GilDodgen

Over at ARN, David Tyler has a blog post entitled We must “understand that there is no serious scientific challenge to evolution.” It references an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The article was authored by Eugenie Scott and Nicholas Matzke of the National Center for Science Education, an organization whose sole purpose appears to be the promotion of Darwinian orthodoxy in publicly funded education, and the suppression of any and all scientific dissent from any aspect of the “theory,” by any means available.

David Tyler:

Eugenie Scott and Nicholas Matzke, from the National Center for Science Education, offer their analysis of how ID is making “a serious challenge not in the world of science, but in the world of public educational policy.” It is a paper that reworks the NCSE position without contributing any new ideas to the debate.

These authors reveal an unqualified confidence that evolutionary theory has the answers. It is “replete with explanations for complex biological structures.” It “continues to make progress in explaining such fascinating structures”. They assert that there is “no serious scientific challenge to evolution.” Underpinning theory are “fertile and unifying evolutionary principles.”

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The British Centre for “Science” Education (Great Britain’s attempt to emulate the NCSE in the U.S.) appears to have faded into the oblivion, meaninglessness, and ultimate absurdity that its philosophy has attempted to promote. From BCSE Revealed: They are whittled down to the real hard core. Those who are left are those who simply refuse to believe it has failed: whether because they’ve invested too much time or reputation for their pride to admit it, or whatever.

I have no “philosophical axe to grind” in this discussion. Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me. I am simply stating the dilemma to which our present fundamental conception of physical law leads us. I see no way round it; but whether future developments of science will find an escape I cannot predict. The dilemma is this: Surveying our surroundings, we find them to be far from a “fortuitous concourse of atoms”. The picture of the world, as drawn in existing physical theories shows arrangements of the individual elements for which the odds are multillions to 1 against an origin by chance. Some people would like to call this non-random feature of the world purpose or design; but I will call it non-committally anti-chance. We are unwilling in physics that anti-chance plays any part in the reactions between the systems of billions of atoms and quanta that we study; and indeed all our experimental evidence goes to show that these are governed by the laws of chance. Accordingly, we sweep anti-chance out of the laws of physics–out of the differential equations. Naturally, therefore, it reappears in the boundary conditions, for it must be got into the scheme somewhere. By sweeping it far enough away from the sphere of our current physical problems, we fancy we have got rid of it. It is only when some of us are so misguided as to try to get back billions of years into the past that we find the sweepings all piled up like a high wall and forming a boundary–a beginning of time–which we cannot climb over.

A way out of the dilemma has been proposed which seems to have found favour with a number of scientific workers. I oppose it because I think it is untenable, not because of any desire to retain the present dilemma, I should like to find a genuine loophole. But that does not alter my conviction that the loophole that is at present being advocated is a blind alley.

Eddington AS. 1931. The end of the world: from the standpoint of mathematical physics. Nature 127:447-453.
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Even the most vociferous and vehement ID opponents (e.g., Richard Dawkins) admit that design in nature appears to be self-evident. Why then, the heroic efforts to explain design away, with such silliness as random variation and natural selection providing the engine that produced highly sophisticated biological software and information-processing systems? I remain completely bewildered by the fact that intelligent, educated people cannot recognize this obvious act of denial and desperation. On the other hand, perhaps they don’t want to recognize it, because evidence and logic might conflict with what they want to believe — that there is no design or ultimate purpose to anything. An obvious question remains: What might motivate this denial of the obvious? I believe that the Read More ›

I think that one of the reasons for the irrational hatred of the ID movement is that in the last 50 years a scientific tide has reversed. The hard sciences (as opposed to Darwinian theory, evolutionary psychology and the like), which for centuries had demystified the world and made the transcendent seem increasingly irrelevant, suddenly started providing solid evidence that a materialistic worldview was untenable. The universe was fine-tuned for life, and living things were fundamentally based on highly sophisticated information and information-processing systems. The fact that those of us in the ID movement are promoting public awareness of this has enraged those with a philosophical commitment to materialism, those who counted on the hard sciences to provide ever-increasing support Read More ›

The real source of the antipathy and vitriol directed toward the ID movement is Fear Of Exposure. The fight against academic freedom is rooted in the worry that Darwinism’s weakness will be revealed… […] The teaching of evolution today in public schools is frozen in the past where it is based largely on a mid-20th century understanding of biology. Research in the biological sciences has moved far beyond that understanding because of the hopeless inability of Darwinian principles to explain the complexity observed in living things. […] There is a revolution under way in the biological sciences. A whole new field of biology called “Systems Biology” has emerged during the past 10 or 15 years. This revolution is just as Read More ›

When considering design versus no design in both cosmology and biology, one thing seems strikingly obvious: The default position is backwards.

