Intelligent Design

Galapagos Finch, Ph.D., DDS, points to recent compromising language that suggests right wing conservative influence. TheBRITES.org

Skeptic Stan Scanton imposed meta analysis of his world view onto his world view to become a skeptic of skepticism. Dr. Galapagos Finch, VP of Education for The BRITES, is skeptical of Scanton’s skepticism of skepticism. TheBRITES.org

Perhaps I’ve been too hard on the NCSE, always referring to the group as the National Center for Science Education Selling Evolution and questioning the organization’s integrity and purpose. So, to make amends, I’m helping to circulate this advertisement for a position they are trying to fill. Note the paragraph in bold. I expect many who read this blog would be qualified to fill this position. Help wanted The National Center for Science Education, a non-profit organization that defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools, seeks candidates for a position in its Public Information Project. Staff members in the Public Information Project provide advice and support to local activists faced with threats to evolution education in their communities. Read More ›

Teleology has been completely rejected by evolutionary biologists. This rejection is unfortunate, because, teleology is alive and well in physics

Frank Tipler,
World Renowned Cosmologist on Sci Phi Show!

Much of the discussion of ID has been in biology. But the notion of ID and teleology has permeated the history of physics from the beginning to the present day.

Commenting on the history of physics, Tipler with his co-author Barrow describe the ID-inspired least action principles that are the foundation of many theories in physics:

The principle of least time was the bases of the next use of a minimal principle, by the seventeenth-century French mathematician and lawyer Fermat
……
Fermat’s work led the German philosopher Leibniz to argue in a letter written in 1687 that in as much as the concept of purpose was basic to true science, the laws of physics should and could be expressed in terms of minimum principles Read More ›

Responding to something I wrote at the Post-Darwinist about the popularity of evolutionary psychology among atheists, Moran (a textbook co-author you may well have suffered through in school), responds:

Just for the record, Denyse, I’m one of those evil atheists that you like to rant about but I’m totally opposed to evolutionary psychology.

But you already knew that many evolutionary biologist were against evolutionary psychology, didn’t you?

No, I didn’t, Larry, and if that’s true, it’s high time more of them voiced their objections. The only sustained critiques I have seen are Hilary and Steven Rose’s unjustly neglected Alas, Poor Darwin and David Buller’s also unjustly neglected Adapting Minds. Steven Rose is a neurobiologist, but Hilary Rose is a social scientist, and David J. Buller a philosopher. 

No doubt, there are many critiques out there that I haven’t seen, but I wonder what proportion comes from evolutionary biologists, as opposed to social scientists who know the difference between research and speculation. Read More ›

If you visit Eugene Koonin’s lab at the NCBI — that’s Dr. Koonin standing just to the right of the woman in the red sweater — brush up on your Russian. Many of the most prolific scientists in comparative genomics work in Koonin’s group, hail from Russia, and love the Big Questions, such as the origin of life. In a new, open access paper, Koonin argues that the problem of the origin of life may under current scenarios be intractable: Despite considerable experimental and theoretical effort, no compelling scenarios currently exist for the origin of replication and translation, the key processes that together comprise the core of biological systems and the apparent pre-requisite of biological evolution. The RNA World concept Read More ›

In an interesting bit of news Senator Inohofe stated he overheard Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) saying they wanted to stifle conservative talk radio via legislation. Now where have we seen this tactic before – when people want to criticize something and you can’t counter it with facts you turn instead to legal chicanery to silence their criticism. Just lovely. I guess for the left the only important thing in the first amendment is something it doesn’t even say: freedom from religion. Freedom of the press, something the first amendment explicitely spells out, apparently isn’t nearly as important as the left wing agenda. SENATOR CLAIMS: Clinton, Boxer Conspiring to Rein In Talk Radio HT to the Drudge Read More ›

I attempted mathematics….but I got on very slowly. The work was repugnant to me, chiefly from my not being able to see any meaning in the early steps in algebra….I do not believe that I should ever have succeeded beyond a very low grade.

Charles Darwin,
writing of his ineptitude and dislike of math

The inability of Darwin and his followers to make the math of their ideas work continues to haunt them. Another mathematical problem for Darwinism comes in the form of the failing molecular clock hypothesis, a statistical theory of molecular evolution. The hypothesis was the brainchild of arch-Darwinist Schlemiel Zuckerkandl (Zuck for short).

