[I’m for giving opposing viewpoints a fair representation. Aiguy is a widely respected critic of ID. I cross post his offering from TSZ What Does “Intelligence” Mean in ID Theory?] Below I argue that despite insisting that it makes no claims about the nature of the Designer, ID’s equivocation on the meaning of “intelligence” results in implicit and unsupported connotations being lumped together as conclusions of the “design inference”. Is it Intelligent? Working in Artificial Intelligence, one comes to realize that asking if something is “intelligent” or not is generally a matter of definition rather than discovery. Here is a joke illustrating this point: AIGUY: Here is our newest AI system. It learned to play grandmaster-level chess by reading books. Read More ›

Thus, a scientist may view design and its appeal to a designer as simply a fruitful device for understanding the world, not attaching any significance to questions such as whether a theory of design is in some ultimate sense true or whether the designer actually exists. Philosophers of science would call this a constructive empiricist approach to design. Scientists in the business of manufacturing theoretical entities like quarks, strings, and cold dark matter could therefore view the designer as just one more theoretical entity to be added to the list. I follow here Ludwig Wittgenstein, who wrote, “What a Copernicus or a Darwin really achieved was not the discovery of a true theory but of a fertile new point of Read More ›

Since my Cornell conference contribution has generated dozens of critical comments on another thread, I feel compelled to respond. I hope this is the last time I ever have to talk about this topic, I’m really tired of it. Here are two scenarios: 1. A tornado hits a town, turning houses and cars into rubble. Then, another tornado hits, and turns the rubble back into houses and cars. 2. The atoms on a barren planet spontaneously rearrange themselves, with the help of solar energy and under the direction of four unintelligent forces of physics alone, into humans, cars, high-speed computers, libraries full of science texts and encyclopedias, TV sets, airplanes and spaceships. Then, the sun explodes into a supernova, and, Read More ›

Even though I’m an Advantage Player, I would never dream of hosting illegal dice games and fleecing people (I swear never, never). But, ahem, for some reason I did take an interest in this product that could roll 6 and 8 at will! [youtube 3MynUHA6DTs] Goodness, that guy could earn a mint in the betting on 6 and 8! 😈 The user can use his key chain and force the dice to certain orientations. As far as I know the dice can behave as if they are fair if the remote control is not in force. For the sake of this discussion, let us suppose the dice will behave fairly when the remote control is not in force. Suppose for Read More ›

Can an evolutionist consistently believe in higher and lower life forms? That’s the subject of a recent essay by Emanuele Rigato and Alessandro Minelli, entitled, The great chain of being is still here, in Evolution: Education and Outreach, a SpringerOpen journal whose aim is to promote “accurate understanding and comprehensive teaching of evolutionary theory for a wide audience.” In their article (Evolution: Education and Outreach 2013, 6:18, 27 June 2013), Rigato and Minelli argue for a purge: they insist that “progressionist language” must be systematically eradicated from all scientific papers on evolutionary biology. The authors felt impelled to make this drastic recommendation, after making the shocking discovery that nearly 2% of all biological articles published between 2005 and 2010 in Read More ›

One evening at the Fitz Tunica casino, a lady playing blackjack at my table confided to me, “I’ve lost $500,000 playing blackjack. The entire inheritance my father left me,”. Her bankruptcy is like the bankruptcy of Darwinism. [Fitzgerald’s casino in Tunica, Mississippi] Let us call her Jane, as in Jane Doe. As I tried to collect myself at the shock of this revelation, not knowing what to say, I asked, “did you have fun?” Jane’s eyes beamed as if she had just seen angels, “Yes! I’d do it over again. The fun was like nothing I’d ever known betting $500 a hand.” 😯 Her story is not unique. Dealers tell me of patrons losing hundreds of thousands. One lady won Read More ›

In response to this blog, I answer that it is true that all attempts at inventing life randomly have come up short, as have all attempts at creating life lawfully. The paradox is that neither chance nor order can explain what we observe. Yet this does not mean that OOL research is “flatlined”, for we are learning a great deal, even as we discover what doesn’t work–as Edison famously said. Darwin undoubtedly believed in the fecundity of primordial ooze, yet 150 years of study have shown both the complexity and fragility of that polysaccharide glycopeptide. The biologist Jacques Monod may claim that his OOL research has led him to the Abyss of meaninglessness where a faith in Man’s existence was Read More ›

Recently some astronomers have dramatically increased their estimates of how many planets in our little corner of the Cosmos might fall in the habitable zone around red dwarf stars!  There could be as many as 60,000,000,000 such habitable planets in the Milky Way alone! Based on data from NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft, scientists have predicted that there should be one Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of each red dwarf, the most common type of star. But a group of researchers has now doubled that estimate after considering how cloud cover might help an alien planet support life. “Clouds cause warming, and they cause cooling on Earth,” study researcher Dorian Abbot, an assistant professor in geophysical sciences at the University of Read More ›