Intelligent Design

The whole review can be found for free here.

One of the first things to note is repetition of a common fallacy about ID being illegal to teach due to the Dover decision. Michael writes:

IDT has been remarkably successful. George W. Bush is one among many who have stated flatly that it should be taught in schools alongside evolutionary biology. Although it is illegal to do so – another court case in Dover, Penn., in 2005 ruled that it, too, violates the separation of church and state – estimates are that at least 20 per cent of American schools already teach it. One suspects that it is not entirely unknown in biology classes north of the border, either.

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Jerry Coyne in his disastrous attempt to educate laypersons in evolutionary dogma has this to say: If evolution is a car, then natural selection is the engine and mutation is the gas. … Although Darwin had no idea where this variation came from, we now know that it is produced by mutation–accidental changes in the sequence of DNA that usually occur as copying errors when a molecule replicates during cell division. And if Henry Ford were Jerry Coyne he’d say that assembly line mistakes turned the Ford Quadricycle into the Ford GT What a maroon. I’m not complaining mind you. The likes of Mark Chu-Carrol, Sean Carrol, and Jerry Coyne are certainly entertaining in a slapstick kind of way but Read More ›

The attempted refutation of Behe’s work by the Darwinists has been so anemic that even the prominent names in the Darwinist blogsphere are beginning to lament the lackluster performance of their All-Stars against Michael Behe.

For example, Jason Rosenhouse, one of the most brilliant authors at PandasThumb, has decided to break ranks and openly criticize world-renowned Darwinist Jerry Coyne.

In Coyne Lays an Egg, Rosenhouse writes:

[Coyne’s] review of [Behe’s Edge of Evolution] EoE is a terrible piece of work. It’s all snideness and ridicule with very little in the way of good arguments. It really infuriates me when someone like Coyne is given such a terrific platform, several thousand words in a classy magazine like The New Republic, and then writes as if the whole project is beneath him.
….
Behe will have a good time lambasting Coyne for not reading very carefully.

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It will be interesting to see how the National Center for Science Education Selling Evolution deals with the growing number of non-religious ID proponents. Check out the following link: icon-rids.blogspot.com.

“To knock out 2 megabases and not have an effect—that’s remarkable,” says Jim Hudson, a geneticist at Open Biosystems in Huntsville, Alabama. “It can’t be true,” says a skeptical Arend Sidow of Stanford University.

Arend Sidow is not a dumb or unqualified guy. He’s the principal researcher at Stanford University’s Sidow Lab. In fact this is his lab’s primary area of investigation: Much of our work rests on a simple, fundamental, principle of evolution: functionally or structurally important sites in the genome are subject to selective constraints;

So why can’t it be true? Because if evolutionary theory (natural selection) is true then it MUST BE TRUE that conserved (constrained) regions of DNA have biological activity. Arend won’t entertain natural selection at the DNA sequence level not being true. The knockout experiment, if there is no mistake, overturns his faith in evolutionary theory. So the experiment must be flawed. “It just can’t be true.” Arend is having a crisis of faith. Isn’t that just precious?

THE BIOLOGY OF GENOMES MEETING: Disposable DNA Puzzles Researchers
Elizabeth Pennisi
11 JUNE 2004 VOL 304 SCIENCE

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Yet another parallel with human-engineered systems is discovered in the living cell – digital counters that control the number of protein molecules expressed. The researchers obviously aren’t electronic engineers as this particular circuit isn’t analogous to a clock. It’s a counter circuit. It counts from zero to a preset maximum number of operations then stops when the maximum count is reached. This is a very common function employed in digital electronic devices often implemented with what’s called a serial shift register. The shift register starts out containing all zeros. One bits are fed into the input and zeros shift out the other end like putting marbles into an empty tube. When the shift register is full then ones start coming out the other end. Some action is taken when the first one bit emerges at the output. Shift registers can have any arbitrary number of bits.

Isn’t it fascinating how many things conceived by intelligent human designers are found in the molecular machinery of living cells? But hey, ignore the man behind the curtain. Nothing to see here. Click your heels together three times while repeating “It’s all just chance & necessity!” 🙄

Clocking In And Out Of Gene Expression Read More ›

In a landmark decision, despite repeated pleas by Taylor to “Just look at me!,” Judge Jones rules FDA approval is science and scientists cannot be wrong. At emotional Times Square news conference, Taylor vows to continue his crusade against Finch Foods and mutation paste. [Details]. [Transcript of Mr. Taylor’s final day of testimony].

