For those of you who don’t know, TED is a convention of (usually) world-class thinkers who each give a 15-minute talk about a subject. Many of the people in TED are thought leaders. Some of them, however, get in merely because they have written a popular or controversial book. In one of this year’s TED Read More…
Author: johnnyb
Applied Intelligent Design, Part 2: ID and Software Engineering
In part 1 of this series, I discussed one application of ID concepts to the biological sciences. In this post, I’m going to move my focus into two areas where I apply Intelligent Design to my own field of software engineering.
Why I Care About Teaching the Controversy
I realized after my previous post about Academic Freedom legislation that I did not mention why it is that I care about the ability for teachers to “teach the controversy”. I have been told by several research leaders that any attempt to change curriculum, or do anything with public schools, is a Bad Idea™. I Read More…
A Modest Proposal for Academic Freedom Bills
One endless discussion that always happens with the proposal of academic freedom bills in state legislatures is that the Darwin camp always says that they are about introducing religion into science classrooms. Even if the bill says, “this does not permit anyone to introduce religion into the classrooms,” the pro-Darwin crowd somehow misses this clause, Read More…
Applied Intelligent Design, Part 1
This is the first of probably three posts on applied Intelligent Design. This is not an extensive list of applications of ID concepts, but I thought that giving people examples of how ID can be not only interesting and informative but actually useful in solving both biological and engineering problems.
ID and Common Descent
Many, many people seem to misunderstand the relationship between Intelligent Design and Common Descent. Some view ID as being equivalent to Progressive Creationism (sometimes called Old-Earth Creationism), others seeing it as being equivalent to Young-Earth Creationism. I have argued before that the core of ID is not about a specific theory of origins. In fact, Read More…
Are Falk and Ayala ID Supporters?
We’ve been discussing Falk and Ayala’s theological support for evolution. However, while reading Falk’s arguments, I came to the realization that the only way Falk’s arguments about evolution freeing God from responsibility for the created world make sense is if they assume Intelligent Design is true.
Ruse / Dembski Debate at the University of Oklahoma
Tonight at the University of Oklahoma there was a debate between Michael Ruse and William Dembski. I must say, it was one of the most cordial events I’ve been at, especially compared to last week’s event, where the question and answer session got pretty ugly. The topic was whether or not Intelligent Design was science. Read More…
Update on Darwin and the University of Oklahoma
Today there was a great article in the OU Daily about the controversy surrounding the Darwin 2009 Project at OU. Not only were all parties fairly represented (at least as best as I could tell), but they even got the definition of ID right!
Controversy Brewing over the Darwin 2009 Project at the University of Oklahoma
This year, the University of Oklahoma is celebrating Darwin with the Darwin 2009 Project. It appears from the speaker list (at least for the names I am familiar with) that where this project touches on the mechanisms for evolution or the wider debate about its potential implications for other areas of life, this is going Read More…
Book Review: Slaughter of the Dissidents
I just got through reading Slaughter of the Dissidents, and I must say, it is fantastic. I was a little skeptical at first, simply because the title of the book was so extreme. After reading it, I still think that the title is extreme (there are real slaughters of people happening in different parts of Read More…
The Production of Variations – a Case Study in Spiders
Last week I posted about issues with the production of variation that Darwinists often overlook. So then, the question becomes, what is the mechanism for variation production? In a recent book, called Eight-Legged Marvels: Beauty and Design in the World of Spiders, Chad Arment invites us to examine that very question. In the introduction, Arment Read More…
Thoughts on Parameterized vs. Open-Ended Evolution and the Production of Variability
Many of the advocates of neo-Darwinism argue that abilities of evolution is obvious. The idea is that, given variability in a population, selection and/or environmental change will cause a population to move forward in fitness. Basically, the formula is variability + overproduction + selection = evolution. The problem is that the equation hinges on “variability” and its abilities to create the kinds of variations the Darwinists need.
Neo-Darwinism Impeding Research… Again
Remember the dark days of vestigal organs? You know, back when there was a list of 180 vestigal organs? Or remember the days of junk DNA – when repetitive DNA, large regions of non-protein-coding DNA, and all sorts of mobile DNA were assumed to be non-functional simply because the investigators had assumed Darwinism rather than Read More…
A Personal Story about Random Mutation and Selection
I’ve been reading a lot of the classic literature lately on mutation and selection from the 20s, 30s, and 40s. It’s interesting to read old science material with the advantage of hindsight. It’s like watching a movie — you might know what’s going to happen next, but the characters don’t. And so, reading Muller’s experiments Read More…