Intelligent Design

My recent post , two below, on the ISU revelations on Gonzalez’s tenure rejection prompts three reflections: 1. There are two separate issues regarding the rejection of Gonzalez on account of his support for intelligent design. The first is whether ISU can in fact get away with that. The faculty themselves did not seem to believe that they could get away with it, hence the second issue: This second issue – and I believe in this case the more significant one – is that ID was denied as a factor, and came to light mainly through a public records request. In other words, there was double dealing, not transparency. 2. The people in the combox who are trying to come up Read More ›

My to-do list for some time has included addressing University of Oklahoma biochemist Phillip Klebba’s written response to my September 17, 2007 OU lecture at Meacham Auditorium. Klebba, during the Q&A, asserted that biologists know full well how the bacterial flagellum arose without the need for intelligent design. He then proceeded to describe a four-stage evolutionary process that went from a pilum to the type-three secretory system to an ATP-type motor to the full flagellum. I told him during the Q&A that he was bluffing and that his account of flagellar evolution did not provide the specificity needed to confirm its plausibility. He then lectured me on the fact that I’m not a biologist and thus was not in a position to make such a pronouncement. But the fact is that one does not have to be a biologist to assess Klebba’s claims. Rather, one needs some elementary facility with logic to see whether his claims stack up.

Fortunately, Klebba wrote up his proposal on flagellar evolution in an essay for the OU student newspaper (the essay appeared September 20, 2007 here). I urge UD readers to look at it carefully for it betrays the bankruptcy of evolutionary theorizing when it comes to explaining the emergence of molecular machines. Contrary to molecular and cell biologists such as James Shapiro and Franklin Harold, who regard current evolutionary explanations of molecular machines as spectacularly unsuccessful, Klebba proclaims that the problem is solved:

The evolutionary relationships that led to the bacterial flagellar motor — the poster of irreducible complexity for proponents of intelligent design — are now well-known among scientists studying the biochemistry of bacterial cell envelopes. In brief, the flagellar assembly, which propels bacteria through fluid environments, consists of a long, hollow polymeric filament, a basal body that holds the filament in the cell membrane system, and a molecular motor complex containing a stator and rotor that turn the filament around and around when it is energized.

I’m afraid that after all these years in the ID business, I’m still not entirely used to the brazenness of evolutionary theorists in proclaiming that its unsolved problems are solved. Klebba continues: Read More ›

Mary Midgley’s “A Plague on Both Their Houses” purports to set the record straight about ID and evolution. ID is bad science, and evolution, when used to justify atheism, is bad philosophy. If both sides in this debate could only recognize the proper limits of science and philosophy, we could dispense with this needless controversy. Midgley’s analysis is disappointing. For it to work, ID’s scientific critique of and its counterproposal to standard evolutionary theory must fail. And for Midgley it does, as follows: Biologists have pointed out the feebleness of the mechanical analogy, of course. Organisms and their parts do not consist of separate items that must be put together deliberately in the workshop, but of continuous tissue, areas of Read More ›

Silly silly men.

Paul Davies Tuesday June 26, 2007 The Guardian    Condensed Just why is Intelligent Design referred to as a “movement” when Multiverse is called a “theory”?  “The universe looks like a fix. But that doesn’t mean that a god fixed it. We will never explain the cosmos by taking on faith either divinity or physical laws. True meaning is to be found within nature. Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth – the universe looks suspiciously like a fix. For 40 years, physicists and cosmologists have been quietly collecting examples of all too convenient “coincidences” and special features in the underlying laws of the universe. Change any one of them and the consequences would be lethal. Fred Hoyle once Read More ›

In a previous post there was a vigorous debate about idnet.com.au’s suggestion that Craig Venter might soon manufacture a living organism from scratch. This comment caught my eye:  “OMG!! When Craig Venter produces a living organism, will this event trigger the infamous “infinite regress?” WHO DESIGNED CRAIG VENTER???” Indeed.  Assume for the sake of argument that Craig Venter actually succeeds in creating life in the lab (We’ll call them Venter’s critters or “VCs” for short).  Then assume the dreaded super virus comes along and wipes out all life on earth except for the VCs, who are immune.  Assume further that a million years passes and there are no traces that any living thing other than VCs ever existed on earth.  Then two aliens come along.  Alien 1 of 2 observes the VCs Read More ›

Your responses to this condensed version of an editorial would be appreciated. (This item is available free as a special feature.) “Anti-Darwin activism is alive and well. The most insidious movement promotes ‘intelligent design’ (ID) – the notion that some features in nature are best explained by an intelligent cause – as an alternative scientific theory to evolution by natural selection. Pro-ID interest groups can be found throughout US and Europe. It becomes increasingly likely for a scientist to be confronted by a pro-ID campaigner or challenged by a student, friend or neighbor intrigued and seduced by the concept of a scientific theory of design. How to respond is not a trivial matter. One can choose to fully engage in debate Read More ›

A golden fossil turned to dross?

According to Natural Resources Canada:

To many mid-Victorian geologists and paleontologists these laminated green and grey rock specimens from altered limestones of the Canadian Shield of Ontario and Quebec were the most important fossils ever found because they constituted evidence of the existence of complex life forms deep in the Precambrian. J. William Dawson, the Principal of McGill University and one of the foremost geologists in Canada, named the fossil Eozoon canadense — the Canadian dawn animal. In his presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1864, Sir Charles Lyell singled out this fossil as “one of the greatest geological discoveries of his time”. Charles Darwin, in the fourth edition of Origin of Species in 1866, was relieved to be able to cite the first fossil evidence that the succession of life on earth proceeded from simple unicellular organisms to complex multicellular animals and plants.

