ID Proponent of yore: Protein synthesis is semiotic. ID Critic of yore: No it’s not. It’s purely chemical. You’re lying for Jesus in an effort to install a theocracy to control the world. ID Proponent of yore: No really, it’s semiotic. ID Critic of yore: Stupid creationist crank, when we say “information in the genome”, it’s just a metaphor. Idiot. – – – – – – – – – – – – – ID Proponent today: Protein synthesis is semiotic. ID Critic today: No it’s not, it purely chemical. You liars have been saying this same crap for 50 years (HT: Mike Elzinga). ID Proponent today: No really, I can use completely accepted observations within biology to demonstrate it. Not Read More ›

Remember the Sokal Hoax? A physics professor manages to sneak in a completely garbage paper to a “postmodern cultural studies” journal? Well, if you thought that science journals were immune to this sort of thing – or even more often than not reliable – then get ready to have some of your faith in the modern academia broken up a bit.

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It seems that, in the interests of more responsible and responsive, on-issue commentary here at UD and elsewhere in the context of debates over design theory (cf. concerns here and here), participants in discussions in and around UD need to clarify some matters, especially the difference between fair comment dissent and defamation and that between acting to stop disruptive and enabling behaviour and censorship. All this, in the context of free and democratic societies that duly balance rights, freedoms and responsibilities — the difference between liberty and licence. First, defamation is not fair-comment free speech. Madeleine Flanagan of M and M blog in New Zealand writes, helpfully (and as already cited in correction but it seems ignored): >> . . Read More ›

In today’s Phys.Org news page, we hear about a three nucleotide change in the organism “Trypanosoma brucei, a parasite that causes sleeping sickness in Africa and Chagas disease in Latin America.” Immediately after “transcription”, via a completely unknown mechanism, a three nucleotide portion of the intron associated with …… is replaced by three different nucleotides. Here’s what they say: “These are changes for which no chemistry is known and has never been described. We don’t know what enzyme is involved and that is the million-dollar question: What mechanism is doing this? We haven’t a clue,” said Juan Alfonzo, professor of microbiology at The Ohio State University and senior author of the study. . . . . Alfonzo sought to identify Read More ›

All that follows is RD Miksa’s: Dear Kantian Naturalist: You said: “My position, rather, is that at present, design theorists have not done the hard work of implementing the deductive and inductive stages of inquiry that would lend empirical warrant to the hypothesis. And that means that design theory does not yet deserve serious consideration as an alternative to other explanations of biological phenomena.” Consider, then, the following: Let’s start with the abductive leap that you accept: “The abductive leap would be: ‘It is surprising that there is complex, specified information in living things, but if living things were brought about by an intelligent agent, then the presence of complex, specified information in living things would be a matter of Read More ›

Elizabeth Liddle from a prior post: “Darwinian hypotheses make testable predictions and ID hypotheses (so far) don’t.” This statement is breathtakingly false. Let us take just one example. For years Darwinists touted “junk DNA” as not just any evidence but powerful, practically irrefutable evidence for the Darwinian hypothesis. ID proponents disagreed and argued that the evidence would ultimately demonstrate function. Not only did both hypotheses make testable predictions, the Darwinist prediction turned out to be false and the ID prediction turned out to be confirmed. EL, you are entitled to your own private opinion. You are not entitled to your own private facts. And when you make it up as you go like this, be sure you will be called Read More ›

Various studies have shown that in order to produce a protein evolution would need roughly 10^70 attempts to get close enough for natural selection to take over. That is a 1 with 70 zeros after it. The number of attempts possible, on the other hand, is far less. One study concluded that 10^43 attempts may be possible. It is important to understand how tiny 10^43 is compared to 10^70. 10^43 is not about half of 10^70. It is not even close to half. In fact 10^43 is an astronomically tiny sliver of 10^70. Furthermore that study concluded that 10^43 attempts may be possible assumed, as a starting point, the existence of bacteria. In fact it assumed the Earth is covered Read More ›