Intelligent Design

Congratulations to Roddy Bullock for having his first column, Judge says creationism for the birds, published in Worldnet Daily. Roddy is head of the Intelligent Design Network in Ohio. Roddy references Bill Dembski’s Immodest Proposal But there is another option, a brilliant solution if evolution’s defenders have any integrity. Put forth by author William Dembski, “Teaching the Non-Controversy – An Immodest Proposal” sets out an ACLU-proof way to teach evolution honestly. Because the AAAS, the NCSE and other champions of Darwin-only education claim there is no scientific controversy (evolution, they claim, is as well established as gravity!), why not let students simply explain why evolutionary theory is one of the few areas in science where no controversy exists? To further Read More ›

A friend writes to tell me that this article uses the design concept effectively. What do you think?

ASAP Biochemistry, ASAP Article, 10.1021/bi800357b
Web Release Date: June 19, 2008
Copyright © 2008 American Chemical Society
11-cis- and All-trans-Retinols Can Activate Rod Opsin: Rational Design of the Visual Cycle†
Masahiro Kono,* Patrice W. Goletz, and Rosalie K. Crouch
Department of Ophthalmology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina 29425
Received February 29, 2008
Revised Manuscript Received May 25, 2008

Abstract:
Rhodopsin is the photosensitive pigment in the rod photoreceptor cell. Upon absorption of a photon, the covalently bound 11-cis-retinal isomerizes to the all-trans form, enabling rhodopsin to activate transducin, its G protein. All-trans-retinal is then released from the protein and reduced to all-trans-retinol. It is subsequently transported to the retinal pigment epithelium where it is converted to 11-cis-retinol and oxidized to 11-cis-retinal before it is transported back to the photoreceptor to regenerate rhodopsin and complete the visual cycle. In this study, we have measured the effects of all-trans- and 11-cis-retinals and -retinols on the opsin’s ability to activate transducin to ascertain their potentials for activating the signaling cascade. Only 11-cis-retinal acts as an inverse agonist to the opsin. All-trans-retinal, all-trans-retinol, and 11-cis-retinol are all agonists with all-trans-retinal being the most potent agonist and all-trans-retinol being the least potent. Taken as a whole, our study is consistent with the hypothesis that the steps in the visual cycle are optimized such that the rod can serve as a highly sensitive dim light receptor. All-trans-retinal is immediately reduced in the photoreceptor to prevent back reactions and to weaken its effectiveness as an agonist before it is transported out of the cell; oxidation of 11-cis-retinol occurs in the retinal pigment epithelium and not the rod photoreceptor cell because 11-cis-retinol can act as an agonist and activate the signaling cascade if it were to bind an opsin, effectively adapting the cell to light.

The rest of the article is in Paywall City. If you’re from there, read and spill.

Also, new at the Post-Darwinist: Read More ›

Friends remind me of an excerpt from a debate between intelligent design advocate Phillip Johnson, a constitutional lawyer, and Darwinist philosopher William Provine, in which Provine proclaims,

First, the argument from design failed. There is no intelligent design in the natural world. When mammals die, they are really and truly dead. No ultimate foundations for ethics exist, no ultimate meaning in life exists, and free will is merely a human myth. These are all conclusions to which Darwin came quite clearly. (Stanford University, April 30, 1994)

Provine has said this elsewhere over the years, most notably in the Expelled movie.

A friend comments that he admires Provine for at least being honest about where materialist atheism leads – as opposed to Richard Dawkins, who moralizes with abandon, without recognizing that his belief system cannot privilege one morality over another by definition.

What happens then? Well, what happens then is being played out in Canada right now, and all across Europe. All ethical systems come under attack, and degenerate into a swamp of unfocused feelings. In Canada, a quasi-judicial body known as a “human rights commission” – with far more power over individual Canadians’ lives than any court would ever have – is alike empowered to pass judgment on a clergyman’s pastoral advice and a late-night comic’s jokes – based on assorted individuals’ feelings of hurt or offense. One astonishing decision follows another, and you can read about many of them on a regular basis at civil rights lawyer Ezra Levant’s blog.

