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This video attempts to portray Dawkins during his childhood years, but it seems to accurately depict him as an adult! warning: Dawkins uses a swear word in this cartoon

Wikipedia is known to be Darwin loving, but here is a moment of anti-Darwinian honesty: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_redundancy Genetic redundancy is a term typically used to describe situations where a given biochemical function is redundantly encoded by two or more genes. In these cases, mutations (or defects) in one of these genes will have a smaller effect on the fitness of the organism than expected from the genes’ function. Characteristic examples of genetic redundancy include (Enns, Kanaoka et al. 2005) and (Pearce, Senis et al. 2004). Many more examples are thoroughly discussed in (Kafri, Levy & Pilpel. 2006). …. A Darwinian Paradox Genetic redundancy has aroused significant debate in the context of evolutionary biology (Nowak et al., 1997; Kafri, Springer & Pilpel Read More ›

Natural Selection does not have foresight, and this lack of foresight destroys complex capabilities, it does not build them. Behe’s first rule of adaptive evolution is again vindicated. Behe’s rule states that adaptation is usually loss of function, not acquisition of function. In contrast, Darwin envisioned that ever increasing complexity would be selected by nature. That new functions would emerge to enable adaptation. Not so. Nature selects for simplicity, if not out right extinction. Behe was right, Darwin was wrong. http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1003972 Whole Genome, Whole Population Sequencing Reveals That Loss of Signaling Networks Is the Major Adaptive Strategy in a Constant Environment Molecular signaling networks are ubiquitous across life and likely evolved to allow organisms to sense and respond to environmental Read More ›

Having participated at UD for 8 years now, criticizing Darwinism and OOL over and over again for 8 years is like beating a dead horse for 8 years. We only dream up more clever and effective and creative ways to beat the dead horse of Darwinism, but it’s still beating a dead horse. It’s amazing we still have a readership that enjoys seeing the debates play out given we know which side will win the debates about Darwin… Given this fact, I’ve turned to some other questions that have been of interest to me and readers. One question that remains outstanding (and may not ever have an answer) is how much information is in an artifact. This may not be Read More ›

NLF theorems are stated in terms of the average performance of evolutionary algorithms, but ID proponents must be mindful whenever the word AVERAGE is used, because it implies there may be above average performers, and I’m surprised Darwinists have been slow to seize refuge in the possibility of above average outcomes. To illustrate, the house edge (casino edge) in the game of dice (craps) is a mere 1.41% for the “passline” wager. So on average we expect the casino to win, but not immutably. I asked one pit boss, “what was the longest winning streak by the players?” He said something on the order of 15 wins in a row, and the casino lost over $140,000 in a few hours Read More ›

So what is the evidence of intelligence? I would suggest the ability to construct artifacts or events with Specified Improbability (the usual term is Specified Complexity, CSI, etc. but those terms are too confusing). Thus factories with robots, smart cruise missiles, genetic algorithms, bacteria, a collective network of ants, etc. can be considered intelligent systems. The problem is that we have no means of distinguishing real from artificial intelligence in any formal way. With no disrespect intended toward those with severe mental handicaps, yes such people are conscious, but there is a point a robotic automaton might be capable of generating more Specified Improbability than such an individual. Thus the line between real and artificial, as far as what is Read More ›

Recall the series of threads that was sparked by this comment by a Darwinist: if you have 500 flips of a fair coin that all come up heads, given your qualification (“fair coin”), that is outcome is perfectly consistent with fair coins, a 22 sigma event is consistent with fair coins which was another example of SSDD where I asked a Darwinist if a space shuttle is an example of intelligent design, and he said, “No!”. Barry highlighted some other comments in the wake of their fiascos: Jerad’s DDS causes him to succumb to miller’s mendacity and Jerad and Neil Ricker Double Down. In their determination to disagree with IDists on every point, even basic questions, they end up saying Read More ›

HT: David Coppedge In all the debates about the status of Archaeopteryx between reptiles and birds, no one till now expected this wild idea: it lost its ability to fly. Michael Habib (Univ. of Southern California) raised eyebrows in Los Angeles last week when he told a packed house at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting that he believes Archaeopteryx was secondarily flightless. Nature News reported, The idea that it was instead evolving to lose its flight and becoming flightless again, or ‘secondarily flightless’, occurred to Habib while he was calculating limb ratios and degrees of feather symmetry in Archaeopteryx, and comparing the values to those of living birds, to better understand its flying ability. In doing so, he found Read More ›

