Ran across this Biola video lecture (in course BB ST 450) on scientism in a thread from a few months back, HT BA77 as usual. I think it is well worth pondering: [youtube lnxrmF9O1ko] So, thoughts? END
natural selection cannot build any feature in which intermediate steps do not confer a net benefit on the organism. Jerry Coyne as reported in Hopless Matzke contrast this with what Allan Miller said at The Skeptical Zone It is sufficient that NS does not act too strongly against, not that it must act for, a particular change. Allan Miller TSZ Allan Miller says natural selection has to fail for evolution to work I actually agree with Miller to the extent that Miller agrees with Michael Lynch and Mae Wan Ho many genomic features could not have emerged without a near-complete disengagement of the power of natural selection Michael Lynch opening, The Origins of Genome Architecture and a relative lack of Read More ›
The answer appears to be yes (at least for electrical and mechanical means, don’t know for sure about chemical and biological means). A physics professor assigned our class term papers of our choosing. Our goal was to learn something new. I chose to explore the effects of electricity and chemistry on nuclear processes. I thought the professor would take my head off for such a radical claim, so I determined to look at mainstream peer-reviewed literature on the topic. We all had to make presentations of our term papers in class, and the professor had a big smile after I gave mine, he said, “that was the topic of the night!” [The Vodka designation in the title indicates speculative ideas Read More ›
From the Evolution News and Views: Hopless Matzke.
The question of the fossil ages is comparable to a central problem in forensic crime investigation, namely establishing the time of death. Did the creatures in the fossil record die tens of millions of years ago or did they die recently (say less than 50,000 years ago). It is mildly unfortunate that criticism of accepted mainstream fossil ages are conflated with YEC, because strictly speaking the age of the fossils is a formally distinct question from the question of Young Earth Creation (YEC) and the age of the Earth. One reason that criticism of the geological record has been resisted (even within ID circles) is the affiliation of such criticism with YEC. But this does not have to be the Read More ›
Creationists are now beginning to embrace the Design argument. If biology is Intelligently Designed, it stands to reason the designs can be used to teach humans how to construct designs. The implications of ID are not purely religious. This fact is often forgotten. The presumption that biology is mostly cobbled together junk is a hindrance to medical and technological advancement. What benefit is there in viewing biology as cobbled together mistakes that happen to be reproductively selected for? None of any consequence. But if biology is truly designed by a mind beyond anything we can comprehend, we can learn engineering from the all-wise creator himself. To that end, here is a book written by creationists describing the discovery of such Read More ›