Intelligent Design

A web page on “Einstein’s razor” at Wikipedia and ResearchID cited:
* Q. T. Jackson (2005) describes:

“a corollary from Occam’s Razor, which I shall call herein ”Einstein’s Razor.” The notion that a theory should be as simple as possible (but no simpler). . . Einstein’s Razor brings forward the following notion: ”even when a simple explanation is theoretically sufficient, it is sometimes insufficient to reach desired goals.” That is, some ”needs” or ”goals” are not necessarily attainable by the simpler of two or more systems. . . . When Occam’s Razor is insufficiently sharp to split hairs, Einstein’s Razor is required.”

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GO HERE: newworldencyclopedia.org/….

More at TheBRITES.org

Jefferson to John Adams on April 11, 1823: I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripedal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with its distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organised as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, Read More ›

“Not only does the oak tree and homo sapien share 70% identical DNA, the similarity of phenotypical features of the acorn with the adult human is compelling and, indeed, irrefutable,” says Dr. Richard Knuther. Details at TheBrites.org.

In a private forum a question was recently posed: At what point the police should stop investigating an unsolved murder and close the case, declaring that God must have simply wanted the victim dead? It is the same point at which it is appropriate to tell scientists to stop looking for explanations and simply conclude “God did it”. My reply Dear XXXX, Well, in practice they stop investigating when the evidence goes cold (the trail of evidence stops in an inconclusive state). In the investigation into the origin and diversification of life the trail of evidence hasn’t gone cold. The trail begins with ancient scientist/philosophers looking at macroscopic features of life like the camera eye and saying it looks like Read More ›

George W. Beccaloni and Vincent S. Smith of The Natural History Museum (London) recently drew attention to the nearly forgotten figure of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) in Nature vol. 451.28 (February 2008): 1050.  Bemoaning “how Wallace’s achievements have been overshadowed by Darwin’s . . ., a process certainly not helped by the Darwin ‘industry’ of recent decades,” the authors call for a revision of “the current darwinocentric view of the history of biology.”  Few among this blog could dissent from such a bold proposal.  Beccaloni and Smith would like the focus to be upon the reading of Darwin and Wallace’s seminal papers to the Linnean Society on July 1, 1858, with due recognition accorded Wallace for his joint discovery of natural selection.  Published one month later, this most surely was a major turning point in the history of the biological sciences and in that regard one can hardly find fault with the simple but instructive point that for all the Darwin Day hype, natural selection was indeed a joint discovery.

Yet this in itself fails to do justice to Wallace.  The theory Wallace developed from years of field experience in the Mayla Archipelago did not end with that 1858 reading; in fact, it was just the beginning of an intellectual odyssey that would find fullest expression in what might arguably be regarded as his magnum opus, The World of Life: a Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose, published just three years before his death in 1913.  That book more than any other expressed Wallace’s fullest and most complete views on the subject of evolution.  While Beccaloni and Smith want us to remember Wallace’s discovery, I suggest a fuller reflection upon what that discovery meant to Wallace and to the biological sciences will uncover a wholly different kind of evolutionary scenario than that fashioned by Darwin, Huxley and their X-Club fellow travelers.  In short, I call for not a recognition of Wallace within this much-touted Darwinian context but rather upon Wallace as the originator of an independent design-centered view best expressed as Wallaceism.  What precisely that means requires some explanation.

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Quite often when confronted with the problematic nature of explaining the arrival of the first life capable of supporting descent with modification an evolutionary theorist will say the theory has no bearing on how the first life came into existence – the theory only explains what happened after that. Is this true? Well, yes and no. Evolutionary theory doesn’t explain exactly how the first life was created and doesn’t demand any particular modus operandi. However, that’s not to say it doesn’t make any assumptions at all. It assumes that the first life was a simple cell and the mechanism(s) described by the theory made a simple common ancestor (or perhaps a few simple common ancestors) into the complex and diverse Read More ›

Sounds like the title of a bad horror movie, but it’s true. Run. All right, you can walk. The link above takes you to a pdf of page 110 of Donald Prothero’s new book, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). Prothero argues that “all vertebrate embryos start out with a long tail, well-developed gill slits, and many other fish-like features” (p. 108). Thus, he continues, “to the limited extent that von Baer had shown 40 years earlier,” Haeckel’s biogenetic law — ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny — “is true.” Except sometimes it’s not: But embryos also have many unique features (yolk sac, allantois, amniotic membranes, umbilical cords) that have nothing to do with Read More ›

Research led by Prof Frank Gannon has uncovered new revelations on possible ways to switch genes on and off and how cells interpret their DNA. Only some genes are expressed in any given tissue. Proteins active in nerve cells are not expressed in the liver. How this is controlled is complex. One fundamental factor is whether the DNA is tagged or modified (methylated) in the region of a gene. This is important in gene expression and balancing the level proteins in different cell lines. Although gene methylation (when a gene is turned on or turned off) was thought to be stable and unchangeable, this is not the case. Things are even more complicated than previously thought. Transient, cyclical and dynamic Read More ›

The Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science is offering incoming students this summer a choice of two T-shirts (go here):

Paul Kurtz’s Center for Inquiry is partnering with SUNY-Buffalo (the State University of New York) to offer an Ed.M. in “scientific literacy” (which will include a whopping dose of Darwinism and an assault on ID). For a description of the degree, go to their website. Below is a description of the program from an email I just received. In reading it, ask youself what would happen if Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, which is far less sectarian than the Center for Inquiry, were to partner with a state university to offer a program in “scientific literacy.” It’s okay for the Center for Inquiry to promote atheism in the name of science but anything that even gets close to Read More ›

David Goldston (extensively edited) “Scientists tend to underestimate the public receptivity to science, and the battles ahead. Intelligent-design advocates try to sell their wares as science rather than religion partly as a legal gambit, but also because science and scientists are held in high esteem. Scientists do not face a public inherently hostile to science even among fundamentalists, and should address the public with respect rather than contempt. Although a remarkably high percentage of Americans do not believe that humans evolved from earlier life forms, it’s not clear whether this is just a casual way of saying they viscerally reject the notion of a random Universe. Evolution is largely a symbolic issue to the public, and may be a poor measure of how religious Read More ›

HT to Larry Moran’s Sandwalk for the link to this fascinating long piece by journalist Suzan Mazur about an upcoming (July 2008) evolution meeting at the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Altenberg, Austria. “The Altenberg 16” is Mazur’s playful term for the sixteeen biologists and theoreticians invited by organizer Massimo Pigliucci. Most are on record as being, to greater and lesser degrees, dissatisfied with the current textbook theory of evolution. Surveying the group, I note that I’ve interacted with several of the people over the years, as have other ID theorists and assorted Bad Guys. This should be an exciting meeting, with the papers to be published in 2009 by MIT Press. Mazur’s article is worth your attention. Evolutionary theory is Read More ›