Yesterday, David Berlinski was interviewed on KBRT radio by Greg Koukl of Stand To Reason. This is one of the best interviews with David I’ve ever heard. Greg is extremely sharp and articulate, and really knows his stuff concerning ID. You can stream the MP3 here. The Berlinski interview begins at 1:52:05.
I was raised an atheist, and was very devout as a kid. I studied astronomy, cosmology, and the origins of the universe. I remember saying to a scientist, “I don’t get it. I read a book that said there was an explosion known as the Big Bang, and that all the laws of physics were fine-tuned to make life possible. Wouldn’t this require design and purpose?” Unfortunately, the response I got was, “Only mindless, uneducated religious fanatics ask that question. It was all an accident. Stop asking stupid questions.” But I wasn’t mindless, uneducated, or a religious fanatic. I was an atheist! A light went off, and I said, “Materialism doesn’t make sense. Design and purpose in the cosmos makes Read More ›
This thread inspired the following observations. The bottom line is that none of Dawkins’ computer programs have any relevance to biological evolution, because of this in WEASEL1: Target:Text=’METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL’; and this in WEASEL2: WRITELN(’Type target phrase in capital letters’); READLN(TARGET); which allows the user to enter the “target” phrase. No search is required, because the solution has been provided in advance. These programs are just hideously inefficient means of printing out what could have been printed out when the program launched. The information for the solution was explicitly supplied by the programmer. Once this is recognized, further conversation about the relevance of the programs to biological evolution is no more illuminating than conjecture about the number Read More ›
The recent brouhaha concerning Mike Behe at BloggingHeads got me to thinking. (I do that from time to time.) I finally figured out why the incensed Darwinists who resigned from BH did so: They are the equivalent of alchemists who have been confronted with knowledge about the nature of the nucleus of the atom. Alchemists thought that they might be able to turn lead into gold through chemistry. (After all, lead is heavy and dense, and gold is too.) Darwinists propose that inanimate matter — coupled with the laws of chance, chemistry, etc. — can produce information-processing systems of incredible sophistication. The alchemist and the Darwinist have been seduced into pursuing analogous rainbows, based on a fundamental misunderstanding about how Read More ›
In the 20th century, a powerful confluence of evidence emerged that essentially eviscerated the creative power of Darwinian mechanisms. This is not hard to figure out. The most “simple” cell is a marvel of functionally integrated information-processing technology. Those who propose that the Darwinian mechanisms of random errors filtered by natural selection explain all of life are living in an era gone by, a time when it was thought that the foundation of life was chemistry, physics, time, and chance. The fossil record is a grand and ever-persistent testimony that Darwin was wrong about gradualism. Simple logic, trivial combinatoric mathematical analysis, and the monstrous problems presented by the likelihood of functional, naturally-selectable intermediates, present overwhelming evidence that Darwinian mechanisms are Read More ›
Greg Koukl of Stand To Reason interviewed Steve Meyer yesterday on Greg’s radio show. The interview (actually more of a dialog) was extremely comprehensive, although it was primarily centered around Meyer’s new book, Signature in the Cell. Greg is extremely bright and articulate, as is Steve, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy the exchange. You can listen to the interview here, or access the mp3 file directly here. Yes, I know, Stand to Reason is a Christian apologetics organization and Greg Koukl is a Christian apologist, but let’s keep the conversation on the topic of the content of the interview, and not get hopelessly lost in a giant digression about how this proves that ID is all about religion instead of Read More ›
On another forum I was alerted to the following, concerning scientific consensus and the debate about continental drift that raged in the first half of the twentieth century: ³The verdict of paleontologists is practically unanimous: almost all agree in opposing [Alfred Wegener’s hypothesis that the continents used to be one land mass and have since drifted apart]… The fact that almost all paleontologists say that the paleontological data oppose the various theories of continental drift should, perhaps, obviate further discussion of this point … It must be almost unique in scientific history for a group of students admittedly without special competence in a given field thus to reject the all but unanimous verdict of those who do have such competence.² Read More ›
Once upon a time people thought that the sun revolved around the earth because this was intuitive. They were wrong. Once upon a time people thought that the moon revolved around the earth because it was intuitive. They were right. Therefore, intuition can’t be trusted. Good enough. Evidence eventually confirmed the truth in both cases. Then along came neo-Darwinism in the 20th century. Intuition and the simple mathematics of combinatorics suggest that random errors and throwing out stuff that doesn’t work can’t account for highly complex information-processing machinery and the information it processes in biological systems. There is no evidence, hard science, or mathematical analysis that can give any credibility to the proposed power of the Darwinian mechanism in this Read More ›
In another thread a fellow who goes by Legendary made some rather derisive comments about a suggestion I once made, concerning making computer programs that purport to model biological evolution more realistic. The suggestion was half serious and half tongue-in-cheek, since it would be impractical.
