Intelligent Design

Here’s a pro-ID article without the usual disclaimers (e.g., a ritualistic suck-up to Darwin, an obligatory sneer at ID). Perhaps this is a sign of things to come. Protein engineering: opportunities and challenges Matti Leisola1 and Ossi Turunen1 Journal Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology Publisher Springer Berlin / Heidelberg SpringerLink Date Tuesday, April 03, 2007 SOURCE: http://www.springerlink.com/content/d514772515583767/ Received: 28 February 2007 Revised: 20 March 2007 Accepted: 21 March 2007 Published online: 3 April 2007 Abstract: The extraordinary properties of natural proteins demonstrate that life-like protein engineering is both achievable and valuable. Rapid progress and impressive results have been made towards this goal using rational design and random techniques or a combination of both. However, we still do not have a general Read More ›

Jonathan wells asked me to post the following at UD: Hated by the Right People On April 2, Bill posted a comment by me [1] about a recent press release from the University of Bath. In my comment I made two basic points. First, evolutionary developmental biology (“evo-devo”) – which is currently all the rage among Darwinists – has not lived up to its promise. Despite claims by some of its practitioners to have plugged the last remaining major gap in evolutionary theory – namely, the origin of major innovations such as new organs and body plans – evo-devo has not provided an experimentally confirmed explanation of even one such innovation. Second, one of evo-devo’s most widely advertised claims has Read More ›

Thanks everyone for helping make another new record high for Uncommon Descent traffic in the month of March. The graph is a little misleading as March had 10% greater number of days than February. Daily average number of visits (which eliminates the differences in number of days per month) rose from 6430 to 6896, up 7%. April is shaping up to be far faster growth and indeed the last week of March was more active than the first weeks. I believe we can credit this to the addition of the voting icons at the bottom of each article, particularly Reddit (the last one on the right). So if you see an article you especially enjoy please vote it up by Read More ›

Here’s an abstract to a speculative article by Carlos Gershenson on information. It is relevant to how intelligence might enter and be expressed in evolutionary processes. The article was posted yesterday at arxiv.org: ABSTRACT: This philosophical paper discusses the benefits of describing the world as information, especially in the study of the evolution of life and cognition. Traditional studies encounter difficulties because it is difficult to describe life and cognition in terms of matter and energy, falling into a dualist trap. However, if matter and energy, as well as life and cognition, are described in terms of information, evolution can be described consistently as information becoming more complex. Moreover, information theory is already well established and formalized. The paper presents Read More ›

The real source of the antipathy and vitriol directed toward the ID movement is Fear Of Exposure. The fight against academic freedom is rooted in the worry that Darwinism’s weakness will be revealed… […] The teaching of evolution today in public schools is frozen in the past where it is based largely on a mid-20th century understanding of biology. Research in the biological sciences has moved far beyond that understanding because of the hopeless inability of Darwinian principles to explain the complexity observed in living things. […] There is a revolution under way in the biological sciences. A whole new field of biology called “Systems Biology” has emerged during the past 10 or 15 years. This revolution is just as Read More ›

I had not realized that I had become a fundamentalist until several people wrote to me, wondering what had happened.

(Fell? Hit my head?)

Regular readers of this space (devout thanks to both of you) know that I am still a Catholic, and may wish to read the claim and my response, linked below.

[Update: The problem has been fixed! As a kind poster noted at the PostD, it now reads, correctly, “Roman Catholic” in the online version. Now I won’t spend years putting out fires – plus, I can send all those snakes back to Petco and get a refund before something terminally stupid happens.]
Read More ›

I was nicknamed “Gas.”

Charles Darwin
Autobiography

Is evolution of antibiotic resistance by bacteria an example of Darwinism? Such a claim is very suspicious since Darwinism deals mainly with the origin of species.

Evolution of antibiotic resistance is an example of survival of the fittest within a species, not an origin of species. This phenomenon ought more properly to be credited to the ideas of Edward Blyth rather than Charles “Gas” Darwin.

