Intelligent Design

The comment threads to several recent posts have contained spirited discussions of faith, reason and the relationship between the two. This issue comes up quite often on this blog, so I decided it was time to devote a post to it. Many of the comments assume a dichotomy, namely that materialists operate solely within the sphere of reason, and theists operate solely within the sphere of faith. In this post I will demonstrate that this dichotomy is not only false, but obviously false. I will show that everyone operates in varying degrees in both spheres. I will then show that far from being a bastion of pure reason, materialism actually requires greater faith commitments than theism.

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Perhaps someone can explain to me what the science of design detection has to do with Nazis, the Holocaust, or Hitler. I sure can’t think of anything. Help me out here. It’s things like this that undermine ruin the effort to get ID accepted as good science. It gives our critics the ammunition they need to convince people that ID is nothing more than a tool being used to promote social reform. Science has left the building once the Nazi card gets played. As far as science is concerned it doesn’t matter if Hitler and Darwin were the same person. The only thing that matters is whether his theories can stand up to scientific scrutiny. It’s a crying shame that Read More ›

Many of us have heard a wearisome amount of commentary about whether the Expelled film should have – or should not have – dwelt on the Darwin-driven Nazi extermination of “inferior” peoples.

Scholar Richard Weikart, who knows more than anyone alive about the  Nazis and Darwin, writes to say,

The point about showing the social and ethical impact of Darwinism is not to *disprove* Darwinism. However, many people fail to understand that Darwinism necessarily has ethical implications, in ways that other sciences do not, because it makes claims about the origins of morality (at least Darwin in Descent of Man made such claims, as have myriads of Darwinists thereafter).

However, while not disproving Darwinism, pointing out the ethical implications and impacts of Darwinism is nonetheless important, as I have learned from reactions to my book, From Darwin to Hitler, and to lectures I have given. Some individuals have told me that before learning about my work on the intersection of Darwinism and bioethics, they didn’t think Darwinism was all that important—they saw it as irrelevant, a mere intellectual curiosity. Darwinism, however, makes claims about life and death issues—indeed, about the very meaning of life and death (in addition to its claims about the origins of morality). Granted, there are various ways philosophically to try to meet these challenges, but knowing the directions that Darwinism has taken historically can help clarify the philosophical issues, it seems to me. For those who think that the social implications have only been felt by Nazi Germany, get John West’s excellent book, _Darwin Day in America_, where he shows the way that Darwinism has impacted many diverse fields in the US.

I do not disbelieve in Darwinism because of its ethical and social consequences. I disbelieve in Darwinism because it is inconsistent with the available evidence. It simply is not true. Showing that people have been (and are being!!) killed in the name of Darwinism, however, lends poignancy and urgency to exposing the falsehood.

If I did not have any other reason to believe Weikart, I need only look at the rubbish at Wikipedia on the subject.

Surely no one sends their students there? It is nothing but a whitewash of Darwin’s racism and the inevitable consequences of same. It will be instructive to see Barack Obama’s campaign get hold of this stuff and turn it into something really slick.

Meanwhile, key news from the north: Read More ›

ConversantLife.com is doing a lot of the web marketing of my new book with Sean McDowell (UNDERSTANDING INTELLIGENT DESIGN). Here are some videos they did of Sean and me during a recent bookseller’s convention: www.conversantlife.com/id (scroll down) www.youtube.com/user/conversantlifestyle (scroll down)

In the lastest escapades of Paul “Frackin’ Cracker” Myers I found that all links to Pharyngula, where Myers recently promised to film and blog himself desecrating the Catholic Eucharist, have been hastily removed from the University of Minnesota (Morris) website.

Thanks to Google Cache and also The Wayback Machine we can see that these links were there not long ago. What we want to know is who removed them. Was it Paul “Frackin’ Cracker” Myers himself who removed the links in an effort to protect his job or was it the University of Minnesota that removed them to protect itself from Myers? Either way, someone is trying to distance the University of Minnesota from Paul “Frackin’ Cracker” Myers’ personal blog.

Something else that should be investigated is if Myers is using the University’s computers and networks to manage his personal blog, to compose things like the desecration of the Eucharist blog entries, and otherwise leverage taxpayer and tuition funded resources to carry on these activities.

We here are supportive of Paul Myers’ right to use his own time and resources for any legal activities he cares to indulge in but when he begins using the resources of a public university to engage in these activities then it becomes something that he has no right to do. It then amounts to theft of services. The University of Minnesota’s computers and networks are paid for by various sources including the taxpayers but these resources are only to be used for things explicitely approved of by university administrators who are in turn accountable to said sources of funding. Employees of the university should not be free to use these resources for unapproved personal purposes.

