Intelligent Design

Readers of this blog will know that my favorite game is “spot the irony” (based upon Monty Python’s “spot the looney” game).  Here a colleague from another listserve brings Richard Dawkins’ statement from “The Enemies of Reason” We’ve got to go back to the evidence and see what is true. We must favour verifiable evidence over private feeling otherwise we leave ourselves vulnerable to those who would obscure the truth. We should be open minded, but not so open minded that our brains fall out. The scientific method tests with objective observation and statistical analysis. Individual scientists may or may not be honest, but science with its’ safeguards of peer review and repeated experiment has scrupulous honesty built into it Read More ›

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any sillier, now Sam Harris, author of “Letter to a Christian Nation” publishes a letter in Nature calling all good scientists to oppose religion at every turn. Unfortunately for Sam, the letter is frought with inaccuracies and mischaracterizations that would make PiZza Myers proud. He even goes so far as to scold Nature for not taking a hard enough line against this pernicious evil.

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There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Responding to PZ Myers’ usual commenters, Randy Olson, of FLOCK OF DODOS fame, remarks: Are you folks really this clueless? You make me think of a baseball team that finishes the season in last place, then spends the off season criticizing all the other teams, as if that will address the problem. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that is an excellent trailer they have produced. Not some amateurish clunky mess that you would expect from a science organization. The music cue, “Bad to the Bone,” would have cost them $25,000 at least (assuming they have paid the rights — someone might want to look into that, but I’m guessing they have). Rights for music in Read More ›

Trailers for the movie Expelled are now on the net. See: www.ExpelledTheMovie.com I was viewed as an intellectual terrorist. Rick Sternberg You can get your Rebel ID attire. It’s much better than those goofy Dawkins uniforms.

It’s August, after all. Keep that in mind. Even so, I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it, but apparently, according to SciAm blogger Christopher Mims, Lifecode author Stuart Pivar is suing PZ Myers for libel. Yes, Stuart is the one who was friends with the late Stephen Jay Gould. Hat tip to Jack, who draws my attention to Mims’ last graff, quoting Myers: Huh. I’d heard some noise from Pivar threatening to sue, but this is the first I’ve heard of any formal action being taken. Since I’m a defendant (one who hasn’t been notified of his status!) I suppose I should just shut up at this point and let justice run its course. Since I’m a Read More ›

Recently, an item in Nature News promised big things for the evolution of bacteria:

Beneficial mutations in the bacterium Escherichia coli occur 1,000 times more frequently than previously predicted, according to research from a group in Portugal.

In a study of E. coli populations of various different sizes, Isabel Gordo and her collaborators at the Gulbenkian Science Institute in Oeiras, Portugal, found that thousands of mutations that could lead to modest increases in fitness were going unseen because good mutations were outperformed by better ones

The authors say that the work could explain why bacteria are so quick to develop resistance to antibiotics.

“It’s changed the way I think about things,” says Frederick Cohan, a biology professor at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He adds that although the principles involved were understood, no one expected to find such a high rate of adaptive mutation.

So have the found the answer to evolution? Well, no. Read More ›

From Letter 3154 — Darwin, C. R. to Herschel, J. F. W., 23 May [1861] One cannot look at this Universe with all living productions & man without believing that all has been intelligently designed Charles Darwin, 1861 I think that would make a perfect textbook sticker.

While they don’t call it intelligent design research… that’s in fact what it is. In the article a scientist is quoted saying once a container (cell wall) is synthesized and nucleotides are added in the right proportions then Darwinian evolution will take care of the rest. Yeah, right. Darwinian processes won’t do jack diddly squat. It’ll require intelligent design every step of the way. Mark my words. ID will be proven in concept and Darwinian evolution will (again) be disproven in concept.

Artificial Life Likely in 3 to 10 Years

Aug 19 11:52 PM US/Eastern
By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) – Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they’re getting closer.

Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of “wet artificial life.”

“It’s going to be a big deal and everybody’s going to know about it,” said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. “We’re talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways—in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict.”

That first cell of synthetic life—made from the basic chemicals in DNA—may not seem like much to non-scientists. For one thing, you’ll have to look in a microscope to see it.

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Following on the fact that a Canadian writer, Cameron Wybrow, got a positive review of Mike Behe’s Edge of Evolution published, I think it is worth introducing two things this evening: Go here for more.