Concerning cosmology, the fine-tuning of the universe for life would appear to be prima facie evidence for design. One can either choose to believe (at least provisionally) that this is the case, based on some evidence, or one can choose to believe in an infinitude of hypothetical alternate universes, which are in principle undetectable, based on no evidence.
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A bunch of people are mad at me for my “wasted life” comment, and I confess to an injudicious choice of words. Of course I don’t believe that Ken Miller’s, or anyone else’s life is a total waste just because one’s professional career might be invested in something that turns out to be wrong. But I do think there is a valid point concerning one’s professional life investment and objectivity in evaluating evidence, and I think that Darwinism has caused countless people to invest their careers in a pursuit that will turn out to have been a waste of time and effort. What paleontologist would want to admit that he invested his life’s work in looking for transitional intermediates that Read More ›

Over at evolutionnews.org Casey Luskin blogs about how Ken Miller, in a BBC documentary entitled A War on Science, distorts and misrepresents Bill Dembski’s methods for inferring intelligent design. Ken’s constant distortion of ID theory is very revealing. He can’t address the real arguments, evidence, or logic, so he makes stuff up. It’s like what Judge Jones said regarding irreducible complexity, that Behe ignores co-option, as though co-option is a real phenomenon and not just a made-up story that defies evidence and logic. Miller continues this silly tradition with reference to the Type 3 secretory system, as if this should end all debate about the power of Darwinian mechanisms to produce highly complex and functionally integrated biological machinery. Personally, I Read More ›

Computer simulations of global warming and Darwinian mechanisms in biology should not be trusted, because they can’t be subjected to empirical verification. In these two areas, computer simulations and models can degenerate into nothing more than digital just-so stories — in one category about the future, and in the other about the past. The programmer can produce whatever outcome he desires, by choosing initial assumptions and algorithms, and weighting various factors to produce a desired output.

Unfortunately, when those in the general public hear the words “scientific” and “computer model,” they often assume that unassailable truth has been established.

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Magicians have been doing it for centuries: using misdirection to keep attention off what is really going on. Darwinists have refined this art when it comes to defending their story: talk about religious motives, define “science” so that ID cannot be considered, fear-monger about the dangers of theocracy and the collapse of science education… etcetera, and so forth. Above all, divert attention from the substantive issues, like the origin of biological information. Listen to Michael Egnor here on that subject. Now for the just-for-fun part: Check out this PowerPoint file of a David Copperfield illusion. Who can solve it and identify the misdirection?

Mustafa Akyol presents a report on Turkey’s first ID conference here. Speakers included Paul Nelson, David Berlinski, Mustafa, John Lennox, and Alpaslan Açıkgenç.

For those not familiar with Mustafa, you can listen to lectures by him at the MacLaurin Institute website (scroll down and look for his name). He shared the podium with UD’s Denyse O’Leary during one lecture.

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On another UD thread there was discussion about an amazing piece of biological molecular machinery and the deficiencies of Darwinian processes to account for it. The bottom line is that Darwinists are looking in the wrong place for an explanation (random variation and natural selection), just as alchemists did when trying to figure out how to transform lead into gold (chemistry doesn’t deal with the nucleus of the atom). They both represent entirely inapplicable explanatory categories for the problems under consideration.
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For those who missed it, check out this animation presented by DaveScot.

I find the phenomenon of the DNA supercoiling problem and its biochemical solution even more compelling than examples like protein synthesis and the bacterial flagellum, since twisted ropes are familiar to everyone. This might make for another highly persuasive ID mascot.
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Here’s a thought about anthropic “coincidences.” Michael Denton, in his book Nature’s Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe (a tour de force which cannot be summarized here), points out that if metals could not have been smelted and refined at temperatures reachable through carbon-based fire, technology could never have arisen. What a happy coincidence. One can’t make cars and computers from wood and stone.
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