It’s gratifying that a hypothesis which Zuck received so much recognition for 45 years ago is now being bludgeoned to death by empirical data, much to the delight of ID proponents. The most recent example of the failure of Zuck’s idea is reported in When did placental and marsupial mammals split?, we read:

“We’re in total discord with the molecular dates,” Wible says. He thinks genetic clocks fail to account for the post-Cretaceous burst of mammalian evolution.
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I’ve read Michael Behe’s The Edge of Evolution. Michael offers hard evidence for what most people recognize. (Those who have been blinded by Darwinist indoctrination are obviously excluded.) Mutations break things. However, on occasion, with huge probabilistic resources, a broken thing can promote survival in a specific environment (e.g., bacterial antibiotic resistance). But broken things represent a downhill process, informationally, and cannot account for an uphill, information-creating process, not to mention the machinery required to process that information. Understanding this is not difficult, unless one has a nearly pathological commitment to the notion that design in the universe and living systems cannot possibly exist.

The Council of Europe may justly be renamed as “The European Council for the Advancement of Atheism.” To believe in a God who acts in the world (aka theism) henceforward constitutes “religious extremism.” It will be interesting to see at what point advocacy of ID is regarded in Europe as a “hate crime” against … science? … society? … humanity?

Oh, your’re wondering what this is all about. Check out the following report by the Parliamentary Assembly of the CU (assembly.coe.int):

Doc. 11297
8 June 2007

The dangers of creationism in education

Report
Committee on Culture, Science and Education
Rapporteur: Mr Guy LENGAGNE, France, Socialist Group

——————————————————————————–

Summary

The theory of evolution is being attacked by religious fundamentalists who call for creationist theories to be taught in European schools alongside or even in place of it. From a scientific view point there is absolutely no doubt that evolution is a central theory for our understanding of the Universe and of life on Earth.

Creationism in any of its forms, such as “intelligent design”, is not based on facts, does not use any scientific reasoning and its contents are pathetically inadequate for science classes.

The Assembly calls on education authorities in member States to promote scientific knowledge and the teaching of evolution and to oppose firmly any attempts at teaching creationism as a scientific discipline.

A. Draft resolution

1. The Parliamentary Assembly is worried about the possible ill-effects of the spread of creationist theories within our education systems and about the consequences for our democracies. If we are not careful, creationism could become a threat to human rights, which are a key concern of the Council of Europe. Read More ›

A commenter in another thread prompted this. I didn’t approve the comment because it was so impoverished but thought the discussion warranted a thread of its own. The commenter basically said that 30,000 proteins w/regulatory regions is enough – a mere fraction of the DNA in a human egg – implying that plenty of DNA can be functionless junk. While that number of regulated proteins might possibly be enough to define myriad cell types and tissue types there is an awful lot more required. The list of things I can think of (which is likely not complete) includes: 1) cell types 2) tissue types 3) organs 5) body plan 6) autonomic control system 7) instinctive behaviors Since complex system design Read More ›

In “Evolution, Religion and Free Will” (American Scientist, Volume 95, 294ff), Gregory W. Graffin and William B. Provine found that, of 149 eminent evolutionists polled, 78% were pure naturalists (no God) and only two were clearly theists (traditional idea of God). Some were in between these poles. The authors describe most of them as deists (some sort of divinity might have got things rolling but it is not God in any sense that Christians understand).

They note that the evolutionary biologists scored the lowest so far in any such poll. They described the vast majority of their respondents as Read More ›

Here is Judge John E. Jones III receiving an honorary doctorate just six months after rendering his decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover (check out Dickinson College’s reasons for conferring the degree). How many honorary doctorates has the Judge racked up since then? (I’m told four, but I have yet to confirm that.) Not bad for someone who went from head of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board to towering intellect of American jurisprudence. There’s a lesson in all this. ID is often presented as a “conservative thing.” But conservatives and liberals alike are intent on pleasing and being rewarded by the pro-Darwin lobby (witness the Republican Judge Jones — I expect the biggest worry weighing on him in Kitzmiller was how Read More ›

Biologist John Lynch seems to think there is surprising silence over Behe’s book. I speculated that his perception is due to the fact that there are so many pro-ID or ID-sympathetic books and activities out there now. In addition to the activities of the ID community, there is renewed activity in the creationist community. There are at least two creation museums opening in 2007 — one in the USA and one in Canada!

It was through Uncommon Descent that important pro-ID books have gotten some promotion like ReMine’s Biotic Message and Sanford’s Genetic Entropy, or Barrow and Tipler’s Anthropic Cosmological Principle. I will hopefully post in detail on ReMine’s Biotic Message and Davies The Mind of God. It should be noted Barrow and Davies won an almost combined 3 million dollars in the form of Templeton Prizes for their (perhaps unwitting) ID-sympathetic works. Some of the best ID literature is in places you’d least expect!

Uncommon Descent will from time to time point out other books like Tipler’s Physics of Christianity and now this (unwitting) ID-sympathetic book by renowned scientist Owen Gingerich: God’s Universe

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