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Evolution

Golem (Genetically Organized Lifelike Electro Mechanics)

Does the following point up disconfirming evidence against the creative power of unguided evolutionary processes? What has become of this project to vindicate standard evolutionary theory? The golem@Home project has concluded. After accumulating several Million CPU hours on this project and reviewing many evolved creatures we have concluded that merely more CPU is not sufficient to evolve complexity: The evolutionary process appears to be hitting a complexity barrier that is not traversable using direct mutation-selection processes, due to the exponential nature of the problem. We are now developing new theories about additional mechanisms that are necessary for the synthetic evolution of complex life forms. Some of these new mechanisms are based on ideas of modularity, regularity, hierarchy, symbiosis and co-evolution. Read More ›

More on “Incompetent Design”

Sam Chen posted the inside story on the “Incompetent Design” video that I highlighted here at UD two days ago (go here for Sam’s post). Here’s my favorite quote from Dave Wise (not to be confused with Kurt), the designing intelligence behind this farce: Branding ID as Incompetent Design involves both humor and grit but avoids direct insult to the opposition, a mistake to be avoided in any political campaign. All the tools of political campaigns should be used: slogans, songs, bumper stickers (“Human skeletal errors: Incompetent Design or Evolution ?”), IDers will attempt to take us off-message with debates on origins of life, thermodynamics, etc., but instead we must continue to pound simple themes of obvious design failures. Science Read More ›

The Primordial Goo

In light of the challenge proposed to ID in the previous post (i.e., “The Intelligent Design Zoo”), here is a parallel challenge directed at materialistic evolutionists: Take the goo depicted in the photo below, autoclave it until none of the organic material here belongs to living cells (i.e., till all the cells are dead), and then try to reconstitute life without teleological guidance. Origin-of-life researchers typically focus on trying to obtain more complicated biomolecules from simpler ones. Here you’ve got all the complicated biomolecules you could ever want. Go to it — show us how, out of the material here once autoclaved, to get a living being that has all the characteristics we ordinarily attribute to life (i.e., reproduction, growth, Read More ›

Does understanding coerce belief?

Paul Myers has a post at the Panda’s Thumb that points up a fundamental misconception of some evolutionists (go here for his post). The post is titled “American political conservatism impedes the understanding of science.” The point of the post is to chart the acceptance of evolution** among conservatives, moderates, and liberals against education, and the consistent finding is that conservatives, regardless of education, tend to “believe” evolution less than liberals and moderates (though believing evolution goes up across the board with education). But why should disbelieving evolution reflect a lack of understanding of it? Alternatively, does understanding evolution automatically force one to believe it? I remember speaking at the University of Toronto in 2002 when a biologist challenged me Read More ›

ID article in Guardian

Here’s an indicator how the ID debate is shaping up in the UK. Please note the extensive comments at the end of this article at the Guardian website (go here). Intelligent design is a science, not a faith By Richard Buggs Tuesday January 9, 2007 The Guardian . . . If Darwin had known what we now know about molecular biology – gigabytes of coded information in DNA, cells rife with tiny machines, the highly specific structures of certain proteins – would he have found his own theory convincing? Randerson thinks that natural selection works fine to explain the origin of molecular machines. But the fact is that we are still unable even to guess Darwinian pathways for the origin Read More ›

If the horse is dead, why keep beating it?

Here are still two more anti-ID books, recently off the press: Philip Kitcher’s LIVING WITH DARWIN: EVOLUTION, DESIGN, AND THE FUTURE OF FAITH http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195314441/ref=pe_pe_5050_3468500_pe_snp_441 =-=-=-=-=-=- Francisco Ayala’s DARWIN AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN: http://www.amazon.com/Darwin-Intelligent-Design-Facets-Francisco/dp/0800638026/ref=pd_sim_b_1/105-1985473-5492415