But what happened thereafter is a cautionary tale.

British physicist David Tyler, whose work I have been profiling recently, tells the story here, of how the fossil was greeted with tidings of great joy.

Charles Darwin welcomed the find and brought it into the 4th edition of the Origin in 1866. He wrote: “After reading Dr Carpenter’s description of this remarkable fossil, it is impossible to feel any doubt regarding its organic nature”. The problem for Darwin was that the earliest known fossils were complex, and his theory required something much simpler to precede the forms of the Cambrian Explosion. It was a relief when Eozoon appeared to provide evidence supporting gradualism.

In the 6th edition, Darwin modified the text to read: “The existence of the Eozoon in the Laurentian formation of Canada is generally admitted”.

But there was dissent. In this case, from geologist Professor William King and chemist Thomas Rowney at Queen’s College, Galway.

They did not think that Eozoon was in fact a fossil. And they had good reasons for thinking it wasn’t. They knew how it could have been formed without any input from a life form at all.

So what happened between 1866, when those Galway men were basically a problem to be seen off, and 1879 when the truth was eventually revealed?

As Tyler explains,

The characteristics of the ensuing controversy are the subject of an interesting paper by Adelman.* She points out that the Canadian geologists adopted a “diffusion” model of communication: “scientific facts were confirmed within the scientific community and then presented to the public.” London was the focus of their attention, because the opinion-formers were located there. “The ‘Eozoonists’ felt that the fossil’s credibility was established once the leaders of the scientific community in London had accepted it.” The dissenters, however, chose not to play this game.

And the Galway dissenters were treated with contempt, their credibility under severe question, for years. Their crime? Raising entirely reasonable objections against Darwinism. Read More ›

Check out Discovery Institute’s “The Theory of Intelligent Design: A Briefing Packet for Educators.” As part of its response to the PBS-NOVA documentary “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design,” Discovery Institute just released this packet (for free download, see below). The packet contains numerous resources for educators to effectively teach about biological origins in public schools. These resources include: 1) An introductory letter helping teachers to understand the debate and to avoid the pitfalls in the PBS-NOVA’s educational resources; 2) An FAQ answering common questions about evolution and intelligent design, discussing definitions and evidence for both theories. 3) The truth about the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. 4) A summary of the law regarding teaching evolution in public schools. 5) A list of Read More ›

Backers battle ISU professor’s tenure denial By LISA ROSSI • REGISTER AMES BUREAU • November 28, 2007 Ames, Ia. — The fight will rage on over Iowa State University astronomy professor Guillermo Gonzalez, who advocated for intelligent design, the theory that disputes parts of evolution, and lost a bid for tenure. Advocates for Gonzalez said in a release distributed Tuesday that they will hold a news conference at 11 a.m. Monday in Des Moines. There, they said, they will discuss documents they contend will prove that Gonzalez “lost his job” because he supports intelligent design, not because he was deficient as a scholar. Gonzalez’s backers say an appeal to the Iowa Board of Regents and possibly a lawsuit would be Read More ›

See the story here. “From the ubiquitous daisy to the fantastical orchid, flowering plant species are as diverse as they are numerous.  It turns out that these bloomers went through an evolutionary “Big Bang” of sorts some 130 million years ago . . . “Flowering plants today comprise around 400,000 species,” said Pam Soltis, curator at the University of Florida’s Florida Museum of Natural History. “To think that the burst that gave rise to almost all of these plants occurred in less than 5 million years is pretty amazing — especially when you consider that flowering plants as a group have been around for at least 130 million years.” . . .  From the length of the diagrams’ branches along with Read More ›

I would like to apologise to Prof Krauss for a posting which inferred, based entirely on the quotes in a Telegraph UK interview(see here), that he had asserted that observing the universe had adversely changed the universe. Unfortunately the New Scientist paper upon which the Telegraph article is based is not available on line without subscription. idnet.com.au

News Release: Harvard’s XVIVO Video By William A. Dembski | originally posted November 26, 2007 | updated November 27, 2007 Back in September of 2006 I announced at my blog UncommonDescent that a “breathtaking video” titled “The Inner Life of Cell” had just come out (see www.uncommondescent.com/…/the-inner-life-of-a-cell). The video was so good that I wanted to use it in some of my public presentations, but when I tried to purchase a DVD of it (I sent several emails to relevant parties), I was informed it wasn’t ready (to my knowledge the video is still not available for sale in DVD or any other format — if it were, I would gladly purchase it and encourage others to do so). Moreover, Read More ›

Marx (Karl, not Groucho) predicted that under capitalism workers were bound to become more and more dissatisfied and therefore a workers’ revolution was inevitable.  When workers’ conditions actually improved under capitalism, Lenin modified the theory — of course the workers’ lot is improving; the capitalists are bribing them to keep them pacified, just what the theory predicted would happen. In Edge, Behe talks about Ernst Mayr’s 1960’s prediction that on Darwinian grounds the search for homologous genes would be quite futile.  Now Darwinists use homologous genes as evidence for the theory; after all the existence of such genes was predicted by the theory (after the fact). What can you say about a theory that can just as easily predict “X” and Read More ›

Here’s what E. O. Wilson writes in THE NEW SCIENTIST: . . . Many who accept the fact of evolution cannot, however, on religious grounds, accept the operation of blind chance and the absence of divine purpose implicit in natural selection. They support the alternative explanation of intelligent design. The reasoning they offer is not based on evidence but on the lack of it. The formulation of intelligent design is a default argument advanced in support of a non sequitur. It is in essence the following: there are some phenomena that have not yet been explained and that (most importantly) the critics personally cannot imagine being explained; therefore there must be a supernatural designer at work. The designer is seldom Read More ›