2013

In Illustra Media’s Darwin’s Dilemma, there is a clip on proteins as islands of function in amino acid sequence space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h38Xi-Jz9yk Food for thought. As a stimulus to such, let us next note how the bloggist Wintery Knight has given an interesting summary of the challenges involved if a chance-dominated process is invoked for a hypothetical 100-AA polypeptide: But, some will object, it’s not just chance involved! That is, they are appealing to self-organisation and/or mechanical necessity, or incremental complexification — a sort of pre-life evolution. Especially, with RNA acting as a catalyst and potential information store. Mechanical necessity, a forced sequence of bonds, is both counter to what we know of the chemistry of both AA and D/RNA chaining, Read More ›

There are two versions of the metric for Bill Dembski’s CSI. One version can be traced to his book No Free Lunch published in 2002. Let us call that “CSI v1.0”. Then in 2005 Bill published Specification the Pattern that Signifies Intelligence where he includes the identifier “v1.22”, but perhaps it would be better to call the concepts in that paper CSI v2.0 since, like windows 8, it has some radical differences from its predecessor and will come up with different results. Some end users of the concept of CSI prefer CSI v1.0 over v2.0. It was very easy to estimate CSI numbers in version 1.0 and then argue later whether the subjective patterns used to deduce CSI were independent Read More ›

It is intuitively obvious that insect wings, such as these shown from the desert locust, did not evolve from random chance events as evolutionists insist they did, and new research is helping to elucidate the underlying reasons. One glance at the insect wings pictured here reveals something special, but what is it? There is a definite pattern revealed by the crisscrossing veins and the new research demonstrates that the cells formed by the intersecting veins are optimized to minimize the weight of the wing while maximizing the wing’s resistance to cracks. Specifically, the cell’s are sized according to the so-called “critical crack length” which is the length at which a crack becomes a structural threat—a property of the wing material. Read More ›

The scientific enterprise entails: 1. observation2. hypothesis3. testing Consider this passage from the class text of an introductory cosmology class I took once upon a time: galaxies farther than 4300 megaparsecs from us are currently moving away from us at speeds greater than that of light. Cosmological innocents sometimes exclaim, “Gosh! Doesn’t this violate the law that massive objects can’t travel faster than the speed of light?” Actually, it doesn’t. The speed limit that states that massive objects must travel with v < c relative to each other is one of the results of special relativity, and refers to the relative motion of objects within a static space. In the context of general relativity, there is no objection to having Read More ›

Just now VJT picked up a TSZ attempt to challenge CSI. I suggested wood grain as a possibility, leading to complex but not relevantly specified. Phineas did a Google Image search and came up, ash on ice. I did a similar search: This led me to seek to superpose and fit on a colourised version of the suggested original: This seems to be indeed the source. In neither case are we dealing with the joint complexity and specificity pattern that leads to inferring CSI thence design. It is worth repeating the design inference filter as a reference. Notice, the significance of the joint presence of specificity and complexity: Comments may be made in VJT’s discussion thread. END

Over at The Skeptical Zone, Dr. Elizabeth Liddle has put up a post for Uncommon Descent readers, entitled, A CSI Challenge (15 May 2013). She writes: Here is a pattern: It’s a gray-scale image, so it is just one 2D matrix. Here is a text file containing the matrix: MysteryPhoto I would like to know whether it has CSI or not. The term complex specified information (or CSI) is defined by Intelligent Design advocates William Dembski and Jonathan Wells in their book, The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems (The Foundation for Thought and Ethics, Dallas, 2008), as being equivalent to specified complexity (p. 311), which is then defined as follows: An event or object exhibits Read More ›

