Alister McGrath is a well-known Christian theologian, priest, and author of many apologetic books. In one of them, “The Dawkins Delusion”, he fiercely opposes the pseudo intellectual arrogance of Dawkins’ atheism. In general I appreciate much McGrath’s work in defense of theism. For this reason I sincerely regret the need to criticize some of his […]
Author: niwrad
Animal instincts and meta-programming
The best book I have read about ethology is “Nature’s I.Q. — Extraordinary animal behaviors that defy evolution”, by Balazs Hornyanszky and Istvan Tasi, Torchlight Publishing Inc. 2009. I suggest reading it. The authors provide a rich summary of almost all animal behaviors about predation, defense, construction of complex structures (webs, nets, traps…), disguise, deception, […]
Is ID about internal or external teleology?
Some Aristotelian Neo-Thomists (E. Feser call them “A-T philosophers”) accuse intelligent design (ID) of being an expression of the modern mechanistic reductionist quantificationist mindset, and of denying an immanent teleology in nature. I would argue that the difference between internal and external teleology shouldn’t divide ID and A-T. ID doesn’t deny immanent teleology in nature, […]
Failure of the “compensation argument” and implausibility of evolution
Granville Sewell and Daniel Styer have a thing in common: both wrote an article with the same title “Entropy and evolution”. But they reach opposite conclusions on a fundamental question: Styer says that the evolutionist “compensation argument” (henceforth “ECA”) is ok, Sewell says it isn’t. Here I briefly explain why I fully agree with Granville. […]
The illusion of organizing energy
The 2nd law of statistical thermodynamics states that in a closed system any natural transformation goes towards the more probable states. The states of organization are those more improbable, then transformations spontaneously go towards non-organization, so to speak. Since evolution would be spontaneous organization, evolution disagrees with the 2nd law. The tendency expressed in the […]
The “quine dilemma” of evolution
Sorry if this post is a bit for computer programmers, anyway I trust that also the others can grasp the overall picture. Evolutionists claim that what it takes to evolution to work is simply “a populations of replicators, random variations on them, and a competition for survival or resources”. Today we will try to partially […]
Cell duplication, biocybernetics in action
John von Neumann, in his mid-1950s ground breaking studies about the mathematical theory of self-reproducing automata, argued that self-replication basically involves: — import of materials; — symbolic description/instructions; — memory; — constructor; — controller. He developed his theory before the discovery of DNA and the cellular machinery based on information processing. Here I will deal […]
Self-organization, a misnomer
The term “self-organization” is widely used with relation to many phenomena: crystals, laser, Bénard’s heat convection cells, Prigogine’s dissipative non-equilibrium open systems, oscillating chemical reactions, Eigen’s autocatalytic cycles, chaotic systems, origin of life, cellular replication, homeostasis, morphogenesis, embryological developments… About this list there is an important conceptual distinguo to do and a possible misunderstanding to […]
Difference between Organization and Order
In my previous post Silver Asiatic asked: “What do you mean by organization being of a higher order than simple order? Why don’t these [natural] forces produce organization? Those are better areas for discussion, in my opinion.” (comment #122) Organization I think the distinction organization vs. order is fundamental in the design / evolution debate. […]
Non-probabilistic design arguments
Biochemist Michael Behe has stated: “A man from a primitive culture who sees an automobile might guess that it was powered by the wind or by an antelope hidden under the car, but when he opens up the hood and sees the engine he immediately realizes that it was designed. In the same way biochemistry […]
The Snowflake Objection
Against the ID arguments based on improbability and specification some evolutionists oppose the “snowflake objection”, which sounds something like this: “Also snowflakes are highly improbable, yet it snows, then the ID arguments fail”. Such objection is baseless. To understand why we must first state a premise. Probability is not an absolute concept or measure. The […]
Thomas Aquinas contra Transformism
In my previous post Synthesis-versus-Analysis I dealt with the distinction between “true whole” and “false whole”. Now let’s see how that had relations with Aquinas and his refutation of biological macroevolution. About the origin of man and the relations between his soul and body, Aquinas was clear: Reply to objection 3: Some have claimed that […]
Synthesis versus Analysis
I dedicate this post to our Denyse O’Leary (UD News desk), who suggested me to deal a bit with this topic. — A “whole” (or “all” or “total”) can be a “true whole” or a “false whole”. A “true whole” (or “unit”) is anterior and independent from the consideration of parts, is not obtained from […]
The error of anthropomorphism
Some oppose a design conception of the cosmos only because they consider bizarre a “Designer” of the cosmos. This way they show to have an anthropomorphic, wrong idea of the Designer. So I think it is useful to dedicate a post to counter the error of anthropomorphism. Specifically anthropomorphism is the error of attributing to […]
Intelligent voltage
There is an intuitive analogy between the basic operation of an electric circuit and how intelligent design works. In an electric circuit, a current flows in a load only if a generator provides voltage. In a system, organization can increase only if a generator of information provides intelligence. Consider the figure: On the left we […]