UD is honored to have Dr. Paul Giem as an occasional visitor. Here is Dr. Giem’s bio: Paul Giem, medical research Dr. Giem is assistant professor of emergency medicine at Loma Linda University. He holds a B.A. in chemistry from Union College, Nebraska, an M.A. in religion from Loma Linda University and an M.D. from Loma Linda University. Dr. Giem has published research articles in the areas of religion and medicine. His current research includes work on carbon-14 dating methods. He is author of the book Scientific Theology, which deals with a number of science–Bible areas, including dating methodology and biblical chronology. http://creation.com/paul-giem-medical-research-in-six-days One of the other UD commenters, franklin, is having a discussion with Dr. Giem in another thread. Read More ›

Suppose I constructed a Rube Goldberg machine to do the simple task of turning on a light. Suppose the Rube Goldberg machine were irreducibly complex, being composed of 10,000 components such that if even one component were removed, the Rube Goldberg machine would no longer function. Are the components really essential to turning on a light in the ultimate sense or are the only essential in the sense that the extravagant Rube Goldberg machine would fail without it? The correct answer is that the components are not essential in the ultimate sense since there are simpler mechanisms to turn on lights (aka a “light switch”). The components are “essential” to the turning on of light only in as much as Read More ›

A galaxy is speculated to form in only 700 million years. By way of contrast, in a comparable stretch of time (450 million years) the Living Fossil horse shoe crab has remained unchanged. In fact the Earth supposedly took only 20 million years to form out of a nebula, and that horse shoe crab remained immutable for 450 million years (22 times longer)! In the same time frame that the horseshoe crab remained the same, fish evolve into birds. Isn’t evolution (or lack thereof in the horseshoe crab) amazing? One test I suggest is whenever we have a living fossil plus a supposed real fossil of the same species (like a horseshoe crab), to the extent we can do a Read More ›

Philanthropist, world-renowned eye surgeon James Gills co-authored two ID-friendly books Darwin under the microscope and The Mysterious Epigenome and spearheaded an ID-friendly project related to the epigenome. Named after him is the James P. Gills Professorship in Opthalmology at Johns Hopkins University. Here is a nice narrative of Dr. Gills: TARPON SPRINGS – The blue-masked man bends forward in his rolling chair, back stiff, eyes pressed to microscope. On his surgical table lies a woman wrapped in blue like a package, except for naked right eye, lid peeled back, pupil widely dilated, bathed in light. ¶ He is busy with two slender instruments. One obliterates a lens, opaque as butter. The other suctions out milky debris. He slips a tube Read More ›

I was christened Clinton Richard Dawkins. By a strange quirk, Charles Darwin also has the initials CRD. I often think how proud he would have been to share them with me…., I propose to start this memoir with my grandfather, Clinton Evelyn, the first Dawkins to go to Balliol College, Oxford. The eulogy I wrote for his funeral still brings tears to my eyes. … I frequently pretended to know less than I actually did. This, I now see, was early evidence of my peculiar empathy towards individuals who are much stupider than me. … I shall never forget the shame I felt on my first day as a fag, after ringing the five-minute bell five minutes too late. For Read More ›

Selection after something exists is not the same as selection before something exists, except in confused, illogical thinking of Darwinists. This is the heart of the problem that Behe’s Irreducible Complexity poses for Darwinism. I once offered a Darwinist $100 if he could figure out the 40 letter password I’d written on a piece of paper and filed away. Even though it would have increased his survival advantage to figure out the password, did he figure it out? No. Did he write and evolutionary algorithm to figure it out? No. There was no free lunch for him. 🙂 The point of this exercise was to show that even though finding a solution to a problem gives one advantage, it does Read More ›

We, the undersigned atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, and other non-believers, hereby condemn Richard Dawkins’ continued comments trivializing what he termed ‘mild’ sexual abuse of children. Dr. Dawkins is seen by many as a representative of the atheist community — but when it comes to his dismissive comments on the incredibly serious topic of sexual abuse, the atheist community emphatically does not stand with him. Dr. Dawkins has publicly compared childhood sexual abuse favorably to teaching children about Hell since at least the publication of The God Delusion. He has extrapolated from his relatively trauma-free experience with sexual abuse to make general comments about the experiences of other victims. These comments have received serious criticism from victim advocates as misrepresenting the Read More ›