Yesterday, I ran across the video to be shown below and posted a comment that I think needs to be headlined and seriously pondered if we are concerned that the university functions in an objective, fair-minded, truth-seeking way: This study (HT: WK) as presented in a short lecture by Dr George Yancey — a sociologist — on bias against Christians in the academy, among progressives (especially cultural progressives) and even in IQ tests, should give food for thought as we reflect on the above. Video: Dr Yancey’s  IQ test questions (strictly: fallacy-detection questions, evidently used by some to claim that Christians are less intelligent than secularist progressives and fellow travellers) are especially revealing of how biases are embedded in what Read More ›

Mark Perakh, who was an author at Panda’s thumb passed away. From the NCSE website: Perakh was born (as Mark Yakovlevich Popereka) on November 2, 1924, in Kiev, Ukraine. After serving in the Soviet Army during World War II, he earned the equivalent of a PhD in physics from the Odessa Polytechnic Institute in 1946. From 1950 to 1973, he conducted research and taught physics in several universities in the USSR, receiving a Diploma of Doctorate of Sciences from Kazan Institute of Technology in 1968. He emigrated to Israel, where he changed his surname to Perakh and was appointed a professor of physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in 1973. He subsequently emigrated to the United States in 1978, Read More ›

“Cool” is often presented as the iconic, somewhat glamorous state of being calm, collected, in control.  It is often viewed as highly desirable, sexy, balanced, stylish, just plain “right.” Oh, soo, desirable . . . But, beneath the surface of “cool,” there too often lurks a reptilian coldly amoral ferocity that marks all the difference between the Christian virtue of self-control and the manipulative, demonically controlling. The dark triad, satanic side of cool. Dark triad? Though this sounds a little like an overly melodramatic movie title, it is actually a term of art in modern psychology, to describe a destructive cluster of personality syndromes that is increasingly seen. As Susan Whitbourne, writing in a Psychology Today article, sums up in Read More ›

Taxonomic nested hierarchies don’t support Darwinism or common descent, actually the opposite. Michael Denton convincingly argued that nested hierarchies can be used to argue against macro evolution. If the fish are always fish, then they will never be birds, reptiles, apes, or humans. From a forgotten book called Catholics and the Theory of Evolution, there is a quote of Platnick and Nelson who were pioneers of transformed cladism: ‘Darwinism . . . is, in short, a theory that has been put to the test and found false’ Dawkins was clearly unhappy with the claims of Nelson and Platnick and the transformed cladists: It isn’t that any transformed cladists are themselves fundamentalist creationists. My own interpretation is that they enjoy an Read More ›

Reading through a recent article by KeithS over at The Skeptical Zone, I was reminded of the following lyrics from the musical Annie Get Your Gun: Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything Better than you. No, you can’t. Yes, I can. No, you can’t. Yes, I can. No, you can’t. Yes, I can, Yes, I can! The article, which is entitled, Things That IDers Don’t Understand, Part 1 — Intelligent Design is not compatible with the evidence for common descent, argues that evolution guided by an Intelligent Designer fares much worse – in fact, trillions of times worse – than unguided Darwinian evolution as an explanation of how living things arose in all their Read More ›

As observant readers will doubtless be aware, the generous pre-order deal (steep discount + free shipping + 4 free digital books) for Stephen Meyer’s forthcoming book, Darwin’s Doubt, was extended into the month of May by popular demand. Click here to take advantage now! You can also listen to this ‘ID the Future’ podcast featuring Casey Luskin’s interview with Stephen Meyer about his new book. This is not to be missed.

Johns Hopkins invited creationist Ben Carson to speak at the 2013 graduation. Unfortunately, he chose to withdraw as the speaker because gay rights activists complained about Carson’s comments against gay marriage. What is notable is that it is probably well known by now at Johns Hopkins that Carson is a creationist, and that didn’t stop the Johns Hopkins from inviting him to speak. Ben Carson Withdraws as Johns Hopkins Graduation Speaker Dr. Ben Carson announced Wednesday that he is withdrawing as graduation speaker at Johns Hopkins University, ceding to demands from students concerned about his controversial recent comments about gay marriage. “Given all the national media surrounding my statements as to my belief in traditional marriage, I believe it would Read More ›