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In this thread, I will suggest the identity of Intelligent Designer of life. The question of the identity of the Intelligent Designer is outside of ID proper, but if a design is detected, it inspires the question, “who is the Designer?”

If the identity of the Intelligent Designer is outside of ID proper, is it outside the speculations of science? I think not. As Dawkins himself once remarked:

You then realize that the presence of a creative deity in the universe is clearly a scientific hypothesis. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more momentous hypothesis in all of science.

Richard Dawkins
as reported in Dawkins on the Discovery Institute Payroll?

In that spirit, rather than offer a theological speculation, I will offer a speculation based on inference from scientific observation. And I will argue scientific observation suggests the Intelligent Designer is a Deity of some sort.

To begin, I point out this essay in the prestigious scientific journal Nature in 2005 by physicist Richard Conn Henry:

“The ultimate cause of atheism, Newton asserted, is ‘this notion of bodies having, as it were, a complete, absolute and independent reality in themselves.’”
…
The 1925 discovery of quantum mechanics solved the problem of the Universe’s nature. Bright physicists were again led to believe the unbelievable — this time, that the Universe is mental.
…
According to Sir James Jeans: “the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter…we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.”
….
The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual.

Richard Conn Henry
The Mental Universe: Nature Volume 436

Today is the closing day of “Evolution Weekend”. The weekend is promoted by The clergy letter project. This is a weekend dedicated to glorifying Darwinism in churches.

Curiously one of the scientists on call to help clergy and parishioners promote the glories of Darwinism was Amy Bishop, she is listed here:

Name: Amy Bishop, Ph.D.
Title: Associate Professor
Address: Department of Biological Sciences
University of Alabama in Huntsville
Huntsville, AL 35899
Areas of Expertise: neuroscience, molecular biology, genetics, evolution of the human brain
Email: ——-@uah.edu

Amy Bishop was charged in the murder of several people recently. Now, there are some very fine Darwinists like Francis Collins, and I don’t mean to say Amy Bishop is representative of all Darwinists. But I’d recommend that if the Clergy Letter Project wishes to put on a good face for Darwinism, they might consider disassociating themselves from Amy Bishop.

They may not want to promote “survival of the fittest” in their sermons today. That would be kind of poor taste in light of the fact a presumed societal degenerate (Bishop) is the “fittest” survivor while 3 (possibly 4) innocent victims are the “unfit” dead. Think I’m overstating the case against Darwinism? Consider what Evolutionary Psychologist David Buss argues in his book The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind Is Designed to Kill

murder is the product of evolutionary forces and that the homicidal act, in evolutionary terms, conveys advantages to the killer.

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In case we haven’t mentioned it previously at UD, I thought today would be a good day to remember Robert Jastrow, one of the stars of the pro-ID movie Privileged Planet.

Jastrow passed away February 8, 2008, a little more than two years ago today. He was the founding director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and author of the celebrated ID-sympathetic book: God and the Astronomers (available at www.ARN.org).

Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world…
The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts in Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading up to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.

Robert Jastrow
God and the Astronomers

Here is the tribute written in the NY Times:
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Bill reported earlier about a Global Warming/Hitler video which was released (10/3/2009) before the climategate scandal broke out:

More Global Warming Fraud Humor

A new improved video has been released to incorporate the climategate scandal. Version 2, is much better, imho.

Hitler was behind global warming-climategate
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The following is a crude 1-minute silent animation that I and members of the IDCS Network put together. God willing, there will be major improvements to the animation (including audio), but this is a start. Be sure to watch it in full screen mode to see the details.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrIDjvpx7w4

The animation asserts that if harmful mutation rates are high enough, then there exists no form or mechanism of selection which can arrest genetic deterioration. Even if the harmful mutations do not reach population fixation, they can still damage the collective genome.

The animation starts off with healthy gingerbread men as parents. Each spawns ginger kids, and the red dots on the kids represent them having a mutation. The missing ginger limbs are suggestive of severe mutations, the more mild mutations are represented by ginger kids merely having a red dot and not severe phenotypic effects of their mutation. The exploding ginger kids represent Selection doing its thing and removing the less functionally fit from the population. The persistence of red dots on the ginger kids represents persistence of bad mutations despite any possible mechanism of selection.

