Intelligent Design

Here’s an excerpt from the San Francisco Chronicle about Obama. Adjectives like “fawning,” “effusive,” and “unhinged” don’t quite capture this article, which is titled “Is Obama an Enlightened Being?” “Messianic” is more like it. Interestingly, the highest praise that this article heaps on Obama is that he will “help us evolve.” Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly Read More ›

In evaluating whether or not Barack Obama, now pretty much confirmed as the US Democratic candidate for president, is indeed a “Messiah in our midst?”, commentator Jonah Goldberg comments:

Obama’s apostles are hard to dismiss. Oprah simply calls him “The One,” because “we need politicians who know how to be the truth.” (Jesus says in John 14:6 “I am the way, the truth …”) Oprah goes on to say Obama will help us “evolve to a higher plane,” which would put Obama in the role of our Intelligent Designer.

Intelligent Designer? Hold that thought. And hold your fork, Duke, there’s pie:

According to the New York Times, Obama’s volunteers are taught to eschew discussions of the issues and instead “testify” about how they “came to Obama.”

For many, he’s no retro-redeemer, but a 21st century savior, a Matrix-messiah and Neo for our modern-day Nineveh. Self-help guru Deepak Chopra dubs Obama “a quantum leap in American consciousness,” while prominent “leadership coach” Eve Konstantine assures us that, “He’s our product out of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence.”

Obama willing, I will never be stuck next to these people on a plane.

Well, speaking for myself, Jonah, if I were stuck next to them on a plane, I would burst out singing, “If I had the wings of a … private jet!”

Yes indeed, a private jet, just like some American politicians*, who can insulate themselves from their goofy supporters, even if the rest of the travelling public can’t.

Goldberg warns that the Obamans will never leave you or forsake you as a mere one-celled, unquelled amoeba:

Those of you who thought we had a Second Amendment to keep government from fixing your soul are so 20th century. Evolve already.

Anyway, what I find fascinating is how the terminology of the debate finds its way into popular culture. Note especially: “Attention: Burgeoning post-Darwinists: Should we all sign up and get a tax number at this point?”

(*Disclaimer: Yes, yes, I am sure that the Republican contender has wingnut supporters too, but Do. Not. Ever. Mail. Me. Their. Literature.  I. Believe. You. Already. Yet.)

Meanwhile, just up at Overwhelming Evidence Read More ›

From Mike Gene’s book, The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues: Sometime around 1860, Asa Gray, a professor of botany from Harvard, apparently asked Darwin what it would take to convince him of design. Darwin replied: “Your question what would convince me of design is a poser. If I saw an angel come down to teach us good, and I was convinced from others seeing him that I was not mad, I should believe in design. If I could be convinced thoroughly that life and mind was in an unknown way a function of other imponderable force, I should be convinced. If man was made of brass or iron and no way connected with any other organism which had ever Read More ›

It’s open access: check it out.

His attempt to tiptoe is better known as his book, Chance or Purpose? Creation, Evolution, and a Rational Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007). Tiptoeing won’t work, actually. The ID guys don’t really care what he says because Darwinism and materialism are toast so burnt that even a miracle couldn’t revive them, not that any miracle worker would bother, of course. But the Darwinists/materialists are accustomed to demanding total surrender from everyone for no particular reason, and I guess it becomes a habit or something. Anyway: Introduction Christoph Cardinal Schoenborn’s Chance or Purpose? Flickering light on the ID controversy at best Part One: Is the proposed distinction between evolution and “evolutionism” legitimate in today’s environment? (Of course not.) Part Two: Read More ›

Do self replicating systems arise from design or solely by materialistic processes? A self replicating system has just been designed by Adrian Bowyer and demonstrated a the University Of Bath.

Studying RepRap is likely to give further insights into the requirements for self replicating systems. Then those can be compared with self replicating biotic systems and evaluated as to whether those could have arisen by materialistic processes, or if that most probably would indicate intelligent causation. Read More ›

Yoko Ono’s copyright infringement suit against the makers of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed for using 15 seconds of the Lennon song Imagine was thrown out of court. Of course we all knew it was no more than a nuisance suit brought because Ono didn’t approve of the film’s negative view of the philosophy expressed in Imagine. Stanford Law School’s Fair Use Project: Yoko Ono’s Injunction Against “Expelled” Producers Denied The Fair Use Project of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society today announced that Yoko Ono’s attempt to enjoin Premise Media’s documentary, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” has been denied. The film, released in the United States last month on more than 1000 theater screens nationwide, explores whether proponents of Read More ›

Christian commentator Dinesh D’Souza has recently been arguing that the real problem with Darwinism in the classroom is that it is used to promote atheism. Today,

I noticed he had an interesting item in TotheSource, which is not yet archived, talking about Darwin’s own agnosticism-bordering-on-atheism. I have elsewhere pointed out that Darwinism has always been sold primarily as the creation story of atheism.