My argument was as follows: Computer programs that purport to model biological evolution invariably isolate the effects of “mutations” to only those aspects of the “organism” that have a chance of helping the organism approach the desired goal (EQU in the case of Avida, for example). But this ignores an extremely important aspect of modeling living systems.
Random mutations, if they are truly random, will affect, and potentially damage, any aspect of the organism, including its ability to survive and reproduce. The computer program, OS, and hardware represent the features of the simulation that keep the organism alive and allow it to reproduce, but this is artificially isolated from the effects of mutations.
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In our home we have six computers (distributed among me, my wife, and two daughters): two Macs, two Windows machines, and two Linux (Unix) machines. I’m the IT (Information Technology) or IS (Information Systems) guy in the household — whatever is is. A chronic problem rears its ugly head on a regular basis when I attempt to update any of our computer systems: Software programs are often interdependent. DLLs are dynamic link libraries of executable code which are accessed by multiple programs, in order to save memory and disk space. But this interdependence can cause big problems. If the DLL is updated but the accessing program is not, all hell will break loose and the program will either severely malfunction Read More ›
Last evening I posted the following, and within a short period of time the Darwinbots descended upon it, challenging my expertise in two highly sophisticated areas of computational science, AI and FEA, fields in which I have the goods to demonstrate that I know what I am talking about. One commenter even asserted that the physics involved in an LS-DYNA simulation cannot be represented with mathematical precision. Yes they can. And it works.
At this point I decided that I have nothing further to offer. If some people cannot recognize that the information-processing systems encoded in biological systems defy naturalistic explanation and suggest a design inference, I cannot help them, and they are free to continue to pursue a phantom.
Farewell, and best wishes to all.
Gil
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In DonaldM’s post (‘Analyze and Evaluate’ Are the New Code Words for ‘Creationism’) discussion ensued about high school students and challenges to orthodox evolutionary theory.
One of the ploys of Darwinists is to pretend (and especially to try to fool young students into thinking) that evolutionary theory is like real science (mathematics, chemistry, physics, or electrical, mechanical, aeronautical, software, or other engineering disciplines) — when it is not. It’s Mickey Mouse stuff pretending to be hard science, and is not difficult to understand and therefore not difficult to challenge.
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Someone by the name of skeech is cluttering up UD with impervious sophistry and wasting a lot of our time.
His/her latest thesis is that “according to biologists…” there is a “credible possibility that small incremental changes could have developed massive increases in biological information in a short time — followed by stasis.”
So, skeech assures us that “biologists” are universally agreed upon this proposition?
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In Bill Dembski’s thread, No Major Conceptual Leaps, I posted a comment about the evidential, logical, and probabilistic vacuity of the Darwinian co-option hypothesis. (I use the word hypothesis with reservation. A hypothesis in a domain such as this should at least be based on a minimal, mathematical probabilistic analysis.)
In response to my comment, another commenter offered this as a refutation.
This text from Deborah A. McLennan, of Evo Edu Outreach, is utterly embarrassing for her cause, because it makes the case for design, just as Tim Berra did with his infamous blunder.
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There has been some discussion at UD about computational search algorithms, which is one of my specialties. Just for fun, I’ve included some C source code here (as a .txt file), which is part of a research project. I’ll send a free set of my classical piano albums to the first person who runs the code and publishes the program output in the comments below, along with a correct guess as to what the ultimate purpose of the search algorithm is. Please provide the following information: CPU clock speed and compiler used. EIL members are not eligible.