GilDodgen

As many UD readers know, I am a classical pianist by training since the age of seven. The piano and classical music have been a tremendous inspiration all my life, and this was my refuge during four decades in the hideous darkness of atheism. After 2.5 centuries, great, uplifting works of musical art such as Handel’s Messiah endure. But fear not, we have in the 20th century such great classics as those by the Rolling Stones with these inspirational lyrics: I can’t get no satisfaction, I can’t get no girly action. How far we have come since Handel’s masterwork! HT: Jonathan Wells

On another forum, a colleague used this term to describe the phenomenon I illucidated in the final sentence of my post there. (I’ve reproduced the content of that post below as a blockquote.) My comment was in reference to the widely circulated article, Naked Chimp Reminds Us of Ourselves. The article begins with: “It’s been said that humans are just naked apes. And if you don’t think that’s true, just take a look at Guru, a hairless 20-year-old chimpanzee…” Humans are much more than naked apes. Let me count the ways (with apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning): Agriculture, houses, indoor plumbing, books, symphonies, cars, airplanes, philosophy, churches, hospitals, high-blood-pressure medication, nuclear reactors, magnetic resonance imaging, rockets, parachutes, supersonic aircraft, computer Read More ›

Yet again, we have this utterly meaningless question asked of an electoral candidate during a debate, in an attempt to discredit her. My response, had I been asked this question, would have been as follows: Does evolution mean that living things have changed over time? Does evolution mean universal common ancestry? Does evolution mean that random errors filtered by natural selection explain all of biology, including the origin of the functionally specified information encoded in the base-four digital code of the DNA molecule, along with the information-processing machinery that translates it, performs error detection and repair, and much more? If your definition of “evolution” is the latter, can you supply us with adequate evidence that the probabilistic resources have existed Read More ›

At this writing I see that my post here has 122 responses, and that my post here has 81 responses. After examining all the dialog one thing seems clear to me: The ID versus Darwinian-materialism question must inevitably invade and challenge the core of the human soul. Don’t tell me that anyone doesn’t at least eventually ask the only substantive and meaningful questions: 1) Why am I here? 2) Where did I come from? 3) Is there any ultimate purpose or meaning in my life? If Darwinism is true, the answers to these questions are obvious: 1) No reason. 2) Chemistry and chance, which did not have you in mind. 3) No. You are an ephemeral product of 2). The Read More ›

Because of my many duties and responsibilities I post infrequently at UD. However, I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon: My posts seem to inspire a great amount of debate and very long threads, as is the case here. I have a theory about why this is the case. My thesis is that people like me, a former materialist atheist, who have been influenced by logic, reason, and evidence (i.e., the ID movement) represent the greatest threat to the reigning nihilistic and anti-intellectual Darwinian orthodoxy.

In this comment I included an essay I wrote in 1994 at the behest of a Christian friend, David Pounds, after my conversion from militant atheism to traditional Christianity. Dave encouraged me to write it, but it only chronicles one aspect of the journey (the most significant one). But there was another extremely significant aspect of this journey, which I cannot overemphasize, and that was reading Michael Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, recommended to me by Dave. I was thoroughly schooled in traditional Darwinian orthodoxy, and never gave a thought to the possibility that there might be problems with it. It took me only a few hours over a couple of days to read the book, and my materialistic Read More ›

As many UD readers know, I was once a classical concert pianist. Although I no longer perform classical piano concerts or record (earning a living has precluded this for many years), I still play the piano every day for myself and still have a passion for classical music. I recently discovered something extraordinary: a pianist by the name of Yundi Li, who grew up in relative poverty in China and became the youngest pianist to ever win the International Chopin Competition at the age of 18. At this youtube link you can listen to and see his performances at the competition. The first two works (Chopin Scherzo No. 2 and Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise Brillante, both of which are Read More ›

gpuccio made the following comment on my post Almost Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Design. I always like your posts, which get to the core of issues with admirable simplicity and efficacy. This is my mission and message. The Darwinistic chance-and-necessity-creative-engine nonsense as an explanation for all that exists in living systems — that is currently promoted as “irrefutable science with overwhelming evidence” — is completely out of the ballpark of reality, evidence, and reason. It’s not a close call. It’s a slam dunk that Darwinism cannot account for what we observe in living things. Figuring this out is trivially easy. Darwinists want us to believe the following: Screw things up. Throw wrenches randomly into Read More ›

