Intelligent Design

Here are the new additions to the Evolution and Intelligent Design Encyclopedia, from British physicist David Tyler. Read, for example, about adaptationist fantasies (how natural selection explains everything it doesn’t explain), why bipedalism (walking on two legs) is good for you (not like what you’ve been told), and what the fact that very old life forms had complex genomes means. Shhhh!! It means – generally – that Darwinism is, like, dead. Walk softly, for you tread on the Darwinbots’ dreams.

At Mindful Hack I have put up some information from a neurosurgeon on why the mind obviously isn’t merely the brain. Amazing stuff, and certainly NOT what you would hear from materialist cognitive scientist Steven Pinker.

Pinker posed a whole bunch of “dangerous questions” in the Chicago Sun-Times. What strikes me as remarkable is how UNdangerous his questions are.

Anyway, I decided to list and answer his questions, as follows:

Do women, on average, have a different profile of aptitudes and emotions than men?

[From Denyse: Yes, of course. Get pregnant, have and raise a baby, and you will understand. But so? (If you cannot carry out this program, not to worry, you have just made my case. Thanks much. Read on anyway.)] Read More ›

At Mindful Hack I have put up some information from a neurosurgeon on what the mind obviously isn’t – merely the brain. Amazing stuff, and certainly stuff you won’t hear from materialist cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, who has discovered questions that he thinks are “dangerous”, but I have no idea why. Today, non-materialism is dangerous. The rest is mostly lining for the floor of the bird cage.

Who will it be? The Dawkins delusion or you? Malcolm Chisholm, our Master of the Games, tells me, “We are up to 2170 simulations run so far. I have had no feedback, except about spelling, That is now corrected. And HERE is the link. He also says, “I will have another game ready in a day or so. I am going to post that on “a private list” first to see if anyone can spot bugs in it.” Play this one, and tell us what you think.

A propos Bill Dembski having to defend himself against a silly attack in top science mag Nature, a lawyer friend suggests taking a look at Nature‘s mission statement: First, to serve scientists through prompt publication of significant advances in any branch of science, and to provide a forum for the reporting and discussion of news and issues concerning science. Second, to ensure that the results of science are rapidly disseminated to the public throughout the world, in a fashion that conveys their significance for knowledge, culture and daily life. He wisely observes, To report advances and serve scientists means not to report setbacks, or the exposure of fallacies in widely-held theories that would tend to put mainstream science in a Read More ›

Here’s a fun interview with my friend and colleague Robert Marks. I hope you catch from the interview the ambitiousness of the lab and how it promises to put people like Christoph Adami and Rob Pennock out of business (compare www.evolutionaryinformatics.org with devolab.cse.msu.edu). Well-Informed: Dr. Robert Marks and the Evolutionary Informatics Lab July 20, 2007 10:40AM In today’s episode of ID The Future, Casey Luskin interviews Dr. Robert Marks about his work in evolutionary informatics. Marks explains that evolutionary informatics seeks to emulate evolution on a computer, allowing for new engineering designs to be developed. Unlike Darwinian evolution, this process does not advance gradually, and requires a certain amount of external information to be fed into the computer before the Read More ›

Kevin Padian’s review in NATURE of several recent books on the Dover trial says more about Padian and NATURE than it does about the books under review. Indeed, the review and its inclusion in NATURE are emblematic of the new low to which the scientific community has sunk in discussing ID. Bigotry, cluelessness, and misrepresentation don’t matter so long as the case against ID is made with sufficient vigor and vitriol. Judge Jones, who headed the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board before assuming a federal judgeship, is now a towering intellectual worthy of multiple honorary doctorates on account of his Dover decision, which he largely cribbed from the ACLU’s and NCSE’s playbook. Kevin Padian, for his yeoman’s service in the cause Read More ›

Chuckie’s Ghost visits me regularly and let’s me know what’s happening inside the belly of the beast. Here’s the latest: The 2007 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference in London included a “social” occasion in which Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones, and Lewis Wolpert all participated in a “debate” in the London Museum of Natural History. It was not a conventional debate in that the conference organizers had solicited questions from the registrants prior to the conference on the web and then selected individuals to ask their questions. The panel then took turns responding. Although the topic was supposed to be how complexity could arise from evolution, none of the questions ever really got to the point. It will be interesting to Read More ›