Ron Numbers in Salon

There’s an interesting interview with Ron Numbers in Salon: http://www.salon.com/books/int/2007/01/02/numbers. Here’s an excerpt. . . . More recently, we’ve had the intelligent design movement. I know some people just see this as a new version of creationism, stripping away all the talk about God and religion so you can teach it in the schools. Is that true? RN: There’s a little bit of evidence to support that. But I think that both demographically and intellectually, it doesn’t hold a lot of water. The intelligent design leaders are people, by and large, who do not believe in young earth creationism. So they would accept the Earth’s being four-and-a-half billion years old. RN: That’s not an issue with most of them. They Read More ›

The Emerald Cockroach Wasp

The Emerald Cockroach Wasp The emerald cockroach wasp (Ampulex compressa, also known as the jewel wasp) is a parasitoid wasp of the family Ampulicidae. It is known for its reproductive behavior, which involves using a live cockroach (specificially a Periplaneta americana) as a host for its larva. A number of other venomous animals which use live food for their larvae paralyze their prey. Unlike them, Ampulex compressa initially leaves the cockroach mobile, but modifies its behaviour in a unique way. As early as the 1940s it was published that wasps of this species sting a roach twice, which modifies the behavior of the prey. A recent study using radioactive labeling proved that the wasp stings precisely into specific ganglia. Ampulex Read More ›

2007 — Buckle your safety belts!

Happy New Year to all UD regulars. I expect 2007 to be a bang-up year for ID. Here are three things in particular I’m looking forward to in the coming year: A new ID friendly research center at a major university. (This is not merely an idle wish — stay tuned.) The publication of Michael Behe’s book with Free Press: THE EDGE OF EVOLUTION. The publication of the sequel to OF PANDAS AND PEOPLE, authored by Jonathan Wells and me and titled THE DESIGN OF LIFE: DISCOVERING SIGNS OF INTELLIGENCE IN BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS. P.S. I would also say that I’m looking forward to debating Barbara Forrest, but I’m giving 5 to 1 odds that she won’t even start negotiations for Read More ›

Ken Poppe’s RECLAIMING SCIENCE FROM DARWINISM

Back in June I made a post here at UD that included my foreword to Ken Poppe’s book RECLAIMING SCIENCE FROM DARWINISM (see here). In the post, I did not indicate the book to which it would be a foreword since the book was not yet out and I didn’t want to jeopardize its reception. As it is, the publisher sanitized the foreword. Below the fold is the original as I had intended it.

Let me urge you to get Poppe’s book. It is available at Amazon.com here.

Cover of Reclaiming Science from Darwinism

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The Acceptance of Evolution and the Path of Compliance

Here’s an old study that I recall reading about as an undergraduate psychology major. It is about groupthink, those who adopt it and those who don’t. As you read it, ask youself who in the debate over evolution and ID is following the path of compliance and, alternatively, the path of independence (note that the distinction is not quite as neat as pro-ID and anti-ID): “Opinions and Social Pressure” by Solomon Asch http://www.panarchy.org/asch/social.pressure.1955.html

Venter: Cracking The Ocean Code

I just watched Cracking the Ocean Code on the Discovery Science Channel last night. It’s on again at 3pm Eastern Time today and tomorrow. Really amazing. Venter basically circumnavigated the globe stopping every 200 miles to sample the microscopic life in the ocean which he is now shotgun sequencing back at his lab. In the shakedown cruise to the Sargasso Sea hundreds of new species and over a million unique new genes were discovered upon analysis. We’ve only catalogued about 1% of all species on the planet and have sequenced just a tiny fraction of those catalogued. As sequencing methods improve and prices plummet saying this is just the tip of the iceberg is a vast understatement.

The Digital Evidence for Flagellar Evolution

When biological evidence fails to establish Darwinian evolution, go instead for digital evidence. Here at last digital proof positive for the Darwinian evolution of the bacterial flagellum (if Kitzmiller v. Dover wasn’t enough to sink ID, this surely will): For more on digital evolution, check out MSU’s Digital Evolution Lab. For the logic underlying digital evidence for evolution, see my piece Evolutionary Logic.