March 2014

Metaphysical naturalism asserts that nothing exists but matter, space and energy, and therefore every phenomenon is merely the product of particles in motion.  Certain consequences with respect to God and ethics follow inexorably if metaphysical naturalism is a true account of reality.  Perhaps Will Provine summed these up best: 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent. Evolution: Free Will and Punishment and Meaning in Life, Second Annual Darwin Day Celebration Keynote Address, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, February 12, 1998 (abstract) Dawkins agrees: The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if Read More ›

As this is my first OP, I thought it would be good to start with something really basic. And as I like explicit definitions in discussions, what could be better than discussing the definition of design in a place dedicated to the theory of Intelligent Design? Maybe it is too basic to be interesting, but I  believe that is not the case. Indeed, an explicit definition of design is rarely discussed, even here, and when it is discussed it seems to be very controversial, not only with our opponents, but even among those who are in the field of ID. I have tried many times to give my personal definition of design, in the course of different discussions here. I Read More ›

Tragic Mishap has been a long and faithful member of the UD community, and so I’m highlighting a project he is thinking about: I’ve had an idea rolling around in my head for awhile based on Douglas Axe’s research on a 150 residue section of beta-glutamase. He used experiments to come up with a number for the probability of finding a functional fold by mutating it. It was approximately 10^-77. (I’m not sure of the exact number but it doesn’t matter for the illustration.) Ever since becoming aware of that research, I have wondered if it would be possible to theoretically predict such results by simply restricting the type of amino acid substitutions which are allowed. For instance, a protein Read More ›