Straw in the wind: When Levant recently tried debating an establishment lawyer, the establishment lawyer began to claim that Levant “needs counselling” – there are few more ominous words in a rapidly degenerating materialist society. The establishment neither has nor needs arguments for its position; it only needs to flow in whatever direction it is driven by the moods of the moment, and those whose moods (not “ideas”, notice) are out of synch – “need counselling.”

As Mario Beauregard and I put it in the The Spiritual Brain, the root of this sort of abuse is materialist atheism, in which

“science-based, effective and progressive policies” are not offered by a self to other selves, but driven by an object at other objects.” (p. 117)

That, I think, is what breeds the totalitarian impulse. The materialist has first dehumanized himself, then he dehumanizes others.

Also, just up at The Mindful Hack Read More ›

Cool. This should be interesting when it gets to court. As I was reading the complaint it mentions Barbara Forrest’s talk was sponsored by the Austin Center for Inquiry. So basically Comer was using taxpayer funded resources owned by the Texas government to help the Austin Center for Inquiry advertise the event it was sponsoring. This raises the question of who exactly is the Austin Center for Inquiry and why should they be entitled to free advertising from the state of Texas? CFI Austin The Center for Inquiry Austin was created for people who call themselves Brights, Atheists, Secular Humanists, Skeptics, Agnostics, Freethinkers – you get the idea! It is a chance not only to meet other local people whose Read More ›

Where is ID on this scale? Bruce G. Charlton Editor-in-Chief, Medical Hypotheses “An old joke about the response to revolutionary new scientific theories states that there are three phases on the road to acceptance: 1. The theory is not true; 2. The theory is true, but it is unimportant; 3. The theory is true, and it is important – but we knew it all along. The point of this joke is that (according to scientific theorists) new theories are never properly appreciated. The ‘false’ phase happens because a defining feature of a revolutionary theory is that it contradicts the assumptions of already-existing mainstream theory. The second ‘trivial’ phase follows from a preliminary analysis which suggests that the new idea is Read More ›

He who sups with the devil must bring a long spoon. – proverb An American living in Paris, a secular agnostic Jew, and both a mathematician and a novelist – so why isn’t Berlinski caterwauling about the Visigoths at the gates, who think there is evidence for design in the universe? Well, for one thing, he is way too smart. He is also a relentless foe of fashionable mediocrities. Thought enforcers mutter darkly against him. No doubt there will be a law against him some day, but the bureaucrats will need to make good time. He was born in 1942. Meanwhile, … Well now, what of Berlinski’s Devils?, that is The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions? The book Read More ›

Searching news.google.com for “intelligent design” I happened across a recent article by a favorite author of mine, Jerry Pournelle. Click here for his biography on Wikipedia. Jerry has written a lot of science fiction, and I quite enjoyed some of it, but that’s not the writing of his that I liked the most. It was his many years of computer technology columns, Chaos Manor, in Byte Magazine that I most enjoyed. I also thoroughly enjoyed his many articles and short stories in Analog Science Fiction and Science Fact Magazine . I’ve read almost every issue of that cover to cover since I first discovered it in the school library in the 7th grade. I still subscribe to it today almost Read More ›

I don’t think she has a leg to stand on. The policy of her government employer was to remain neutral in any official capacity regarding the public controversy over evolution by chance vs. creation of life by design. The government should remain neutral on this subject by neither fostering or restricting differing beliefs on how life orginated and diversified. Clearly Comer, through her advertisement of Barbara Forrest’s lecture, using her employer’s computer network to broadcast it, and using her government email address and title to lend strength to the advertisement, violated a clear and constitutional government mandate regarding how employees are to conduct the government’s business. Forrest’s lecture, because it centers on creationism, even though critical of it, is still Read More ›

While reading Mike Gene’s The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues, I also had the fun of encountering a letter from Richard Sever, of Cold Spring Harbor lab, to the journal Nature informing its editors that he wishes that his colleagues would “reduce confusion” by using the word “design” more intelligently. (Nature 454, 27 (3 July 2008) | doi:10.1038/454027c; Published online 2 July 2008 Paywall)

That is to say,

Few scientists would dispute that evolution provides a far more satisfactory explanation for the workings of living organisms than does ‘intelligent design’. But a much more subtle ‘design’ movement abounds that can distort how they approach their research.

