedicated to Solar System studies, we have this recent paper from Vladimir I. Cherbaka, Department of Mathematics, al-Farabi Kazakh National University and Maxim A. Makukov Fesenkov Astrophysical Institute, Observatory 23. The “Wow” signal in the terrestrial genetic code Abstract It has been repeatedly proposed to expand the scope for SETI, and one of the suggested alternatives to radio is the biological media. Genomic DNA is already used on Earth to store non-biological information. Though smaller in capacity, but stronger in noise immunity is the genetic code. The code is a flexible mapping between codons and amino acids, and this flexibility allows modifying the code artificially. But once fixed, the code might Read More ›

I’ve discovered some features of UD software that I wasn’t aware of and may be of help to all the 30 or so UD authors. It has been a pleasure to assist the News desk for the past week while Denyse worked on another project. I now appreciate how time consuming the task is. In the process of assisting the News desk, I discovered that if a UD author clicks “News” in the category list, then that article will automatically scroll beneath the featured articles when a new article is posted. I want to apologize to VJTorley and other authors since I did not fully realize how the “News” category automatically scrolls past featured articles like VJTorley’s Scala Naturae article. Read More ›

Natural Selection was pioneered by the creationist Blyth, and Darwin later plagiarized Blyth’s work and published his own corrupt variation of Blyth’s ideas. (See: Was Blyth the True Scientist and Darwin merely a plagiarist and charlatan). Blyth asserted that survival of the healthier individuals in a population was a mechanism of preserving a species (not originating them). Darwin, erroneously claimed Natural Selection was the mechanism of originating species and Dawkins in the present day vigorously insists selection is the mechanism for the appearance of design. I have no problem asserting selection is a mechanism for preserving species as Blyth proposed. However, expanding on Darwin’s ideas, Dawkins’ insistence that selection creates machines in biology is suspect at best. When is selection Read More ›

Can I find examples that can fit any of the four following descriptions? Are some even impossible in principle? [Assume first that the artifact in question has high improbability (like a set of a million coins or as stream of a million bits) or high Shannon entropy. Also assume by “disordered” I mean Kolmogorov simple or algorithmically simple or possessing low algorithmic entropy. Curiously (as far as I know), organization cannot be measured in terms of either Shannon entropy nor algorithmic entropy, it is a transcendent feature that can perceived almost only through subjective specification. Further, thermodynamic entropy isn’t even considered in any of these cases (and may not even be applicable)]. 1. ordered and organized 2. ordered but disorganized Read More ›

Why would a Biblical creationist be interested in the Design argument? Isn’t enough for a creationist to know “God did it?”. No! God also wants creationists to know the level of His genius, and that is where the Design argument has benefit for creationists. Design research will glorify the Creator in ways revealed theology cannot. To illustrate: a creationist could say “God created birds” but a Design theorist could say “God made birds and there is genius in the design of flight…” The Design theorist then shows the genius of the Creator rather than merely asserting “God did it”. Scripture doesn’t describe every design in the universe. There may be designs out there remaining to be discovered. Things a Biblical Read More ›

[the “Cocktail” designation in the title refers to ideas that are possibly true, but are speculative in nature and which are not offered with the same level of conviction as other arguments at UD.] In a rather terse report here: http://justpaste.it/2q1a we learn the C14 dates indicate dinosaur remains are only 22-40K years old, not tens of millions of years old! 1.On this page you can see where 20 samples of acrocanthosaurus, allosaurus, hadrosaur, triceratops, and apatosaur were C14 dated at the University of Arizona using both the AMS and beta-decay methods to be between 22-40k years old. Authors Jean De Pontcharra and Marie Claire van Oosterwych have Ph.D’s in physics and physical chemistry, respectively. It was originally presented as Read More ›

Every once in a while evolutionists distill their thoughts into pithy statements that profoundly summarize what it’s all about for them. Carl Sagan’s 1980 Cosmos video is chocked full of such statements, but non better than his classic opening line: “The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.” [Please click to see] Obviously that is a truth claim, but it does not come from science. Truth claims that do not come from science are nothing new. What is new, however, is the presentation of such truth asscience. And so while there is nothing wrong with evolutionists proclaiming what they believe. There is everything wrong with their insistence that it is what everyone else must believe as well. That Read More ›

In his Computational Molecular Evolution course professor Anders Gorm Pedersen states that “evolutionary theory is the conceptual foundation of biology” and that “A phylogenetic [evolutionary] tree will almost always help you think more clearly about your biological problem.” That might seem strange since evolutionary theory’s fundamental predictions have turned out to be false and the species do not fit into an evolutionary tree. But all is clear when Pedersen approvingly quotes what is practically evolution’s official motto from Theodosius Dobzhansky: “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”  Read more

I care about truth if there is a God. But why should I care about truth if there is no God? In fact if there is no God, maybe I shouldn’t care about truth because it would be too sad to know…I’d rather live out my life with the illusion of happily ever after in that case. Two thousand years ago, someone echoed those sentiments: What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Paul of Tarsus 1 Cor 15:32 There was an exchange between KeithS and I in another thread, and he fired off this comment: Your comment epitomizes one Read More ›

Here is one pro-ID author I’m not endorsing without even reading his book: Lou Barreto who wrote the pro-ID book Who is this Alien?. Recently, Nick Matzke has been getting criticism for dissing pro-ID books he’s not even read. See: Nick Matzke Book Burner. To his credit, Nick’s at least read some of the material by the ID authors he disses. But I think I might do Nick one better, I’m going to diss a pro-ID author and his book without reading his book. Why? See what Barreto wrote about me: THE CRITICS OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN Article: By Lou Barreto It seems like the critics of Intelligent Design, such as Sal Cordova and others, will never acknowledge the concepts of Read More ›

Over the past few days, ideological objectors to the design inference have been pushing the deeply flawed but superficially persuasive open system compensation argument. That is as long as mass and/or energy is flowing in and/or out, thermodynamics poses no problem for OOL or origin of major body plan innovations. But, as there is a pivotal link between entropy and information once we duly factor in the microscopic, statistical view of matter, that cannot be right. FYI-FTR, I clip Sewell’s crucial point in reply: . . . The second law is all about probability, it uses probability at the microscopic level to predict macroscopic change: the reason carbon distributes itself more and more uniformly in an insulated solid [–> i.e. Read More ›