ID Foundations

The vid is embedded here at 640 wide. Appealing to the WordPress gods to allow an embed here: [youtube 00vBqYDBW5s] And, let me clip the linked KF post: . . . Of course, there is a hot — and too often quite uncivil — controversy surrounding the inference to design on empirically tested signs such as complex, functionally specific organisation and associated information, or irreducibly complex functional organisation. However, much of that controversy is not driven by the actual balance on the merits but by the determination of institutionally dominant evolutionary materialist factions to retain their (now fast-crumbling) hold on science, the academy, education, most mass media, public policy and the public square. Sometimes, even the pulpit. If you doubt Read More ›

Next up in the Engineering and Metaphysics series is a presentation by Winston Ewert. This one is on a new informatics metric, called conditional Kolmogorov complexity. Check it out!

In recent days, the UD “Engineer says . . . ” thread has become an extended discussion on the design inference and its justification. It has already led to another ID Foundations post, on the significance of Mignea’s simplest self-replicator model for the design inference from FSCO/I in life. Today, it is worth excerpting and adapting a recent summary post in the thread on the significance of inferring on signs that design is the best causal explanation for certain phenomena in the natural world. To set context, it is useful to first pause and remind ourselves from the online New World Encyclopedia, what design theory, at core, is about: Intelligent design (ID) is the view that it is possible to Read More ›

For the next installment of the Engineering and Metaphysics Conference Videos, we have a talk on setting up a testable line between physical and non-physical causation, as well as how one can integrate non-physical causation into models of cognitive processes.

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The recent Engineering and ID conference was obviously fruitful. I find it — HT: JohnnyB — helpful to compose Mignea’s schematic for self-replication, and discuss it a bit in the context of the origin of self-replicating entities given von Neumann’s requisites of a successful kinematic self-replicator. [Henceforth, vNSR.] Let me extract from the just updated discussion in the IOSE course, Unit 2: _________ >>John von Neumann’s self-replicator (1948 – 49) is a good focal case to study. Ralph Merkle gives a good motivating context: [[T]he costs involved in the exploration of the galaxy using self replicating probes would be almost exclusively the design and initial manufacturing costs. Subsequent manufacturing costs would then drop dramatically . . . . A device Read More ›

ID proponents and creationists should not use the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics to support ID. Appropriate for Independence Day in the USA is my declaration of independence and disavowal of 2nd Law arguments in support of ID and creation theory. Any student of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics will likely find Granville Sewell’s argument and similar arguments not consistent with textbook understanding of these subjects, and wrong on many levels. With regrets for my dissent to my colleagues (like my colleague Granville Sewell) and friends in the ID and creationist communities, I offer this essay. I do so because to avoid saying anything would be a disservice to the ID and creationist community of which I am a part.

 [Granville Sewell  responds to Sal Cordova here. ]

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I don’t think Granville Sewell 2nd law arguments are correct. An author of the founding book of ID, Mystery of Life’s Origin, agrees with me:

“Strictly speaking, the earth is an open system, and thus the Second Law of Thermodynamics cannot be used to preclude a naturalistic origin of life.”

Walter Bradley, Thermodynamics and the Origin of Life

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I have just now commented in the recent thread on Dr Fuller’s thought, and think it useful to headline for record (especially given some continued abusive misbehaviour at Anti- Evo and linked sites that has come to my attention in recent days): ____________ >> Let me clip a few thought-sparker cites from Dr Steve Fuller: “The failure of intelligent design theory to specify the intelligent designer constitutes both a rhetorical and an epistemological disadvantage…The epistemological disadvantage is subtler, namely, that intelligent design theory is unnecessarily forced to adopt an instrumentalist philosophy of science, whereby its theory is treated merely as a device for explaining particular phenomena (i.e. as products of intelligent design) without allowing inferences to the best explanation (i.e. Read More ›

ENV reports on how there seems to be an attempt to reclaim the co-founder of evolutionary theory for the anti-design camp. Such an enterprise is bound to fail the test of historical accuracy in light of a simple reading of Wallace’s The World of Life; as was recently republished by — we can’t make this up — Forgotten Books. Using a modern style, the book is: The World of Life: a manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose. That should tell us something, but evidently not enough to satisfy the enthusiasts and champions of evolutionary materialism. (Cf. the earlier posts here and here (video) on the suppressed/”forgotten” history of Darwin’s Heretic.) We could read the book, which substantiates the Read More ›