Nobel Prize winner HJ Muller (of Muller’s ratchet fame) suggested that the human race can’t even cope with a harmful rate of 0.1 per new born. The actual rate has been speculated to be on the order of 100-300.

The animation uses a conservative harmful rate of 1 and argues (with some attempts at humor) that deterioration would thus be inevitable even with a harmful rate of 1 per new born.

I save discussion in the comment section the relevant but technical topics of truncation selection, sexual reproduction, recombination, synergistic epistasis, compensatory mutations, relief from Muller’s ratchet etc. These highly technical topics should be addressed and were not included in the animation. We can discuss them in the comment section.

However, the essential problem of mutation rates and deterioration is depicted by the animation. How this cartoon is illustrative of reality (when we consider the technicalities such as recombination, sexual reproduction, synergistic epistasis), can be discussed in the comment section.
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On May 26, 2009 Reverend Barry Lynn offered his characterization of infidels who refuse to venerate Darwinius. His tirade (supported by Eugenie Scott) can be found here: Show #1415 Eugenie Scott, Susan Russell.

Some excerpts:

Reverend Barry Lynn :
The more new evidence that develops the more some people dig in to their erroneous earlier beliefs
…..
I am still flabbergasted by the notion that no matter what you show some people and say…”this why I believe what I believe” some people say, “nope not enough”….

….the religious right is already saying….”it [Ida (Darwinius)] could be a fake”

What’s wrong with people that they can’t look at evidence and say, “Ok, I didn’t see it before I’m going to re-evaluate based on what I do see.”

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Over at Amazon in the Physics/Cosmology section, Dr. Meyer’s book got the surprise ranking ahead of Stephen Hawking’s book, A Brief History in Time. There is a section on cosmology and the origin of life in Signature in the Cell. Here are the Amazon Stats: Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design Hardcover: 624 pages Publisher: HarperOne (June 23, 2009) Amazon.com Sales Rank: #799 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books) Popular in these categories: #1 in Books > Science > Astronomy > Cosmology #1 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Theology > Creationism #1 in Books > Science > Physics > Cosmology Congratulations Dr. Meyer!

Listed below are some events with Dr. Stephen Meyer. I expect more to be forthcoming!

Those of us who are part of promoting ID know how hard it is to get churches to appreciate the importance of ID. Most of the biology teachers who opposed ID at Dover were professing Christians and Sunday School teachers. The unfortunate situation in Dover is not unique. Darwinism has remained in the culture because churches have allowed it to spread. Churches have allowed it to spread because they are unwilling to engage the facts but rather resort to theology.

I often get harsh reactions from fellow creationists when I tell them they have to stop arguing theology and start engaging the facts. Recall the words of the father of modern ID, Phil Johnson, “Get the Bible and the Book of Genesis out of the debate.”

Theistic evolution can be successfully opposed in the churches by arguing the facts. Maybe your experience is different than mine, but I’ve not known a single individual who was truly converted away from Darwinism by purely theological means or trying to pound them over the head with theology and the Bible…

With that in mind, I am happy to report the following ID events, two of which will be at churches, and one where I hope to be present (in McLean, Virginia, near Washington, DC):

Walter ReMine once said to me, the supposed 99.5% identity between chimps and humans is like taking two books, creating an alphabetical listing of all the unique words in each book, and then comparing the lists of unique words derived from each book. It would be really easy then to use these lists to argue: “see the books are 99.5% identical!” Another ID proponent, David Pogge, argued that the sequence comparison are like comparing driving directions: two sets of directions can have 99% similarity, but a few differences can lead to radically different destinations. With this in mind, here is Rick Sternberg’s Guy Walks Into a Bar and Thinks He’s a Chimpanzee: The Unbearable Lightness of Chimp-Human Genome Similarity.

Recall this post by Bill Dembski, August 31, 2006 where Bill pointed out how A.N. Wilson railed against the ID proponents in Kansas and labeled them Morons.

A.N. Wilson Skewered — it couldn’t happen to a nicer credulous moron!

A. N. Wilson, the epitomy of English snootiness, recently fell for an elaborate prank that he could have avoided if he had drawn a design inference. Note that Eve de Harben doesn’t exist either, and the letters in “her” name are an anagram for “Ever been had?”

