2014

Living things appear to be designed for a purpose. That statement is entirely non-controversial. Even the world’s most famous materialist admits it: “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design (New York; Norton, 1986), 1. I will go one step further and assert that the appearance of design in living things is far from ambiguous or equivocal; it is overwhelming. Honest materialists do not dispute this assertion either. Dawkins again: Living things “overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker . . .” Id., 21. To be sure, Dawkins Read More ›

Coyne is not an engineer. He’s sort of a glorified fruitfly farmer. He doesn’t have engineering insights and it shows. He’s also one of the most militant ideologues out there ( protesting the appointment of Francis Collins MD,PhD as head of NIH because Collins was a Christian). Jerry Coyne argues the human eyes is poorly designed: The human eye, though eminently functional, is imperfect—certainly not the sort of eye an engineer would create from scratch … the nerves and blood vessels that attach to our photoreceptor cells are on the inside rather than the outside of the eye, running over the surface of the retina. … The whole system is like a car in which all the wires to the Read More ›

I’m not aware of any policy restriction on providing links to TalkOrigins at UD. I’ve linked to TalkOrigins a lot since I’ve criticized it so much in the past. In this case, I actually concur with one of Gordon Davisson’s essays there, and I think it rightly earned Post of the Month 14 years ago at TalkOrigins. When I teach ID, I feel the ideas must defensible to science undergraduate and graduate students and science faculty (physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering). The internet has been an opportunity to vet some of my ideas. Gordon has been of great assistance with his balanced and insightful critiques of my essays at UD. I link to the Gordon’s essay because we independently arrived at Read More ›

I have been watching. Just now: A world-famous chemist tells the truth: there’s no… (199,761) The surge has tapered but the interest plainly continues at a steady pace.  END

This essay is intended to give a short overview of textbook understanding of Shannon Information, Entropy, Uncertainty in thermodynamics and Intelligent Design. Technical corrections are welcome. The phrases “Shannon Information”, “Shannon Uncertainty”, “Shannon Entropy” are all the same. The most familiar every day usage of the notion of Shannon Information is in the world of computing and digital communication where the fundamental unit is the bit. When someone transmits 1 megabit of information, the sender is sending 1 megabit of Shannon information, and the receiver is getting a reduction of 1 megabit of Shannon Uncertainty, and the ensemble of all possible configurations of 1 megabits has 1 million degrees of freedom as described by 1 megabit of Shannon entropy. The Read More ›