Sever means that scientists refer to the design of organisms to mean the design of organisms. But everyone knows that organisms are not “really” designed; they only look exactly like they are … and this supposedly confuses people.

My favourite line is “Systems that emerge by selection differ fundamentally from those conceived by design.”

Oh? Amazing! If devout Darwinists like Sever are right, that’s precisely what isn’t true.

The designs produced by the random walk of Darwinian evolution cannot by definition differ from the designs produced by human selfish-gene robots formed by the random walk of Darwinian evolution. Everything is essentially due to Darwinian evolution, right?

Hey, look, on the Darwinist view, if there were a God and he designed things, he too must have evolved by the random walk of Darwinian evolution. So … so what exactly is Sever’s problem?

There shouldn’t really be a semantic problem along the lines that Sever suggests. Unless, of course, it is legal to doubt Darwinism … But surely the appropriate authorities are slowly but surely taking care of all that. So we can delay the introduction of duckspeak a little longer, can’t we, while we smooth out the quacks?

Actually, Sever’s sort of proposal has a  history. While writing The Spiritual Brain (Harper One, 2007), Mario Beauregard and I ran into similar serious proposals to eliminate language that implies that people have consciousness, personality, or ego, for example:

The social, psychological and cognitive sciences remain stuck with prescientific words and concepts. For many of us the word “soul” is as obsolete as “phlogiston,” but scientists still use such imprecise words as “consciousness,” “personality” and “ego,” not to mention “mind.”

Perhaps it is time that, in science at least, “imagination” and “introspection” are remodelled or, preferably, retired. Artists can have fun with them, but the serious business of the world has moved on. (Peter Watson, “Not Written in Stone”, New Scientist (August 29, 2005, quoted at p. 119 TSB )

When people can’t address the reality, they try to banish it from the terminology.  And people who live in a highly bureaucratic environment have real difficulty comprehending people who are insufficiently “cratted”, and thus continue to use real language.

Also, today at Colliding Universes:

Large Hadron Collider: And what if, $3 billion later, they don’t find the God particle? Read More ›

Vivendi Entertainment acquires home video rights of Expelled MUMBAI: Vivendi Entertainment has acquired home entertainment distribution rights to Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, produced by Premise Media. The announcement was made by Vivendi Entertainment president Tom O’Malley and Expelled executive producer John Sullivan. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, starring journalist and actor Ben Stein, is an independent documentary film that explores the theory of Intelligent Design. The film examines the conflict between advocates of intelligent design and evolutionists, and the hostility of the scientific community towards scientists that embrace intelligent design. “Ben Stein brings his unique perspective to this controversial topic and creates an incredibly insightful and entertaining film. Expelled is one of the most successful theatrical documentary films ever released and Read More ›

A great article in the WSJ about Global Warming. I really like this quote: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn’t evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist, or that global warming isn’t happening. It does mean it isn’t science.” When I saw this a corollary came to mind immediately: Even if things practically impossible for chance & necessity to conjure up remain evidence of neo-Darwinian evolution, what isn’t evidence of neo-Darwinian evolution? What we have here a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist, Read More ›

Understanding Intelligent Design: Everything You Need to Know in Plain Language, which I coauthored with Sean McDowell, and for which his father Josh McDowell wrote a bang-up foreword, is now available at Amazon.com (click here).

The book is geared at Christian young people (junior high and high schoolers) as well as for Church groups (e.g., Sunday Schools) to help get out the word about ID — specifically WHAT IS IT? WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? and WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT?

I was particularly concerned in writing the book to inoculate young people not only against the atheistic poison of Dawkins and Co. but also against the theological and scientific confusions of theistic evolutionists (like Ken Miller and Francis Collins). If this book does its job, both these camps will lose much of their traction with young people.

