The Origins Institute at McMaster University in Canada
Check out http://origins.mcmaster.ca/about.html. Will ID get a fair hearing at this institute?
Biology
“Biologists of the Future”
Is it fair to say that the “biologists of the future” to whom Carl Woese is referring will not be Darwinian? The idea of a last common community, with a communally sophisticated biochemistry, raises another question: how did all this evolve? This is for someone else to answer, says Woese. “We don’t understand how to create novelty from scratch – that’s a question for biologists of the future.” http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v427/n6976/full/427674a_fs.html Is it too much to speculate that maybe, just maybe, creating novelty from scratch might be the work of a designing intelligence??
“The Spurious Foundations of Genetic Engineering”
Here’s an old paper, but one well worth looking at if you haven’t seen it already: “The Spurious Foundations of Genetic Engineering” by Barry Commoner. It goes without saying that the “spurious foundations” here are the same as those for neo-Darwinism.
Kansas IV — Care to weigh in?
The Kansas State Board of Education will hear from scientists and scholars next week about how best to present evolution in the classroom. If you are not testifying to the board, there is still a significant role for you to play in the wider debate. Namely, write supportive letters to the editor to appear during the hearings next week, and the week following, in regional and national newspapers.
Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life
Hubert Yockey attended the 1996 Mere Creation conference at Biola University. At that conference he and I discussed his role in the ID movement. He described himself as an outsider who could do more good for ID by maintaining his intellectual independence and directing his energies at refuting the evolutionary reductionists than by explicitly making common cause with us. He has a new book with Cambridge University Press scheduled for release this summer that will need to be on the reading list of everyone with an interest in ID: Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life. Of especial interest will be chapter 12, titled “Does Evolution Need an Intelligent Designer?” Although I expect Yockey will be critical of ID in this chapter, I expect his objections will be answerable and help move our program forward.
Emergence of Biological Complexity — Cambridge Templeton Consortium
Yesterday’s Nature has, on page 24 of the advertisement section, an announcement requesting grant proposals for the John Templeton Foundation’s “Purpose in the living world” research programme, titled “The Emergence of Biological Complexity” (for more go here and here). Purpose? Biological complexity? Evidence of fine-tuning in biological complexity? All in one breath? This may not be full-fledged ID, but it certainly isn’t “the literal interpretation of Darwin.”