November 2014

Keith S is right. Sort of. As highlighted in a recent post by vjtorley, Keith S has argued that Dembski’s Design Inference is a circular argument. As Keith describes the argument: In other words, we conclude that something didn’t evolve only if we already know that it didn’t evolve. CSI is just window dressing for this rather uninteresting fact. In its most basic form, a specified complexity argument takes a form something like: Premise 1) The evolution of the bacterial flagellum is astronomically improbable. Premise 2) The bacterial flagellum is highly specified. Conclusion) The bacterial flagellum did not evolve. Keith’s point is that in order to show that the bacterial flagellum did not evolve, we have to first show that Read More ›

A week ago, VJT put up a useful set of excerpts from Axe’s 2010 paper on proteins and barriers they pose to Darwinian, blind watchmaker thesis evolution. During onward discussions, it proved useful to focus on some excerpts where Axe spoke to some numerical considerations and the linked idea of islands of specific function deeply isolated in AA sequence and protein fold domain space, though he did not use those exact terms. I think it worth the while to headline the clips, for reference (instead of leaving them deep in a discussion thread): _________________ ABSTRACT: >> Four decades ago, several scientists suggested that the impossibility of any evolutionary process sampling anything but a miniscule fraction of the possible protein sequences Read More ›

The brainchild of Francis Collins, who now heads the National Institutes of Health, BioLogos has taken in nearly $9 million from the Templeton Foundation and millions more from other donors. BioLogos in turn offers grants to church, parachurch, and academic leaders and organizations that promote “evolutionary creation.” See here

One of the more thoughtful critics of Intelligent Design is Keith S, from over at The Skeptical Zone. Recently, Keith S has launched a barrage of criticisms of Intelligent Design on Uncommon Descent, to which I have decided to reply in a single post. Is Dembski’s design inference circular? Keith S’s first charge is that Intelligent Design proponents have repeatedly ignored an argument he put forward two years ago in a comment on a post at TSZ (19 October 2012, at 5:28 p.m.), showing that Dr. William Dembski’s design inference is circular. Here is his argument: I’ll contribute this, from a comment of mine in the other thread. It’s based on Dembski’s argument as presented in Specification: The Pattern That Read More ›

No, really, this is what their headline reads (if not redacted): “Chinese microscopic fossil find challenges Darwin’s theory” Apparently, they are allowed to talk that way in China. Fancy. The Cambria explosion proved that most major animal phyla were fully developed in this relatively short time. This troubled Darwin because the absence of transitional forms has always been problematic for his theory. Darwin had hoped that these intermediates would appear in the fossil record but this has not happened. Evolutionists say that these “missing links” were either too small or too soft-bodied to be fossilised in the pre-Cambrian layer. What is more troubling for Darwin’s theory is the Chinese discovery of microscopic fossils of soft sponge embryos in this pre-Cambrian Read More ›

Here’s a thought experiment readers might find interesting. Consider the following description of an entity: It cannot in principle be detected empirically. It might, nevertheless, exist. If it does exist, the scope of its explanatory power would be breathtaking in that it would explain quite literally everything except for its own existence. Even though it cannot be detected empirically, some people infer its existence based on their interpretation of actual observations. It has been invoked to explain the apparent “fine tuning of the cosmos” for the existence of life. It has been invoked to explain the origin of life on earth in the face of the extreme improbability that life would arise spontaneously. It has existential implications for many religious Read More ›