And with good reason. If we survey the patterns in the actual history of life from the Ediacaran period to the present, given what we know today, it is most unlikely that we would credit Darwin’s theory of natural selection acting on random mutations with explaining how most of it happened.
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That is why I was somewhat impatient with D’Souza’s contention that we need only prevent people from using Darwinism as a tool of atheism and everything will be fine. (See “Earth to planet D’Souza.”*)

The reality is that right now, scientists seem to be trying to dump Darwin’s theory as a theory of everything in biology, yet the secular chants of praise for Darwin have increased in volume in the popular media – competing with a flood tide of nonsense from evolutionary psychologists, flogging to journals material that, if only it were well written and a little more plausible, might have morphed into saleable “Clan of the Cave Bear” fiction. For that sort of thing, Darwin’s theory is far more essential than it is for biology.

Just up at Design of Life blog

Fossil fish find reveals that live birth is ancient, not modern. Live-bearing fish is from 380 million years ago. Read More ›

Richard Dawkins, in a face-off with Rupert Sheldrake, says “I don’t want to discuss evidence”. As the Saturday Night Live Church Lady would say, “Well, isn’t that just precious?” Dick: “But what worries me about you is that you are prepared to believe almost anything. Science should be based on the minimum number of beliefs.” Rupert: “But what worries me about you is that you come across as dogmatic, giving people a bad impression of science.” Read Sheldrake’s article Richard Dawkins comes to call to get more insight into Dick to the Dawk to the PhD’s modus operandi.

How should we spend on malnutrition compared to stabilizing global warming? Environmentalism vs common compassion come to opposite conclusions. Materialism versus intelligent causation worldviews strike again: —————–
May 30, 2008 ˜Forget Climate Change, We Should Spend on Nutrition; Mark Henderson, Science Editor, Copenhagen, Times Online

Malnutrition should be the world’s major priority for aid and development, a panel of eight leading economists, Read More ›

Awesome. The alternative biofuel part of the talk starts at 13 minutes. I highly recommend watching it all.

According to a press release from National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI):

Bethesda, Md., Wed., May 28, 2008 — Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today announced his intention to step down on August 1 to explore writing projects and other professional opportunities.

Dr. Collins, 58, a physician-geneticist, has served as NHGRI’s director since April 1993. He led the Human Genome Project (HGP) to its successful conclusion in 2003, and subsequently initiated and managed a wide range of projects that built upon the foundation laid by the sequencing of the human genome.

Collins is widely known as a Christian scientist, and the author of the popular book The Language of God, advancing the view that Darwinian evolution can account for the development of life (though possibly not its origin). He draws the line at altruism in human beings, though evolutionary psychologists have aggressively staked that too, along with every manifestation of religion, as their territory.

 According to the Institute,

Dr. Collins explained that his decision to step down as leader of NHGRI came after much personal deliberation. “My decision was driven by a desire for an interval of time dedicated to writing, reflection and exploration of other professional opportunities in the public or private sectors,” he said. “The demands and responsibilities of directing an NIH institute do not allow the time commitment necessary for this. In addition, I may need greater latitude than my current position allows to pursue other potential positions of service without encountering any possible conflicts of interest, whether real or perceived.”

It well be interesting to see whether Collins pursues his interest in accommodating Christianity and Darwinism, and if so, how.

Also, just up at Colliding Universes:

Coffee Break question: Why are the space aliens always supposed to have superior technology?

Exoplanets: Will intelligence be common or rare? Read More ›

Czech President Vaclav Klaus published Blue Planet in Green Shackles and challenged Al Gore to debate on climate change. Having survived and overcome Marxism, he has fascinating insights into the parallels of centralized Marxist control mentality and the modern environmentalism trying to impose its utopian ideals on the rest of us. His insights appear to apply to understand the parallel efforts by materialists / atheists to impose their “scientific” worldview of macro-evolution on the rest of the world. See article and book abstract below.
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Czech President Klaus ready to debate Gore on climate change

Washington – Czech President Vaclav Klaus said Tuesday he is ready to debate Al Gore about global warming, Read More ›

An early ID book (possibly the earliest), The Mystery of Life’s Origin by Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, and Roger Olson (1984), with a foreword by Dean Kenyon, has been out of print for a while, I am told. But a .pdf can be downloaded here for now.

Information theory is a special branch of mathematics that has developed a way to measure information. In brief, the information content of a structure is the minimum number of instructions required to describe or specify it,  whether that structure is a rock or a rocket ship, a pile of leaves or a living organism. The more complex a structure is, the more instructions are needed to describe it. —Charles Thaxton, biochemist

Meanwhile ….

Study: Sun not special, therefore alien life should be common?

Does time’s one-way street prove that other universes exist? Read More ›

This paper will be quoted for many years as the basis for faith in the de novo origin by evolution of useful proteins. How good is the evidence? De Novo Origination of a New Protein-Coding Gene in a yeast species by Wen Wang et al “THE total number of different proteins in all organisms on earth is estimated to be 10exp10 to 10exp12. How the protein repertoire evolved the giant diversity that underlies the evolution of the complexity of life is attracting many evolutionary biologists to the field. Origination of new genes is an important mechanism generating genetic novelties during the evolution of an organism. Processes creating new genes using pre-existing genes as the raw materials are well characterized, such Read More ›