For some time now, one of the ID Foundations series, has been on the UD “most popular” list. I had occasion to visit it just now, to see why. I found a statement by a Mr Peter Griffin regarding an exchange with the pseudonymous anti design theory web personality known as Zachriel, and find myself compelled to reply to the issue of violation of confidence and willful poisoning and polarisation of issues by embroiling attacks to the person. In particular, I must note how this post plainly reflects a violation of confidence of correspondence in the teeth of an explicit act of protest regarding earlier violation of confidence. It seems that Zachriel thought he could get away with such violation Read More ›

In the course of the exchanges on Dr Matzke’s clip on what “science” says can and cannot be so regarding miracles, he has made an interesting comment, here at 15: . . . I still haven’t seen anyone present a good argument as to why we can’t just say that science is the study of the usual course of events . . . Of course, he — sadly, misleadingly — failed to inform us that this highlighted phrase was taken from my own remarks in the original post (and which were followed up in the thread): It goes without needing emphasis that those who experienced the sequence A –> B –> C . . .  here [–> A, the last Read More ›

The ongoing debates over methodological naturalism have pointed us back to Newton’s Rules for scientific reasoning. So, thanks to Paul Halshall of Fordham University’s Modern History Sourcebook, let us cite for reference: ___________________ >> Modern History Sourcebook: Isaac Newton: The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy [Excerpts] [The Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy] RULE I We are to admit no more causes of natural things, than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. To this purpose the philosophers say, that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain, when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes. RULE II Therefore to the same natural effects we Read More ›

In the ongoing Methodological Naturalism thread, at no. 66, Dr Matzke is on record: massive observational evidence and the logic of our understanding of natural laws rules say that that miracle thing can’t happen. In short he holds that the laws of nature forbid miracles. (And recall, here, we are speaking about the late publicist for the US-based NCSE, for quite some years.) Oopsie. Double oopise. Triple oopsie. And cf. here, too. In a nutshell, Dr Matzke here seems to make a crude form of the error commonly attributed to Hume (and too often seen as a definitive dismissal of the miraculous). He also reveals that behind methodological naturalism, there may often lurk a prior (and perhaps implicit) commitment to Read More ›

Yesterday, UD’s News announced a free chart of fallacies. I thought, oh, yay, let’s download. But, once I began to look at the chart, I noticed that it presented Plato, Socrates and Aristotle in a way that seemed to mock the orthodox Christian triune concept of God. (Did it ever strike the creator of the chart, that Plato is a foundational design thinker? Cf here on.) Clue no 1. Clue no 2 was that many fallacies seemed to have odd names. And, “thou shalt not commit logical fallacies” in that context suggests that, as with too many presentations on fallacies I have seen online, this is an agenda in disguise: you object to “our” views because you are dumb and/or Read More ›

Passed by and noticed Dr Hunter’s post on Nagel’s forthcoming book.  (And, objectors, Nagel is a serious philosopher of mind, writing in his area of expertise.  As in, author of “What is it like to be a bat?”) Going to the Oxford University Press [OUP] book page, I noticed another name popping up: Plantinga. As in, the man who blew away the logical form of the problem of evil. Passed by my thread on It’s Friday, but Sunday is coming, and saw Axel’s comment. Clipping: . . . while on the subject of the materialists’ desperation to quash any theistic assumption from scientific consideration, surely the proven precedence of mind over matter in physics points unequivocally to a personal God. Read More ›

What on earth does the title of a famous Good Friday Sermon have to do with the ID controversy? (Even, come Easter Sunday morning . . . ) A lot. Sadly. As I was reading and thinking about Dr Torley’s latest amazing UD series and some of UD’s ever so fascinating comments [one of the best features of UD is comments], I was led to look at the Dr Townes story, and related matters. One of the findings is how Dr Townes, a Nobel Prize holder for physics, turns out to be a cosmological design thinker who actually supports intelligent design in an evolutionary framework [i.e. pretty similar to Wallace, co-founder of modern evolutionary theory], but sees ID as anti-evolutionism. Read More ›