Clive Hayden

The Discovery Institute is having their annual Summer Seminar on Intelligent Design in Seattle Washington this summer from July 9 – 17th, 2010:

The Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute announces an extraordinary opportunity for college students in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities to participate in an intensive nine-day seminar that will prepare them to make research contributions advancing the growing science of intelligent design (ID).

Intelligent Design in the Natural Sciences is designed for college-level juniors, seniors, and first-year graduate students who intend to pursue graduate studies in the natural sciences or the philosophy of science.

Intelligent Design in the Social Sciences and Humanities is designed for college-level juniors, seniors, and first-year graduate students who intend to pursue graduate studies in the social sciences (including law) or the humanities (including theology).

At Biologos, Francis Beckwith has written what appears to be a biography of his interactions and considerations with Intelligent Design in two parts: Part 1 and Part 2. Thomas Cudworth has already done a wonderful job of explaining and engaging the content of the two-part blog. Since I had already started my response to Beckwith (before seeing Cudworth’s entry), I thought I would go ahead and publish my entry.

Beckwith’s definition of ID is that, at its core, ID is comprised of the arguments of irreducible and specified complexity:

At the time I was never fully at ease with the Behe/Dembski arguments that relied on notions of specified and irreducible complexity (which I now see as the essence of the ID movement).

There is, of course, the “fine-tuning of the universe, and our privileged place in it” argument that comprises ID, as propounded by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Wesley Richards in their book The Privileged Planet. This cosmological form of ID, along with the biological position, was what convinced Antony Flew to convert to deism from atheism. The point it that ID is not confined to biology, to begin with, nor is it confined to arguments of negations of natural causes, as Beckwith seems to assume in his assessment of irreducible and specified complexity. ID is comprised of positive arguments, not only that chance alone (non-intelligence) cannot account for the particulars in nature that appear designed, but that the formation and information of nature requires an intelligence. This is a positive argument in and of itself, regardless of how the design gets implemented (whether it’s through nature or through some other medium, doesn’t really matter to ID). It’s really an argument about intelligence v. non-intelligence.

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A debate which took place last month at the Imperial College of London concerning the documentary film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (following a screening of the film) is available for your perusal here. Film Screening and Debate Details: “Unbelievable?”, a  Premier Christian Radio program (hosted by Justin Brierly), screened the film at Imperial College London, February, 2010. Participants: Against the film: Atheist Prof Susan Blackmore (Psychology, Plymouth) & Theistic evolutionist Prof Keith Fox (Biology, Southampton). For the film: Prof Steve Fuller (Sociology, Warwick) & Dr. Alastair Noble (Former Inspector of Schools). Panellists on both sides of the ID debate give their reactions to the film’s claims that scientists are not free to question Darwinian evolution and the link the film Read More ›

I would like to encourage ID supporters that can attend a conference in Boston’s North Shore this summer to attend the following conference being offered by Biologos: BioLogos-Gordon College Conference 2010: “A Dialog on Creation” The BioLogos Foundation will offer summer courses in science-and-religion starting in the summer of 2010. These courses provide short 1–3 week overviews of the key ideas in developing a sophisticated and mature understanding of life’s origins in an explicitly Christian context. Participants will have the opportunity to interact with leaders in the field of science-and-religion who will lead discussions of these core concepts. The BioLogos-Gordon workshop provides a unique opportunity to explore questions at the intersection of science & faith. In this inaugural BioLogos workshop, Read More ›

Some say that journals should be more open to controversial subjects, while their peers disagree. If these two groups were to start a peer reviewed journal consisting of what ought to comprise the peer review process, it would never get off the ground, due entirely to peer disagreement. In this case it is two people and their respective advisory boards that disagree. The journal Medical Hypotheses has an editor named Bruce G. Charlton, who consults, on occasion, an editorial advisory board as to what should be published in the journal and what shouldn’t. His point of view is that he is a chooser, not a changer, as to what journal entries are to be published. He doesn’t re-write the song after it’s been recorded, he only decided whether it should be played on the air. This isn’t satisfactory to Elsevier, who has asked Charlton to either resign immediately or implement a series of changes, including a traditional peer-review system, according to this article at The Scientist.com.

In addition to instituting a peer-review system, an external advisory board assembled by Elsevier also recommends that articles on controversial subjects, such as any that support racism, not be considered for publication.

The journal’s editor-in-chief Bruce Charlton told The Scientist that such changes are “vehemently opposed” by the editorial advisory board, as well as at least 150 scientists who have published in the journal.

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Will Provine is scheduled to do two debates at Grace Community Church. The first debate will be March 12th, and the second March 13th.

Description:

DEBATE 002: “Flight in birds and bats: Is evolution or creation the best guide?”

(Provine vs. McIntosh)

Birds and bats have very specialized characteristics that make the phenomena of flight possible. What is the ultimate source of those physical characteristics? Is naturalistic evolution the best guide for understanding flight, or does flight indicate the design of a Creator?