Why am I being so hard on Wilson? Here’s what he wrote back in 1999 about the good people of Kansas: “Their simple, idiotic credulity as a populace would have been the envy of Lenin. That is the tragic paradox. The Land of the Free, telly and burgerfed, has become the Land of the Credulous Moron.” (go here and scroll down) What goes around comes around.

–Bill Dembski

But what now, April 2, 2009, Can you love god and agree with Darwin?

The Descent of Man, with its talk of savages, its belief that black people are more primitive than white people, and much nonsense besides, is an offence to the intelligence – and is obviously incompatible with Christianity.

I think the jury is out about whether the theory of Natural selection, as defined by neo-Darwinians is true, and whether serious scientific doubts, as expressed in a new book Why Us by James Lefanu, deserve to be taken seriously. For example, does the discovery of the complex structure of DNA and the growth in knowledge in genetics require a rethink of Darwinian “gradualism”. But these are scientific rather than religious questions.

–A.N. Wilson

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“It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”

This is a phrase a software engineer will use to jokingly confess his software has a defect.

When Sharon Moalem wrote the NY Times Bestseller, Survival of the Sickest: Why We Need Disease, he probably did not intend to make a joking confession of flaws in Darwin’s theory, but he succeed in doing so.

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In “A Spoonful of Jesus Helps Darwin Go Down”, Coyne criticizes the NCSE:

The pro-religion stance of the NCSE is offensive and unnecessary

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Congratulations to Michael Behe, Eric Anderson, David Chiu, Kirk Durston (members of ISCID). They were mentioned in the peer reviewed journal International Journal of Molecular Sciences. References were made to Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe, “Irreducible Comlexity Reduced” in ISCID’s PCID by Eric Anderson, and peer-reviewed works by David Chiu and Kirk Durston.

Here is the paper: The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity

Great paper!

The cause and evolution of complexity are frequently addressed in the literature [10, 134-141]. How complexity relates to life has attracted innumerable papers [6, 142-148]. Systems Biology emphasizes the growing genomic and epigenetic complexity [149-151]. Attempts to deal with Behe’s “irreducible complexity” [152] are appearing more often in scientific literature [153-157].

The much vaunted Avida community is indirectly criticized:

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Here are excerpts from The Design Matrix by Mike Gene:

Metaphors such as “fear”, “cost”, “abhor” and “angry”, commonly share the projection of consciousness onto the world. Metaphors such as these represent the human tendency to view the world through anthropomorphic glasses. However, the metaphors employed by molecular biologists are not of this type.
….
Metaphors typically break down when we begin to take them literally.

[but] The design terminology that is used in the language of molecular biology does not break down when interpreted literally
….

there is a basic and literal truth to the use of design terminology in molecular biology–these technological concepts are just too useful. Metaphors are certainly useful when explaining concepts to other human beings, yet the design terminology often goes beyond pedagogy–it provides true insight into the molecular and cellular processes. An understanding of our own designed artifacts, along with the principles required to make them, can guide the practice of molecular biology.

Why is it that some metaphors are no where near as effective for describing biology as well other metaphors, especially design metaphors?

Mike Gene recognizes qualitatively the enigma that others recognize quantitatively. There is an improbable coincidence between the architecture of human-made systems and the architecture of biological systems. Recognition of these coincidences is the recognition of specified complexity, and recognition of specified complexity is the recognition of design. Outside of biotic reality, there are no other assemblages of matter in the universe which fit design metaphors more exactly than those found in biology.
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Congratulations to Roddy Bullock for having his first column, Judge says creationism for the birds, published in Worldnet Daily. Roddy is head of the Intelligent Design Network in Ohio. Roddy references Bill Dembski’s Immodest Proposal But there is another option, a brilliant solution if evolution’s defenders have any integrity. Put forth by author William Dembski, “Teaching the Non-Controversy – An Immodest Proposal” sets out an ACLU-proof way to teach evolution honestly. Because the AAAS, the NCSE and other champions of Darwin-only education claim there is no scientific controversy (evolution, they claim, is as well established as gravity!), why not let students simply explain why evolutionary theory is one of the few areas in science where no controversy exists? To further Read More ›