William Dembski

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bright/bright_index.html

Tonight, THE CITIZEN SCIENTIST has posted online “Meeting Dr. Doom,” Forrest Mims’s first-person account of an astonishing speech by Prof. Eric R. Pianka of the University of Texas. Pianka was recently named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist at the annual meeting of the Texas Academy of Science. Mims is an active member of the Academy and chairs its Environmental Science Section. In his Distinguished Scientist speech, Pianka advocated eliminating 90 percent of the world’s population by airborne Ebola to save the world. He said we are no better than bacteria and made other intemperate statements. He received a sustained, standing ovation by the vast majority of the audience of several hundred. Today Pianka gave a similar speech in Austin. MORE

Here’s an article from today’s Baptist Press: http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?ID=22949 And check out the following image and caption from yesterday’s campus paper, the Baylor Lariat: Correction: Beckwith is an associate professor.

Does Lynn Margulis’s endosymbiosis story resolve evolution’s deep problems? Apparently its resolution of the prokaryote-eukaryote transition is far from secure. The paper below notes that with advances in research “the evolutionary gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes is now deeper.” Eukaryotic evolution, changes and challenges T. Martin Embley and William Martin Nature 440, 623-630 (30 March 2006) | doi:10.1038/nature04546 Abstract: The idea that some eukaryotes primitively lacked mitochondria and were true intermediates in the prokaryote-to-eukaryote transition was an exciting prospect. It spawned major advances in understanding anaerobic and parasitic eukaryotes and those with previously overlooked mitochondria. But the evolutionary gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes is now deeper, and the nature of the host that acquired the mitochondrion more obscure, than ever Read More ›

Press release issued today from Biola University: Former Atheist Receives Award From Intelligent Design Community 29 March 2006 La Mirada, Calif. — British philosopher Antony Flew, once considered the most prominent defender of atheism in the English-speaking world, will accept the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth on May 11 from Biola University, a Christian university in Southern California. Flew, 83, argued in books such as God and Philosophy (1966) and The Presumption of Atheism (1984) that one should presuppose atheism until evidence for God proves otherwise. Then, in 2004, the Oxford-educated philosopher stunned the intellectual world by relinquishing his long-held atheism, claiming that the natural sciences supplied evidence for the existence of a designing intelligence. Flew said Read More ›

About a year ago I was asked to commission and collect 30 or so articles on science for an apologetics website run by my denomination, the SBC. The URL for this apologetics website as a whole is www.4truth.net and for the science section is www.4truth.net/site/c.hiKXLbPNLrF/b.786349/k.CAAC/Science.htm. I want to call your attention to two particularly insightful articles, written by two world class engineers (one on faculty at UCDavis, the other at Baylor University): “Intelligent, Optimal, and Divine Design” (go here) “Evolutionary Computation: A Perpetual Motion Machine for Design Information?” (go here)

Junk DNA May Not Be So Junky After All 3/23/2006 Researchers at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins have invented a cost-effective and highly efficient way of analyzing what many have termed “junk” DNA and identified regions critical for controlling gene function. And they have found that these control regions from different species don’t have to look alike to work alike. MORE

Mutations Change the Boolean Logic of Gene Regulation Richard Robinson DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040064 Published: March 28, 2006 It is easy to think of a gene acting like a light bulb, switching either on or off, remaining silent, or being transcribed by the RNA-making machinery. The region of DNA that controls the gene’s output is called its regulatory region, and in this simple (and too simplistic) scenario, that region would act like a simple on–off switch. But the regulatory regions of real genes are more complex, and act more like molecular computers, combining the effects of multiple inputs and calibrating the gene’s output accordingly. The inputs are the various molecules that affect gene activity by binding to sites in the regulatory region. Read More ›

March 27, 2006
First Things
Joseph Bottum

Down in Waco, Texas, there is a Baptist school called Baylor University. It was never a major player in American academics, and with the strained situation in which American colleges found themselves at the end of the baby boom, Baylor had problems figuring out what it should do.

Certainly, the school played a regional role there in central Texas, but it lacked much national appeal. Its relations with the Baptist Christianity of its founding were strained, and the intellectual resources of its faculty and programs appeared thin. In the tight market of America academia, what reason had parents to send their children to a place like Baylor? The school seemed in flight from its niche market as a full-fledged Baptist institution, and for a purely secular education — well, surely one can do better than Waco.

In the mid-1990s, however, the school decided to do something about its problems. It began by hiring a dynamo of a new president named Robert Sloan. (First Things later published the talks given at his installation by Gertrude Himmelfarb and Richard John Neuhaus). It adopted a plan to achieve a new identity by 2012, and it went out actively seeking high-profile faculty — high-profile religious faculty, that is, for the plan involved positioning Baylor as a national center for religiously informed education.

The idea was that the school would simultaneously redefine its niche market and build a nationwide reputation. Philosophers, literary critics, legal scholars, sociologists: On and on the list went, a parade of new faculty members and new programs that suggested Baylor University was serious about trying to become the premier Christian research university in America.