Blackburn Man helps Raze get tenure at PIT. Read more at TheBRITES.org …

Oh, now you’re in for it, Laura — someone is going to put you on the Naughty Female Science Journalists list. Right next to Catherine Shaffer of Wired. Readers will have to pop for a New Scientist subscription to see the whole of Laura Spinney’s piece about new puzzles in reconstructing the Tree of Life, from the June 13 issue, but here’s the bit of science crack they’re giving away to hook you: IF YOU want to know how all living things are related, don’t bother looking in any textbook that’s more than a few years old. Chances are that the tree of life you find there will be wrong. Since they began delving into DNA, biologists have been finding Read More ›

Renowned Darwinist Sean Carroll is by all counts part of the Darwinist All-Stars. He made a lame attempt to refute Behe’s recent book in a review published by the prestigious journal Science. Carroll writes: pyrimethamine resistance in malarial parasites (6)–a notable omission given Behe’s extensive discussion of malarial drug resistance Carroll argues Behe omitted mention of pyrimethamine resistance! But what did Mike actually write? He did not omit mention of pyrimethamine resistance: One successor drug is called pyrimethamine. Interestingly, malaria can counter it with a single amino acid substitution. That single amino acid change makes malaria one hundred times more resistant to the drug. Is Carroll’s fabrication the best the Darwinist All-Stars can offer? Mike Behe has written the editors Read More ›

To my surprise and delight I found Behe mentioning Engines of Creation by K. Eric Drexler four times in the opening few paragraphs of Appendix A of The Edge of Evolution titled I, Nanobot. Behe appears to have been as impressed by Engines as I was 20 years ago. Engines was what made me realize cells aren’t just sort of like robotic machines but rather they are quite literally robotic machines – the same kind of robotic machines that we envision ourselves creating in the not too distant future. The following quote is from the notes on page 301 of The Edge of Evolution: 3. The terms “robot” and “machine” applied to the cell are not meant as analogies – Read More ›

…such as, for instance, those LINE elements? Wired magazine weighs in with an article about the shifting fortunes of so-called “junk DNA.” Anyone following the ongoing discovery of functional roles for DNA once assumed to be evolutionary rubbish should agree that this is the very worst heuristic for biology: I don’t know what X does; therefore, X probably does nothing. Wrong.

Michael Behe was recently interviewed on the the Michael Medved show. Click on the “Listen Now” button. Medved is an incredibly articulate and insightful interviewer. Behe, as usual, demonstrates sober rationality, good character, composure and respect, even in the face of silly and confrontational questions from some of Medved’s talk-show callers.

I have posted below an article by Sam Zaramba, the Director General for Health Services for the nation of Uganda entitled “Give us DDT.”   Dr. Zaramba argues that the ban on DDT was misguided and has resulted in countless unnecessary deaths in Africa.

I  have limited personal experience with this issue.  A couple of years ago my daughter and I traveled to Kenya (just east of Uganda).  We met with many nationals, many of whom had the tell tale yellowish tinge to the whites of the eyes of malaria sufferers.  I will never forget one father in particular, who literally begged us for money for malaria treatment for his daughter.  He could not afford the $10.00 cost of treatment.  Our hearts were broken, and of course we helped as much as we could, but we realized our efforts were a drop in a vast ocean of pain caused by the disease.

When I got home I did some research and was horrified to learn that the malaria epidemic in Africa is perhaps the most preventable health care tragedy in the history of the world.  We could eradicate African malaria if only we would allow them to use DDT to combat the mosquitos that spread the disease.  I also learned that everything I thought I knew about DDT was flat wrong.  Not only is DDT safe, scientists have known this for decades.

It turns out the DDT ban was based on a combination of junk science and moral preening by the environmental movement.  It as if greenies said, “What are a few million African lives so long as we affluent Westerners can feel good about having ‘done something’ even if that something means nothing?” 

As it turns out, the western environmental movement’s push for polices that will kill millions of Africans is far from over.  The drive to force LDC’s (lesser developed countries) to reduce their CO2 emissions will delay the electrification of the continent by decades, and millions will die as a result of lung cancer and other respiratory diseases caused by smoke inhalation from indoor wood fires –- a very real cost for environmental gains that are, to say the least, speculative. 

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Stuff you might want to know if you are not just a bunch of chemicals running around in a bag: Evolutionary psychology: Why Clan of the Cave Bear makes more sense as a novel than as a science. Atheist gives millions to Catholic schools Quantum weirdness and consciousness New neuroscience blog questions pop science media’s neuro-this and neuro-that. Articles of interest on atheists, materialists, consciousness, and tenured authoritarian crackpots Re chemicals, bag = you – I think that expression was originally coined by Dean Hamer of “God Gene” fame.