As we learn more, this is becoming increasingly, transparently obvious. Random errors can screw things up, and — in very rare circumstances — provide a survival advantage in a pathological environment. The notion that random errors filtered by natural selection can account for all that is found in biological systems is a pathetically illogical, hopelessly improbable explanation for the information-processing machinery of the cell. Chemistry is not the basis of life. Chemistry is the medium; information is the message. On the subject of chemistry: The ID movement has thrown a satchel charge of trinitrotoluene into the Darwinian faux-edifice, and blown it to bits (pun intended).

Check out this lecture by Michael Behe about his book, The Edge of Evolution. Two questions posed by members of the audience were of interest to me. Sean Carroll criticized Behe in a review of The Edge for not considering cumulative, sequential mutations, and Carroll used a specific example. Behe points out in the lecture that this specific example was addressed in his book, and that the subject of cumulative selection was addressed in detail. Behe goes on to speak about the resistance of “science” publications to print his rejoinders to his critics, and that the editors often say something like, “Your response would not be of interest to our readers.” Really? Pointing out flagrant misrepresentations — might I even Read More ›

This UD post got me to thinking. I do that from time to time.

On the subject of computational intelligence I have some minor credentials, including a Silver Medal at the first Computer Olympiad in London, sponsored by David Levy of chess fame. You can access the final results of my research and efforts in computational artificial intelligence (AI) here:

If you have a computer with sufficient memory and disk space you can explore the only perfect-play endgame algorithm ever invented for the game of checkers (known as draughts in the UK).

It was my exploration into computational AI that initially caused me to have doubts about the creative powers of the Darwinian mechanism, which I now consider to be a transparent absurdity as an explanation for almost anything of any significance, and certainly not as an explanation for human intelligence.

Here’s why.
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In a bizarre, perverse inversion of the legitimate goal of science — to find the truth wherever the evidence leads — Darwinists continue to turn things upside down. We are constantly assured that if the unwashed, low-IQ masses could just be “educated,” and become “scientifically literate,” they would embrace the chance-and-necessity Darwinian anti-gospel with open arms and no dissent. The endless, droning mantras about the infinitely creative powers of natural selection, the ubiquitous “scientific consensus,” the “finally discovered fossil that finally proves evolution” news releases that appear every few weeks, and all the rest, have nothing whatsoever to do with scientific literacy. Real scientific literacy about biological systems comes from understanding the discoveries of empirical science in the last half Read More ›

Some people have concluded that the hideously complex, functionally integrated information-processing machinery of the cell — with its error-detection-and-repair algorithms and much more — is best explained by an intelligent cause. But this idea is only held by superstitious religious fanatics who want to destroy science and establish a theocracy. That’s the consensus of “scientists” in the academy. The other consensus of “scientists” in the academy is that random errors screwing up computer code can account for everything in biology. Who is thinking logically here? I have no interest in arguing with people who can’t think and don’t want to follow the evidence where it leads, because it’s a lost cause from the outset.

The burden of proof rests with BW proponents, not ID proponents. For those with inquisitive minds, I suggest checking out David Berlinski’s comments here, starting at 41 minutes. As everyone with any sense knows, David Berlinski — a mindless, born-again, Christian religious fanatic — is masquerading as a secular Jewish mathematician while attempting to impose a theocracy and destroy the entire foundation of modern science. I have, on several occasions at UD, proposed that simple mathematical analysis of the available probabilistic resources — even making unrealistically optimistic probabilistic assumptions at every turn — renders totally absurd the claim that the mechanism of random errors filtered by natural selection can account for what we find in living systems beyond the utterly Read More ›

Enjoy!