2013

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 ›

Albert Einstein, who was struck by the astonishing organization of the cosmos, said: “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible” and asked “How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?” I have to deduce that Einstein hadn’t an understanding of traditional metaphysics. Otherwise he would neither have spoken about the comprehensibility of the universe as “the most incomprehensible thing” or a “miracle”, nor he would have been surprised that math is so “appropriate to the objects of reality”. In fact metaphysics postulates “universal intelligibility” (nothing is unknowable in principle). The comprehensibility of the world is Read More ›

In a previous post of mine Joe replied to a comment of an evolutionist: Evolutionist: “Reproductive success is usually what is meant by fitness. As the biomass of living bacteria currently far exceeds that of all other organisms on Earth, perhaps they should be considered the pinnacle of fitness.” Joe: “Kind of makes you wonder why eukaryotes even got started. And it seems to go against natural selection. The less fit appear to be doing very, very well.” Bravo Joe. If bacteria are the “pinnacle of fitness” you ask “why eukaryotes even got started”? In prokaryotes natural selection worked to increase fitness. In eukaryotes natural selection worked to decrease fitness. Evolution does X and NOT X in the same time. Read More ›

A few days ago, Joe passed along a hint from Petrushka concerning claims advanced by Szostak, which — via DNA Jock — were cast in the light of suggesting that design thinkers were not addressing the latest findings of OOL research. Having had a few moments, I have paused and spoken to this, in the TSZ thread. I think this, too needs to be highlighted for record: ______________ >>I took some time to see what Petrushka may be hinting at (the very coyness being suggestive that there is a lot less there than meets the eye). Here is a clip from a Scientific American (Sept 2009) article courtesy Dr Cornerlius Hunter, back at the time: There could be pools of Read More ›