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Dr. Dawkins would be happy to debate a bishop, cardinal, Pope, but he won’t debate creationists. What does he think that bishops, cardinals, and Popes are? They are overwhelmingly creationists. And he does debate creation in his books, he just won’t do it in person with the object of his debate in the form of an actual person in William Lane Craig. His word processor doesn’t talk back when he debates creation in writing his books. But He did debate John Lennox, who is, at least, an advocate of Intelligent Design (which he considers to be another form of creation).
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I would like to direct our wonderful readers here at UD to an interesting new website www.originofeverything.com. Their purpose: “Origin of Everything is dedicated to providing leading viewpoints, evidence and arguments for both Intelligent Design and Scientific theories associated with the origin of the universe, life and related subjects. Origin of Everything is designed to promote critical thinking and evaluation ascribable to the concurrent presentation of relevant content for each topic in the Science and Intelligent Design sections. Convenient links allow researchers to quickly navigate between sections without loosing focus. Like these theories, Origin of Everything is a work in progress and is continually enhanced and updated. If you would like to contribute, please email ooe@originofeverything.com.” Please, take a look Read More ›

Richard Dawkins, so he says, wants to improve the forums on his website by implementing some new changes. He wants to keep it “scientific” and “rational”. The forums had, apparently, become a safe haven for Darwinians and atheists to post whatever uninteresting and vile subject matter their atheistic and Darwinian philosophy saw fit. So Dawkins posted a letter announcing the changes to the forums:

Starting a new discussion will require approval, so we ask that you only submit new discussions that are truly relevant to reason and science. Subsequent responses on the thread will not need approval—however anything off topic or violating the new terms of service will be removed…We know some of you will be against this change. We ask that you respect our decision and help make this transition as smooth as possible.

The reaction he received from some of his own Darwinian and atheistic followers was heinous, so he responded:

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I’d like to critique Jason Rosenhouse’s critique of Stephen Barr’s critique of ID. I know, round and round we go, where we stop, no one knows. Rosenhouse appreciates the first paragraph of Barr’s analysis, but is disappointed with the rest. I am disappointed with it all. But Rosenhouse does make a few good points in taking stock of the ID movement’s influence with the public:

I hope he is right about no one being moved toward religious belief by ID writing, but I do not think he is. The ID folks are tapping into deep intuitions people have that complex, functioning structures do not arise from natural, non-intelligent causes. Many are already uncomfortable with the naturalism of modern science and see evolution as dehumanizing and implausible. They like the idea that modern science can provide some rational support for theism. My experiences at ID gatherings suggest to me that an awful lot of people are being led just where they want to go. Certainly the public opinion polls show a great deal of sympathy for ID, to the point of wanting it taught next to evolution in science classes.

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I wonder if Richard Dawkins actually knows any watchmaker. No actual horologist would take his notion of the Blind Watchmaker seriously in accounting for complexity, even as an analogy. If the analogy that is used won’t, in and of itself, work, then it doesn’t explain what it intends to illuminate by using it as an example of comparison. If there cannot be a blind watchmaker, there cannot be an analogy for a  blind watchmaker shedding light on some other mystery. It would be like saying the mechanism of natural selection accounting for evolution creating complexity and biodiversity is analogous to a blind abracadabra. It explains nothing.  But for those who are really interested in the language of watchmaking, and how absurd it is that it should be conducted by a blind and dumb process as Richard Dawkins contends (blind because it has no “purpose” or “end” in mind, and dumb because it has no mind, no Intelligent Design) then these videos may interest you. And of course we keep in mind that the living organism, down to the nano-technical scale within even the most “simple” cell, is staggeringly more complex than any watch ever designed.

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“THE RETURN TO RELIGION” from THE WELL AND THE SHALLOWS, by G. K. Chesterton

“IN the days when Huxley and Herbert Spencer and the Victorian agnostics were trumpeting as a final truth the famous hypothesis of Darwin, it seemed to thousands of simple people almost impossible that religion should survive. It is all the more ironic that it has not only survived them all, but it is a perfect example (perhaps the only real example) of what they called the Survival of the Fittest. It so happens that it does really and truly fit in with the theory offered by Darwin; which was something totally different from most of the theories accepted by Darwinians. This real original theory of Darwin has since very largely broken down in the general field of biology and botany; but it does actually apply to this particular argument in the field of religious history.

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Dr. Dembski and Dr. Meyer have made the top of the list of ID science breakthroughs for 2009: On this episode of ID the Future Casey Luskin interviews Dennis Wagner, executive director of the Access Research Network discussing ARN’s top 5 Darwin and Design science stories for 2009. Listen in to learn how the work of Stephen Meyer and William Dembski topped the list of ID science accomplishments for 2009. Meyer and Dembski Breakthroughs Top ID Science Stories fo… Intelligent Design The Future

Hoax as defined by Merriam-Webster’s dictionary: : to trick into believing or accepting as genuine something false and often preposterous According to a recent article, Tamiflu doesn’t prevent the flu, nor does it cure the flu once someone has it. The notion that Tamiflu has any efficacy in fighting the flu is actually the result of a well orchestrated hoax, relying on faulty science and marketing schemes, it says. This sounds familiar. The “Anthropocentric-Global-Warming-Climate-Change-Greenhouse-Gas-Effect” hoax comes to mind as well. So does the Darwinian notion of an “Undirected-Evolution-Of-A-Molecule-To-Man” hoax. The fraudulent science on all fronts, just to promote a particular fancy, is really alarming. Remember Ida and Ardi and the Piltdown Man and Haeckel’s embryos? Tamiflu’s maker, Roche…claims there are Read More ›

B & H Publishing Group, publisher of Dr. Dembski’s excellent new theodicy The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World, is sponsoring a video contest at www.godornot.com. C. S. Lewis wrote in his journal, after the passing of his wife Joy Davidman Gresham from cancer, “Sooner or later I must face the question in plain language. What reason have we, except our own desperate wishes, to believe that God is, by any standard we can conceive, ‘good’?” The journal entries written during his mourning were later to become the book A Grief Observed, which he initially published under the pseudonym N. W. Clerk. The publisher believes that the above quote from Lewis is the central question Read More ›