Today, the plan is in tatters, and Baylor has apparently decided to sink back into its diminished role as a not terribly distinguished regional school. President Sloan is gone, the new high-profile faculty are demoralized and sniffing around for positions at better-known schools, energetic programs like the Intelligent Design Institute have been chased away [i.e., the Michael Polanyi Center — go here], and the bright young professors are having their academic careers ruined by a school that lured them to campus with the promises of the 2012 plan and now is simply embarrassed by them.

A case in point is Francis J. Beckwith, who was denied tenure by Baylor last week. Author of several books, including a new volume forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, he was associate director of the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies, associate professor of Church-State Studies, and associate editor of the Journal of Church & State. You can find his accomplishments listed in more detail here and here. None of this, of course, proves that he deserves tenure, but it looks awfully impressive when compared with the publication records of other faculty members. Read More ›

Why the intelligent design lobby thanks God for Richard Dawkins Anti-religious Darwinists are promulgating a false dichotomy between faith and science that gives succour to creationists Madeleine Bunting Monday March 27, 2006 The Guardian On Wednesday evening, at a debate in Oxford, Richard Dawkins will be gathering the plaudits for his long and productive intellectual career. It is the 30th anniversary of his hugely influential book The Selfish Gene. A festschrift, How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think, has been published this month, with contributions from stars such as Philip Pullman. A week ago it was the turn of the US philosopher Daniel Dennett, second only to Dawkins in the global ranking of contemporary Darwinians, to be similarly feted Read More ›

Lecture at TCNJ on intelligent design Saturday, March 25, 2006 EWING — Dr. William Dembski, a mathematician and philosopher, will lecture on “Understanding Intelligent Design” 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in Kendall Hall at The College of New Jersey. A question-and-answer session will follow. Dembski is the Carl F.H. Henry Professor of Science and Theology at Southern Seminary in Louisville, Ky., where he heads its Center for Theology and Science. He is a senior Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture in Seattle, and the executive director of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design. Dembski has published articles in mathematics, philosophy, and theology journals and is the author/editor of more than 10 books. Admission is free.

What is the survival and reproductive value of a perfect memory? Let me guess: the woman “AJ” described in the article below also has an uncanny ability to attract mates and has given birth to numerous offspring — all on account of her prodigious memory!

Woman With Perfect Memory Baffles Scientists

Updated 11:50 PM ET March 24, 2006

ABC News.com http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pub&dt=060324&cat=scitech&st=scitechdyehard_woman_memory_060320&src=abc

James McGaugh is one of the world’s leading experts on how the human memory system works. But these days, he admits he’s stumped.

McGaugh’s journey through an intellectual purgatory began six years ago when a woman now known only as AJ wrote him a letter detailing her astonishing ability to remember with remarkable clarity even trivial events that happened decades ago.

Give her any date, she said, and she could recall the day of the week, usually what the weather was like on that day, personal details of her life at that time, and major news events that occurred on that date.

Like any good scientist, McGaugh was initially skeptical. But not anymore.

“This is real,” he says.

Soon after AJ took over his life, McGaugh teamed with two fellow researchers at the University of California at Irvine. Elizabeth Parker, a clinical professor of psychiatry and neurology (and lead author of a report on the research in the current issue of the journal Neurocase), and Larry Cahill, an associate professor of neurobiology and behavior, have joined McGaugh in putting AJ through an exhaustive series of interviews and psychological tests. But they aren’t a lot closer today to understanding her amazing ability than they were when they started. Read More ›

Do viruses exploit cells or do cells also exploit viruses? Viruses may have varying roles that we have hardly begun to discover. This conviction is likely to grow stronger as the evidence for the ubiquity and density of viruses in nature accumulates. ‘Coinage’ of plankton — viruses BOSTON, March 24 (UPI) — Sea experiments show there’s a constant shuffling of genetic endowments among tiny plankton, say Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers. The “coinage” the plankton use seems to be a flood of viruses, says researcher Sally W. Chisholm. The MIT team is uncovering a new facet of evolution that may help scientists see how photosynthesizing microbes manage to exploit changing conditions such as altered light, temperature and nutrients. “We are Read More ›

LEGAL EXPERTS ANALYZE THE IMPACT OF THE DOVER INTELLIGENT DESIGN TRIAL DECISION IN THE NEW BOOK, “TRAIPSING INTO EVOLUTION”

Traipsing Into Evolution is the first published critique of federal Judge John E. Jones’s decision in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, the foremeost trial to attempt to address the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design. In this concise yet comprehensive response, Discovery Institute scholars and attorneys expose how Judge Jones’s Kitzmiller decision was based upon faulty reasoning, non-existent evidence, and an elementary misunderstanding of intelligent design theory.

For more information visit www.discovery.org/csc/traipsing.

Despite Jones’s protestations to the contrary, his attempts to use the federal bench to declare evolution a sacred cow–unquestionable in schools and fundamentally compatible with all “true” religion–are exposed by these critical authors as a textbook case of good-old-American judicial activism.

Read More ›

Judge Darrell White on Cobb and Dover: http://www.americanvision.org/articlearchive/03-01-06.asp.