Intelligent Design

From Nature this week. “Knowing how plants and bacteria harvest light for photosynthesis so efficiently could provide a clean solution to mankind’s energy requirements. The secret, it seems, may be the coherent application of quantum principles. Roseanne J. Sension doi:10.1038/446740a Full Text 

Photosynthesis provides the primary energy source for almost all life on Earth. One of its remarkable features is the efficiency with which energy is transferred within the light harvesting complexes comprising the photosynthetic apparatus. Suspicions that quantum trickery might be involved in the energy transfer processes at the core of photosynthesis are now confirmed by a new spectroscopic study. The study reveals electronic quantum beats characteristic of wavelike energy motion within the bacteriochlorophyll complex from the green sulphur bacterium Chlorobium tepidum. This wavelike characteristic of the energy transfer process can explain the extreme efficiency of photosynthesis, in that vast areas of phase space can be sampled effectively to find the most efficient path for energy transfer. Read More ›

Given that the most spectacular documented successes of natural selection are: changing the color of the peppered moth and the length of the beak of the Galapagos Finch, and the development of resistance to antibiotics by bacteria, and that even these trivial examples are now all in dispute, and that no competing natural explanation for evolution has ever been taken seriously by more than a small band of scientists, where is the “overwhelming” evidence that the development of life is due to natural (unintelligent) causes alone? There are, in fact, some fairly persuasive reasons to believe that the development of life was due to natural causes, but when we honestly analyze them, they all reduce to the argument “this doesn’t Read More ›

It will be interesting to see where this debate is in the Roman Catholic Church by the time we get to Darwin’s bicentennial in 2009.

Pope puts his faith in the Book of Genesis, not Darwin
Richard Owen in Rome
From The Times, April 13, 2007

His predecessor appeared, on balance, to favour the scientists. But the present Pope may have tipped the scales the other way in the argument over which is the truer account of the Creation: On the Origin of Species or the Book of Genesis.

Pope Benedict XVI has stepped into the debate over Darwinism with remarks that will be seen as an endorsement of “intelligent design”.

The Pope did not explicitly back intelligent design or creationism. He praised scientific progress but said that the Darwinian theory of evolution was “not finally provable” because: “We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory.”

Intelligent design (ID) argues that life forms are too complex to have evolved randomly, and must have been created by a higher power. Scientists denounce this as a thinly disguised form of creationism, the view that God created the world literally as described in the Book of Genesis. US courts have ruled that neither should be taught in school science because that would violate the separation of Church and State.

Many of those who back intelligent design will draw encouragement from the Pope’s remarks. Read More ›

I posted a reference the other day to a peer-reviewed paper by two Finnish ID-supporters that I claimed supported ID. The paper highlighted that evolutionary methods work to the degree that they are directed. As is typical with our detractors, whenever a pro-ID paper by pro-ID scientists comes out in a peer-reviewed biology journal, they try their best to show that it doesn’t actually support ID. An example is the following post at PT by Steve Reuland: pandasthumb.org…the_proid_paper In reading Reuland’s critique, try to keep track of “rational design,” “directed evolution,” and “Darwinian methods.” Reuland conflates the last two. In so doing, Reuland completely misses the boat. So let me spell it out: DIRECTED EVOLUTION IS NON-DARWINIAN. DARWINIAN EVOLUTION IS Read More ›

Denyse O’Leary mentioned this review in one of her posts. Here it is. The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism Michael J. Behe. Free Press, $28 (336p) ISBN 978-0-7432-9620-5 http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6430603.html With his first book, Darwin’s Black Box, Behe, a professor of biology at Lehigh University, helped define the controversial intelligent design movement with his concept of “irreducible complexity.” Now he attempts to extend his analysis and define what evolution is capable of doing and what is beyond its scope. Behe strongly asserts, to the likely chagrin of young earth creationists, that the earth is billions of years old and that the concept of common descent is correct. But beginning with a look at malaria and the Read More ›

There’s been a fair amount of speculation based on media reports. But media reports are almost never a good source of information on Catholic teachings, so let’s wait and see. Most deadtrees see their role as promoting materialism. So even if they understood what the Pope was saying, reporters would feel duty bound to garble it.

Jay Richards, a research fellow at the Acton Institute and co-author of Privileged Planet [remember the Smithsonian uproar? No no, not the one that involved Rick Sternberg, the other one]  offers some thoughts as to why such reports are almost never a useful source of information:

I suspect there’s a translation problem here. Reading between the lines, it looked like Benedict said some pretty strong things. Of course he’s challenging scientism and calling for a broader concept of reason than is contained in experimental science. Read More ›

Renowned DNA researcher Andras Pellionisz wrote in One Believer’s Junk Is Another Believer’s Treasure; Quest for Predictive Scientific Theories on the Function of ‘junkDNA’

The national debate about Darwinism (D) contra Intelligent Design/Extraterrestrial Intelligence (ID/ET) centers on the nature of predictive and thus refutable scientific theories.

