William Dembski

William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II, “Bernoulli’s Principle of Insufficient Reason and Conservation of Information in Computer Search,” Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. San Antonio, TX, USA – October 2009, pp. 2647-2652. Abstract: Conservation of information (COI) popularized by the no free lunch theorem is a great leveler of search algorithms, showing that on average no search outperforms any other. Yet in practice some searches appear to outperform others. In consequence, some have questioned the significance of COI to the performance of search algorithms. An underlying foundation of COI is Bernoulli’s Principle of Insufficient Reason1(PrOIR) which imposes of a uniform distribution on a search space in the absence of all prior Read More ›

Some UD readers seem upset that I quote Sarah Palin on Climategate. Just so the wine-and-cheese elite feel as welcome here as the unwashed masses, here’s Camille Paglia on Climategate before it was Climategate (commenting to someone named Hanson): Hanson: I too grew up in upstate New York. I am an environmental groundwater geologist (who almost majored in fine arts). Your take on the Al Gore/global warming pseudo-catastrophe was right on target. Anyone can read up on Holocene geology and see that climate changes are caused by polar wandering and magnetic reversals. It is entertaining, yet sad to read bloviage from Leonardo DiCaprio, who is so self-centered that he thinks the earth’s history and climate is a function of his Read More ›

From Sarah Palin’s Facebook page: Mr. President: Boycott Copenhagen; Investigate Your Climate Change “Experts” The president’s decision to attend the international climate conference in Copenhagen needs to be reconsidered in light of the unfolding Climategate scandal. The leaked e-mails involved in Climategate expose the unscientific behavior of leading climate scientists who deliberately destroyed records to block information requests, manipulated data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures, and conspired to silence the critics of man-made global warming. I support Senator James Inhofe’s call for a full investigation into this scandal. Because it involves many of the same personalities and entities behind the Copenhagen conference, Climategate calls into question many of the proposals being pushed there, including anything that would lead Read More ›

Terrific News about Steve Meyer making the cover of WORLD MAGAZINE as their person of the year for 2009.# Much deserved! Steve has considerable visibility in the ID movement, but I’ve known him over the years as well for his indefatigable work behind the scenes to make ID into a thriving intellectual and cultural force. Many of the initiatives and projects that have signally blessed the ID movement have been at his instance (for instance, it was his vision that propelled the video UNLOCKING THE MYSTERY OF LIFE, which has spawned a host of other videos). #Meyer is the second ID proponent to receive this award. Phil Johnson did in 2003.

… then you know that the fraud is real: Ann Coulter at Townhall Jon Stewart on the Daily Show

“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.” –Leo Tolstoy

[Adapted from a close colleague’s email:] This article by Marc Sheppard contains a technical discussion of details of some of the source codes uncovered by the recent hack of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit e-mail servers. These computer codes are the ones used to create the global climate forecasts predicting a warming calamity. The leading global warming alarmists have for years denied all requests for access to these codes (such access is routine and essential to the validation of results in all other fields of science), and it’s now clear why. The codes document in explicit, damning fashion the fraudulent data manipulation that has been used to create false temperature records to support the anthropogenic global warming Read More ›

| | I knew Jeffrey Shallit as a reasonable computational number theorist at the University of Chicago in the 1980s. When it comes to ID, however, he simply can’t think straight. Repulsed by Thomas Nagel’s high praise of Stephen Meyer’s SIGNATURE IN THE CELL (noted here at UD), Shallit calls Nagel a fool and then cites as evidence Nagel’s acceptance of Meyer’s claims about information: Meyer claims, over and over again, that information can only come from a mind — and that claim is an absolutely essential part of his argument. Nagel, the brilliant philosopher, should see why that is false. Consider making a weather forecast. Meteorologists gather information about the environment to do so: wind speed, direction, temperature, cloud Read More ›

[From a colleague:] “Back in 2004, the German-Austrian film ‘Downfall’ was released. The film depicted Hitler’s last days in his Berlin bunker. Since then, the portion of the film where a detached-from-all-reality Hitler goes on a tirade — lashing out and finally conceding all is lost — has been modified to poke fun at everything from Chicago Cubs personnel moves to Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign. Here it is in the context of the recent damning evidence of outright global warming fraud.”

Steve Meyer’s SIGNATURE IN THE CELL continues to garner the praise it deserves. This from Thomas Nagel in The Times Literary Supplement: Stephen C. Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: DNA and the evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperCollins) is a detailed account of the problem of how life came into existence from lifeless matter – something that had to happen before the process of biological evolution could begin. The controversy over Intelligent Design has so far focused mainly on whether the evolution of life since its beginnings can be explained entirely by natural selection and other non-purposive causes. Meyer takes up the prior question of how the immensely complex and exquisitely functional chemical structure of DNA, which cannot be explained by Read More ›

About 150 Christian leaders were the original signatories of the recent manifesto asserting the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and liberty of conscience — the Manhattan Declaration. At the time of this writing, over a 100,000 have signed it (including me). I encourage readers of UD to read the document and sign it if it reflects your views on God and culture.

Of the 150 original signers, I know about 25 personally. Interestingly, the original signers seem overwhelmingly pro-ID. That raises the question why no notable theistic evolutionists are signers (e.g., Francis Collins). To be sure, signers such as Tim Keller and Dinesh D’Souza have indicated an openness to evolutionary theory. But I’m not finding any among the signers who are adamantly committed to theistic evolution, seeing it as the only way to be both scientifically and theologically responsible.

Perhaps I’m missing something here. If so, I’m happy to be disabused. But is it possible that ID is friendlier to classic Christian teaching on the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and liberty of conscience than theistic evolution? It not, I’d like to see the names of theistic evolutionists who are also signers of the Manhattan Declaration.

——

Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience
November 20, 2009

The following is the text of the Manhattan Declaration signed by 149 pro-life and Catholic and evangelical and Orthodox Christian leaders. LifeNews.com supports the pro-life aims of the resolution.

http://manhattandeclaration.org

Preamble

Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.

While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire’s sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.

After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture. It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under Wilberforce’s leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines. Read More ›

Here’s today’s Wall Street Journal on ClimateGate: Global Warming With the Lid Off The emails that reveal an effort to hide the truth about climate science. ‘The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone. . . . We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.” So apparently wrote Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) and one of the world’s leading climate scientists, in a 2005 email to “Mike.” Judging by the email thread, this refers to Michael Mann, director Read More ›

Here’s more on “Climategate.” My favorite line: “And, perhaps most reprehensibly, a long series of communications discussing how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW [anthropogentic global warming] can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority.” Where have I heard that sort of thing before? Here’s also a line I enjoyed from another piece in this vein: “It is not hard to think up ways to scare people into handing over more of their cash via taxes, insurance, inflation, etc. You just have to think of the right nightmare, publicize it, politicize Read More ›

Specifications have long been an intense interest of mine (e.g., go here). Below is an 833-word specification by our U.S. Senate that could have been said in one word — LOUISIANA. Indeed, the only state to which this specifcation applies is LOUISIANA. Congrats to Lousiana’s Mary Landrieu for snagging $100M in pork that’s associated with this specification! ‘‘(aa)(1) Notwithstanding subsection (b), beginning January 1, 2011, the Federal medical assistance percentage for a fiscal year for a disaster-recovery FMAP adjustment State shall be equal to the following: ‘(A) In the case of the first fiscal year (or part of a fiscal year) for which this subsection applies to the State, the Federal medical assistance percentage determined for the fiscal year without Read More ›