Click below to see all the links showing what was recently removed from morris.umn.edu to coverup the university web server’s use associated with Myers personal blog scienceblogs.com/pharyngula.

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…then check out this: www.hybridmedicalanimation.com/demoReel.html

This just posted on the Catholic League’s website: MINNESOTA PROF PLEDGES TO DESECRATE EUCHARIST July 10, 2008 Paul Zachary Myers, a professor at the University of Minnesota Morris, has pledged to desecrate the Eucharist. He is responding to what happened recently at the University of Central Florida when a student walked out of Mass with the Host, holding it hostage for several days. Myers was angry at the Catholic League for criticizing the student. His post can be accessed from his faculty page on the university’s website. Here is an excerpt of his July 8 post, “It’s a Frackin’ Cracker!”: “Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers?” Myers continued by saying, “if any of you would be Read More ›

Lubitz, Reijerse & Messinger have published a fascinating review into the intricacies of photosystem II and hydrogenases that produce hydrogen – Note the marvels within Darwn’s blob of “protoplasm”. It is most interesting that Lubitz et al. address the design principles that we can learn from “nature” and apply to creating synthetic photochemical biosynthetic water splitting systems.Though attributed to “nature”, recognizing design principles and applying them are easily understood at the Max Planck Institut für Bioanorganische Chemie. I wonder when No. America will catch up? From the very detailed complexity described, I highly expect some “irreducibly complex” systems are present. Any candidates? Following are a few extracts from this excellent review.
—————————–

Solar water-splitting into H₂ and O₂: design principles of photosystem II and hydrogenases

Wolfgang Lubitz, Edward J. Reijerse and Johannes Messinger
Max Planck Institut für Bioanorganische Chemie, Germany.

Energy Environ. Sci., 2008 DOI: 10.1039/b808792j

This review aims at presenting the principles of water-oxidation in photosystem II and of hydrogen production by the two major classes of hydrogenases in order to facilitate application for the design of artificial catalysts for solar fuel production. . . .

. . .A promising way for light-driven water splitting would be to mimic the molecular and supramolecular organization of the natural photosynthetic system, i.e. artificial photosynthesis.^{12,13 . . .} Read More ›

So Louisiana has a new law allowing science teachers to teach the weaknesses of time & chance evolutionary theory. What’s the big deal? Evolution by time and chance is as well tested as gravity for Pete’s sake. How long does take to convince a kid that when he throws a baseball into the air gravity will pull it back to earth? According to the theophobic evolutionists there are no weaknesses in their theory. So the teacher will quickly present just a small fraction of the “overwhelming evidence” that time & chance turned mud into Mozart, he’ll have a list of zero things to present to argue against it, and all will be well with nothing lost. The biology teacher can Read More ›

Published online 9 July 2008 | Nature 454, 150 (2008) A former Texas official is suing the state’s education agency, saying that its policies passively endorse creationism. In a complaint filed with a district court on 1 July, Christina Comer, a former director of state science education, alleged that officials tacitly condone the teaching of creationism through a policy of neutrality. Comer oversaw Texas’s science curriculum until last November, when she was forced to resign for circulating a notice of a talk entitled “Inside Creationism’s Trojan Horse”. In her termination notice, Comer was told that the education agency endeavoured to “remain neutral” on the issue of creationism. Comer’s complaint argues that board neutrality violates the separation of church and state. Read More ›

Can’t sleep? Thinking of trying that leftover spicy dip again?

Mmmmmm, can’t comment on that but, as you munch ….

As if to prove that modernization and secularization are not the same thing – as sociologist Peter Berger maintains – long-deceased cultural icons are “appearing” again. Darwin’s face has been discovered in a tree and Turkish secularist Kemal Ataturk’s face in a hillside shadow in a remote Turkish village. All the more interesting because Darwin is the icon of North American atheists and Atatürk was a devout secularist.

Apparently, the silhouette of Turkey’s revered founder appears on the shadow that falls on these heights between June 15 and July 5. And thousands of Atatürk lovers, including military officers, bureaucrats and urban professionals, visit the region in order to observe this fascinating solstice.

Mr. Gülcemal Fidan, the mayor of Damal and a member of the ultra-secular People’s Republican Party, or CHP, recently announced that the “Damal Festival in the Shade of Atatürk” will be observed every year, and his office has spared YTL 200,000 (about $163,000) for this year’s organization — which is quite an amount for a tiny and poor area like his. Mr. Fidan also added that they expected Turkey’s Chief of Staff Gen. Yasar Büyükanit to attend the celebrations.