Most Darwinists erroneously predicted that 98.7% of the DNA was devoid of function (“junk”), while the ID/ET theory correctly predicted some yet to be decoded function of junkDNA.

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“Paris – Pope Benedict, elaborating his views on evolution for the first time as Pontiff, says science has narrowed the way life’s origins are understood and Christians should take a broader approach to the question. The Pope also says the Darwinist theory of evolution is not completely provable because mutations over hundreds of thousands of years cannot be reproduced in a laboratory… ” (go to article) You may recall that shortly after Pope Benedict’s inauguration, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna touched off a fire storm (July 2005) with an op-ed piece in the New York Times questioning Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and appearing to endorse the concept of intelligent design. This brought a quick response from Prof. Kenneth Miller, Read More ›

Has Barbara Forrest ever accepted Bill Dembski’s debate invitation? [See The Vise Strategy Revisited and Barbara Forrest: Will The Real Coward Please Stand Up] Apparently not. Now it seems the Darwinists at Southern Methodist University (SMU) are trying pull off their own Barbara Forrest imitation. See: Are the Darwinists afraid to debate us? Speaking of SMU, here are some events of interest: The Intelligent Design Controversy Thursday, April 12, William Dembski will be the featured speaker at the Dallas Christian Leadership luncheon at Southern Methodist University, to talk about the Intelligent Design Controversy. Thursday, April 12, 2007 12:15pm – 1:30pm SMU Umphrey Lee Center Ballroom (3rd Floor) Reservation Deadline: Noon Monday April 9 Ticket are $20 each, and for SMU Read More ›

About one year ago, Sahotra Sarkar and I debated ID and evolution in front of an overflow audience at the University of Texas-Austin. Sahotra and I had known each other since the mid-1980s, when we were graduate students sharing Bill Wimsatt as our primary advisor. As background for the UT debate, Sahotra sent me a couple of chapter drafts from his forthcoming book on “creationism” — a book now available from Blackwell. One criticism that came up both during the debate [here’s some post-debate commentary], and in discussions at Austin bars afterwards, was the perception that ID bad guys circumvent the normal processes of scientific review by arranging debates in front of lay audiences, instead of academic peers. Having just Read More ›

From God’s Numbers:

Nine in 10 (91 percent) of American adults say they believe in God and almost as many (87 percent) say they identify with a specific religion. …Nearly half (48 percent) of the public rejects the scientific [sic] theory of evolution; one-third (34 percent) of college graduates say they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact. Seventy-three percent of Evangelical Protestants say they believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years; 39 percent of non-Evangelical Protestants and 41 percent of Catholics agree with that view.
….
Just 3 percent of the public self-identifies as atheist.

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Marcus Ross, the young ID-friendly paleontologist recently featured in the New York Times, will be giving a lecture on intelligent design and the Cambrian Explosion at Temple University today (Monday, April 9). The lecture will be located in Gladfelter Hall, 1115 W. Berks Street, Room 16. Also speaking (for evolution) will be dinosaur paleontologist Dr. Peter Dodson of the University of Pennsylvania. Dodson has been a skeptic of the dino-to-bird hypothesis, and has interacted with Ross at professional meetings. Their exchange today should be fascinating. The lectures begin at 6 and run to 8:30 PM. This event is free and open to the public.

Now and again I’m asked to write the foreword to an ID book. Here’s a foreword I recently completed (I leave off the contributors and title so that Darwinists don’t sabotage the book before it sees the light of day): Read More ›

Charles Darwin Institute of Technology (CHIT) in Boston, Massachusetts is the first institution of higher learning to award Certificates of Existence along with diplomas for earned degrees. The certificates are in support of the Progressive Abortion Law (PAL) legislation currently being considered by the Massachusetts legislature. PAL will allow abortion to be performed up to the awarding of a college degree. Details are at www.TheBrites.org.

I think that one of the reasons for the irrational hatred of the ID movement is that in the last 50 years a scientific tide has reversed. The hard sciences (as opposed to Darwinian theory, evolutionary psychology and the like), which for centuries had demystified the world and made the transcendent seem increasingly irrelevant, suddenly started providing solid evidence that a materialistic worldview was untenable. The universe was fine-tuned for life, and living things were fundamentally based on highly sophisticated information and information-processing systems. The fact that those of us in the ID movement are promoting public awareness of this has enraged those with a philosophical commitment to materialism, those who counted on the hard sciences to provide ever-increasing support Read More ›