Here is the cover illustration. Further down are the endorsements.

—ENDORSEMENTS—

“Bill and Sean have written a superb book that I wish I had when I was in high school — it would have spared me decades of believing in Darwinism! This book presents a crystal-clear overview of the most important and exciting development in science in our lifetime — the growing recognition that life and the cosmos reveal clear scientific evidence for design by a Mind.”
–Michael Egnor, M.D., Professor and Vice-Chairman, Department of Neurosurgery, State University of New York at Stony Brook, featured in Ben Stein’s Expelled Read More ›

Some of you might have heard that Jonathan Schaeffer and his team at the U. of Alberta recently solved the game of checkers. It made big news in the computer science world.

I first met Jon at the First Computer Olympiad in London (organized by the famous David Levy of chess and computer-chess fame) at which Jon’s program won the gold medal and mine won the silver.

Jon and his team eventually computed the eight-piece endgame database for checkers, and later my colleague Ed Trice and I computed it as well. Jon and I compared results, and it turned out that his database had errors that had evaded his error-detection scheme. This scheme produced internally consistent results, despite the errors. Later, Jon detected errors in my database, which were traced back to a scratch on a CD that evaded my error-detection scheme.

All the errors were eventually traced to data transfer anomalies and not the generative computational algorithms, so CRC (cyclic redundancy check) methods were used to solve the problem.
Read More ›

Two nights ago, I finally saw the Expelled film.

I had become almost proprietorial about the widely denounced #5 political documentary.  I had first broken the story of its existence last August. I watched it pitch and roll through accusations of trickery, a threatened lawsuit over plagiarism and a real one over intellectual property, production delays (it was supposed to be released on Darwin’s birthday but was pulled for edit), and, inevitably, street drama.

Security was so tight that – as I learned a couple of weeks ago – not only could I not get a screener, neither could the the screenwriter – fellow Canadian Kevin Miller.

Okay, so there I am, sitting half-frozen in a half-empty theatre in downtown Toronto, and … I had two main reactions: Read More ›

The scientists and researchers employed in my secret basement laboratory are quite an ecclectic bunch. We have staff that wash their hands and brush their teeth after every thought as well as those whose superstitions will not allow them to change their underwear until the completion of their research project. We have committed Christians as well as atheists who should be committed. We have cool, but mostly we have nerd. One biochemist’s 5 year old was visiting and after talking to several researchers said to her dad, “Daddy, these guys make even Todd and Lance seem cool.” Her dad just shook his head and said, “Sweetie, you have never met Todd or Lance, have you?” That little girl has the cutest giggle.

Perhaps the most unusual character in our lab is Alfred the Atheist, one of our physicists. He’s a Landscaper of the String Theory clan. Alfred is always spewing equations about which no one else has a clue. Nobody is ever sure if he really knows what he is talking about. Our only evidence on these matters occurs when he does calculations on his super computer. Often after a result is obtained, his computer smacks itself on its monitor with its own mouse and exclaims, “Boo-yah! My hard drive just had an orgasm!” Then it has a smoke.

Alfred has long been determined to calculate and describe the nature of other universes in the Landscape. (Some say that he hasn’t changed underwear in 3 years; others claim he goes ‘commando.’) He declares that he wants to prove beyond all question that God doesn’t exist. His computer now has a 2 pack-a-day habit.

I can only get over this fit of envy by writing another book.

Hey, I have been a book editor most of my adult life. I know books. I know them well.

The excellent Burris, pictured above, maybe don’t.

Yes, book writing is indeed a dying art, and I’ll die with it – but … not yet.

I will write one more book. Meanwhile, enjoy Steve Burri’s spoof, and don’t blame me if you are one Offended bunny … I, as it happens, do NOT care … *

Also, just up at Colliding Universes:

Universe arranged like nautilus shell on a large scale? (Well, would you prefer it had been arranged like a losing hand in poker?) Read More ›