Cameron Wybrow wrote me a while back wanting to know why most legacy Canadian mainstream media will not publish anything about the intelligent design controversy beyond the often incompetent or politically motivated stuff that the New York Times would put out. I said it was my guess that the legacy media would go under before they would update their thinking and ask obvious questions like, “Could it be that there IS something wrong with Darwinism, and that that is why Darwinists must attempt to ruin the careers of anyone who questions it?” Well, I underestimated Cameron. He now writes to say, After many failed tries, I hit upon a newspaper to publish a positive review of Behe, and a major Read More ›

Nobody else is apparently blogging here, deep in August, so here goes: – Did Dawkins actually read Behe’s Edge of Evolution ? Someone (hat tip to whoever) has pointed out that the New York Times review does not read as though he did. Hence the irrelevant riff on dog breeding. The basic problem, in my view, is that Behe outclasses Dawkins. Behe is a working biochemist who knows exactly what Darwinian evolution has and hasn’t done. Unlike Dawkins, who has contributed nothing of substance to science for many years, he does not make Darwinian evolution a substitute for religion. So it is safe for him to know what it can and cannot do. – What, exactly, is “evolutionary” public health? Read More ›

One of the most interesting journalists in Toronto is a friend of mine, David Warren, who – as if he did not have enough troubles – has gotten sick of bloviating Darwinists and decided to take them on. At least I am not alone any more. Far from it.

Writing to friends, Warren notes, “I have been remiss. I have allowed several months to do by without taking another kick at the Darwinoids. I endeavour to correct this oversight in my column for Sunday,” whereupon he directs us to his recent column for The Spectator:

I get such apoplectic letters, whenever I write about “evolutionism,” that I really can’t resist writing about it again. This is not, of course, because I have any desire to tease such correspondents. Perish the thought. Rather, when a writer finds he has hit such a nerve, he can also know that he is approaching a great truth.

In this case, we must ask ourselves why so many people get so excited about an area of science that should not concern them. For most of these correspondents know precious little science, and haven’t the stamina to engage in detailed argument. They are simply shocked and appalled that anyone would dream of challenging what they believe to be the consensus of “qualified experts,” whom they assume are a closed camp of hard-bitten materialists, with no time for religious or poetical flights.

The answer to this question is clear enough. People without a stake in a controversy pay little or no attention to it. They will hardly be vexed by assertions of one party or another, when the result of the controversy cannot touch their lives. It is rather when a person does have a stake, that he begins to care.

It follows that my most apoplectic correspondents have a stake in evolutionary controversies. They imagine themselves to have an impersonal interest in defending science against “religious superstition,” and the dangers to society that the latter might present. They in fact have strong and uncompromising religious beliefs of their own, which they are loath to have questioned.

Much of the “star chamber” atmosphere, that has accompanied the public invigilation of microbiologists such as Michael J. Behe, and other very qualified scientists working on questions of design in organisms and natural systems, can only be explained in this way. The establishment wants such research to be stopped, because it challenges the received religious order, of atheist materialism. Any attempt, or suspected attempt, to acknowledge God in scientific proceedings, must be exposed and punished to the limit of the law; or by other ruthless means where the law does not suffice.

Not to be missed.

An author friend asked Warren recently, Read More ›

Some insights can totally change one’s perspective. One of those insights for me was learning that time had a beginning at the origin of the universe. (Oops, “beginning” implies a point on the time line, so let’s change that to “a point of appearing.”) If time came into existence, then the cause of the universe could not have had a cause, or a history, or a beginning, or a designer, because all of these require that the cause of the universe be located on the time line of the universe, which did not exist prior to the creation of the universe. (Oops, can’t use “prior to” because that implies time.) Thus, the question of who designed the designer is meaningless Read More ›

In his post below Dave refers to Karl Popper’s famous white swan/black swan illustration.  Dave is, of course, quite correct to show how ID can be formulated within Popper’s paradigm, which was most cogently set forth in The Logic of Scientific Discovery in which the swan illustration appears.  Popper may be unique among philosophers in that his ideas have been given the force of law in the United States courts.  One need go no further than Judge Jones’ opinion in Dover (although there are other examples) to see this phenomenon at work.  For this reason all who seek acceptance of their work in the scientific community bow before Popper.  While I find Popper’s ideas compelling and often cite them myself, Read More ›