Did Atatürk get “time off for good behavior” to come back and get his devotees favours from the government?

Now, I ask you, reasonable folk, does this – or does it not – beat the “Virgin Mary on a piece of toast“?

Toronto hack’s view: Devotees – of Darwin, Ataturk, or kitsch Catholicism – “see” things.

The Florida toast cult claims that their piece of bread has mystical power. It never went bad in a whole decade – or anyway, no one ate it and got sick. No one ate it at all. It was offered for sale.

Match THAT< Darwin and Ataturk!

(Note: The Catholic Church thinks that Jesus’s mother Mary has sometimes appeared to help people. But read this for qualifying details. Do not try to phone the Pope about your toast. If you have not been living a really holy life, Mary prays for you. But if you are not listening to usual sources of good advice – why not start by listening to them, instead of waiting for a visit from her?)

Meanwhile, at The Mindful Hack, if you still haven’t gone to sleep … Read More ›

Man, this guy makes PZ Myers look calm, cool, and collected. Click here to read this hilarious exchange between David Heddle and John Kwok on a typical “science” blog. It’s funny until Kwok starts throwing ill-advised libels about. I wonder if Abbie “Potty Mouth” Smith will do him a big favor and flush this down the memory hole (in the words of Jerry Pournelle) “Real Soon Now”. Smithers, release the hounds. And will someone PLEASE do Kwok a huge favor and give him an Amazon gift certificate redeemable for a thesaurus of his choice. I’ve never read anyone who needs one more than this raving lunatic.

As I was catching up on reading back issues of Analog: Science Fiction and Fact I noted, for the first time in nearly 40 years of reading the magazine, not one but a pair of articles (one fact, one fiction) addressed the Intelligent Design controversy.

Both articles were written by physicist Carl Frederick.

The first (non-fiction) titled The Challenge of the Anthropic Universe is about the so-far fruitless quest by physicists to find an explanation for the fine tuning of the universe (basis of Cosmological ID) that doesn’t involve intelligent design. The article begins:

In the early 1990’s, a creeping realization swept through the theoretical physics community that the probability for the universe to even exist was vanishingly small. Indeed, the only “theory” around that seemed able to explain the universe’s existence was Intelligent Design. This was not something physicists and cosmologists liked to talk about.

Later on, after describing the “problem” in detail, he quotes what Lee Smolin considers the four possible solutions:

Which Way Out?

Lee Smolin considers that there are four solutions to the problem, schemas if you will.

[below are truncated for brevity -ds]

1) God tuned the parameters for our benefit.
2) There are a very large number of universes each of which has random parameters.
3) There is a “unique mathematically consistent theory of the whole universe”.
4) The parameters evolve in time – in the Darwinian sense.

[end truncation -ds]

A good number of very intelligent people have argued for schemas two, three, and four above. At the moment there is nothing resembling a consensus among physicists.

Interesting that Frederick fails to mention very intelligent people arguing for schema one. Maybe that’s so self-evident it hurts him to repeat it. 🙂

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John Templeton died today in the Bahamas. He was 95. I had long one-on-one conversations* with him over consecutive dinners back in 1999 during a conference titled “Complexity, Information, Design: A Critical Appraisal,” convened by Charles Harper and Paul Davies. Sir John impressed me as a good and sincere man who cared deeply about the misuse of science to marginalize religion and spirituality. On balance, his impact in facilitating conversation between science and religion has been enormously beneficial. Would that his advisors and administrators at the Templeton Foundation were as broadminded as he. ———— *He shared with me regarding his initial investments at the end of the Great Depression and how they paid off big time: he chose 100 stocks Read More ›

A reader of The Spiritual Brain asks,

… , you write that evolution (i.e., macro-evolution, descent by a common ancestor) is a fact, given the fossil record. Do you really believe this, or this is simply a concession to the scientific establishment, in other words, a disclaimer of sorts that is making sure that your ideas in this book can be taken seriously …

Well that was grounds for a gourmet cup of coffee!

The Spiritual Brain was an enormous amount of work. Mario and I risked much to maintain what we think the evidence supports about the non-material nature of the human mind. 

Anyone who thinks we would complicate our lives by also maintaining positions we do not support … has a future in writing afternoon soaps, where life is the art of the impossible.

So I wrote back and said,

I am intrigued by the way you put your question, “Do you really believe this?”

It reminds me of the day I was received into the Catholic Church (as an adult).

But I am not sure that a question about common descent should remind me of my reception into the Church. Let me explain why: Read More ›