My Touchstone piece “Glorious Wild Things”is here (scroll down): We will never understand creation if we insist on separating glory and design from suffering, loss, and waste, because, bound in finite time and space, creation is full of suffering, loss, and waste as well. All must be taken together or put aside together, in a final decision for meaning or nihilism. The modern debate has decayed in part because that vision of the inseparability of the horror from the glory has been lost. Of course, Stephen Jay Gould was merely being tendentious when he dismissed our deep-seated fears of monsters as commercial hype. As a paleontologist, he well knew that, before humans ever walked the earth, there were terrible beasts Read More ›

Recently, Decima polled Canadians on the origin of humans – God dunit? God neverdunit? Dunno?

Here are the Canadian responses to the 2007 question by percentage, along with the US figures to a similar series of questions in brackets:

 Less than one in three Canadians (29%) believe that God had no part in the
creation or development of human beings. (US: 13%)
 Fewer still (26%) believe “that God created human beings pretty much in their
present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so”. (US: 46%)
 A plurality, but still only 34%, say that “human beings have developed over millions
of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process”. (US: 36%)

None of this surprises me particularly, … but there are some surprises when you break the figures down. Read More ›

Radio host and fellow UD blogger Barry Arrington notes that there may be progress in legacy media understanding of the intelligent design controversy.

Maybe, but an argument can be made for the fact that the slowness to “get” the possibility that Darwin could be wrong is part of a general trend toward decline, in favor of the blogosphere and other newer media. I cannot imagine advising anyone to learn about the intelligent design controversy by reading dead tree media or zoning out in front of whatever the idiot box normally offers on the subject. That would be like hiring a stupid person to observe and explain a complex situation. Read More ›

Sometimes one is tempted to despair that journalists will ever understand even the most basic principles of the philosophy of science.  Then one reads a sentence like this one in a story on the Fox News web site:  “Global warming can no more be “proven” than the theory of continental drift, the theory of evolution or the concept that germs carry diseases.” That little (very little) light you see in the distance is a glimmer of hope.  Full story here:  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289647,00.html

The tagline for the article from PhysOrg.com that I link to here, was “Nano propellers pump with proper chemistry.” Despite no mention being made of it, my immediate thought was: “Their design is based on what biological systems already do.” Then, perusing the article, after all the talk about what Petr Král is doing in his Univ. of Illinois lab, about how this pump works, etc, etc., we find the following: Král’s laboratory studies how biological systems, like tiny flagella that move bacteria, offer clues for building motors, motile systems and other nanoscale devices in a hybrid environment that combines biological and inorganic chemistry. I find it almost infuriating that there are labs like Petr Kral’s all over the world Read More ›

Over what now, you wonder, could the Pharyngula – usually as placid as a sea of glass – be freaking? Actually over something kind of stale. Years ago, at the Post-Darwinist, I blogged on the fact that one of the late Stephen Jay Gould’s friends (yes, he of Wonderful Life AND The Simpsons) said that Gould would never have signed the Darwin lobby’s Steves list (all the Steves in science that the Darwin lobby can find who agree with them). Pivar had his own take on evolution, which he thinks is much closer to what the original Steve really meant. And now his take is back for another run, too. Go here for the rest. Also, more fun today at the Mindful Hack, Read More ›

Devoid of real arguments, Ken Miller has resorted to unsavory rhetoric and misrepresentations in his attempt to discredit the fine work of biochemist Michael Behe. Behe has finally responded to Miller’s antics at Amazon:

Response to Miller Part I

Response to Miller Part II

Regrettably, that’s Miller’s own special style. He doesn’t just sneer and thump his chest, as some other Darwinists do. He uses less savory tactics, too….
…
Call it the principle of malignant reading. He’s been doing it for years with the arguments of Darwin’s Black Box, and he continues it in this review.

Read More ›