Biology

Just wanted to let everyone know that we have posted the abstracts for this weekend’s Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism in Biology conference online.
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The Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism in Biology conference is this Saturday February 25th. Since the conference is online, you can attend from anywhere in the world as long as you have an Internet connection.
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The second Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism online conference is right around the corner! On February 25th, we will convene AM-Nat Biology, focusing on biological applications for alternatives to methodological naturalism.
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This week’s post at Design Disquisitions is the first in a series of articles entitled ‘Critic’s Corner’ where I focus on a critic of ID. The main purpose of these posts is to document their work relevant to ID and also to document the direct responses to the particular critic in question, by those sympathetic to ID. These posts will be a useful resource for anyone wanting to find responses to a particular ID critic. This first one is on the work of Kenneth Miller (no stranger to anyone involved in this debate of course). If there are any articles I have missed, do let me know and I shall add it to the page.

Finally, I’ve managed to publish my first blog article! It’s been a rocky start as I had some technical difficulties. Nevertheless, it feels good to get the ball rolling. In this first article, I’ve chosen to take a step back and reflect upon whether or not intelligent design is an important problem to consider in the first place. I outline what I consider to be five strong reasons why this is a matter of great significance.   In the foreword to the intelligent design text, The Design of Life, biochemist William S. Harris notes: The scientific community continues to wrestle with the deep and fundamental questions: Where did the universe come from? How did life originate? How did a coded language (i.e., DNA) Read More ›

For those of you interested in the Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism series of online conferences, I thought I’d let you know that today is the last day you can submit an abstract for the conference.
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We are excited to report that we have received a steady stream of submissions to AM-Nat Biology over the last few weeks. If you haven’t submitted your abstract, please do so soon.
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If you are interested in submitting a paper for the Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism in Biology online conference, the deadline is fast approaching!
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Despite being an ID advocate for several years now (and having an authors account on this forum), I haven’t really taken the time to put pen to paper and write about it, apart from a few lengthy exchanges I had with a close friend and critic of ID. He has since stepped away from the online world, and so the exchange has ended. You can still view my responses to him here, here, here, here, and here. I also published one article where I highlighted various atheists and agnostics who are critical of neo-Darwinism and supportive of ID here. The last thing I wrote on the subject was two years ago now, however this last year I’ve been wishing to start up a Read More ›

Douglas Axe, author of Undeniable interviewed here: On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid interviews Douglas Axe on his recent book, Undeniable. Axe shares his reasons for writing the volume, defines common science, and describes what a new biology, with intelligent design, not Darwinism, might resemble. See also: Doug Axe: Every reason for optimism on deepest questions in biology Follow UD News at Twitter!

From ScienceDaily: Bacteria are immortal as long as they keep dividing. For decades it has been assumed that a continuous, proteinaceous ring is necessary to drive the division of most microorganisms. An international team of researchers has revealed that the symbiont of the marine roundworm breaks the ring dogma and divides without. … The division of the R. hypermnestra symbiont leaves the dazzled scientists at a loss to know which kind of evolutionary advantage this quirky division might bring. One possible explanation is that this would allow the symbiont to remain faithful to its worm host. “Longitudinal division might have evolved to transmit host attachment to both daughter cells. In other words, to avoid that one daughter cell is lost Read More ›

From msmash at Slashdot: In the middle of a discussion about the pros and cons of statins, Sir Rory Collins, the head of clinical trials at Oxford University, noted that If you want a career in medicine these days you’re better off studying mathematics or computing than biology. More. From Tom Feilden at BBC, a key issue is information science and cancer: So why cancer? The answer can be summed up in two words: big data. What Dr Sottoriva brings to the fight against cancer is the expertise in mathematical modelling needed to mine the vast treasure trove of data the information revolution has brought to medicine. “The exciting thing is that we can apply all the new analytical techniques Read More ›

Imagine if atheistic materialism was actually true and humans are nothing more than biological automatons – complexly programmed and reactive robots that behave and think in whatever manner happenstance chemical interactions dictates at any given time.  Let’s think about what would actually mean. There would be no way for a biological automaton to determine whether or not any statement was in fact true or not since all conclusions are driven by chemistry and not metaphysical “truth” values; indeed, a biological automaton reaches conclusion X for exactly the same reason any other reaches conclusion Y; chemistry.  If chemistry dictates that 1+1=banana, that is what a “person” will conclude. If chemistry dictates they defend that view to the death and see themselves Read More ›

This is a great video, and all those with interest in biological evolution should watch it.
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Just a reminder to those wanting to present at the AM-Nat (Alternatives to Methodological Naturalism) Biology conference, abstracts are due October 28th.

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