Loren Eiseley, Professor of Anthropology and the History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania correctly argues:

the leading tenets of Darwin’s work — the struggle for existence, variation, natural selection and sexual selection — are all fully expressed in Blyth’s paper of 1835.

[For more details, read Was Blyth the true scientist and Darwin merely a plagiarist and charlatan?]

Despite this, Panda’s Thumb author Tara Smith continues her usual equivocations about evolution here. If by “evolution”, one means change, then everyone is an evolutionist, even creationists like Blyth.
Read More ›

Barrett Brown and Jon P. Alston, who appear only recently to have entered puberty judging by their obsession with sex, have just published Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design, & The Easter Bunny (Cambridge House Press, 2007). I would like to share with you some quotes. The book is full of stuff like this ,which I trust we can use to advantage: On ID proponents: “This will not be a polite book. Politeness is wasted on the dishonest, who will always take advantage of any well-intended concession, and the leaders of the so-called “Intelligent Design” movement, as we shall see, are so incredibly dishonest that they could cause a veteran heroin addict to blush — not of any Read More ›

Recently, there was a bit of correspondence between moderators of our list about the question of whether aggressive Darwinists can be accused of being like Nazis.

Now, my own view on this subject is as follows: I don’t really care whether Darwinists who routinely launch or justify persecutions against non-materialists are offended. It’s absolutely fine with me if they realize that their actions are closely observed and recorded. Read More ›

A mathematics graduate student in Colombia has noticed the similarity between my second law arguments (“the underlying principle behind the second law is that natural forces do not do macroscopically describable things which are extremely improbable from the microscopic point of view”), and Bill Dembski’s argument (in his classic work “The Design Inference”) that only intelligence can account for things that are “specified” (=macroscopically describable) and “complex” (=extremely improbable). Daniel Andres’ article can be found (in Spanish) here . If you read the footnote in my article A Second Look at the Second Law you will notice that some of the counter-arguments addressed are very similar to those used against Dembski’s “specified complexity.” Every time I write on the topic Read More ›

Ted Davis, a historian of science at Messiah College, used to be part of a list I moderate. He has some good insights into the history of science (especially into the work of Robert Boyle), but he consistently misses the mark concerning ID. Here is a nice synopsis of his view of ID (also with a jab at UD). It is written to Pim van Meurs, as a mentor would write to his disciple. The short of his view is that ID is a reaction to the scientific materialism of Richard Dawkins, which it tries to displace by setting up a new science, which is really just a disguised form of religion. His counsel is to rise above the fray Read More ›

Here is my review at the ID arts site of the eminent Canadian science fiction writer Rob Sawyer’s interesting approach to the intelligent design controversy in his novel Calculating God (2000), along with an interview I did with him nearly a decade ago.

Modern chemistry has allowed accelerated evolution through mutation paste. The product, patented last year by Finch Foods Inc. of Boise, Idaho, is a potato based food supplement marketed under the brand name Finch’s Mutation Paste. The effects of the mutation paste have been widespread and immediate. The Evolution News Network (ENN) at The BRITES has collected three remarkable stories about results of mutation paste use. Details are reported at TheBRITES.org.

In 1978-79 I was visiting professor in the computer science department at Purdue University, when the student newspaper (the Exponent) published a letter to the editor comparing “creationists” to “flat-earthers”. My reply, given below, was published a few days later. The reason I thought this 30-year-old letter might be of some interest to UD readers is how nicely it anticipates the current debate on whether ID is science or not (especially the last paragraph): Last year I surveyed the literature on evolution in the biology library of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and found Olan Hyndman’s “The Origin of Life and the Evolution of Living Things” (1952) in which he calls the neo-Darwinian theory of random mutation and natural selection “the Read More ›

These are excerpts from the cover story of the March 26, 2007 issue of Chemical and Engineering Times dealing with the origin of life. Read the whole article at the link provided.