Intelligent Design

Stuart Burgess is Professor of design and nature in the department of mechanical engineering at Bristol University. He argues that intelligent design is as valid a scientific concept as evolution. …. I’ve been designing systems like spacecraft for more than 20 years. One of the lessons I’ve learnt is that complex systems require an immense amount of intelligence to design. I’ve seen a lot of irreducible complexity in engineering. I have also seen organs in nature that are apparently irreducible. An irreducibly complex organ is one where several parts are required simultaneously for the system to function usefully, so it cannot have evolved, bit by bit, over time. Against The Grain: ‘There are strong indications of intelligent design’ (HT: Nota Read More ›

Support Kansans (even if you don’t live in Kansas) in standing up for objective scientific treatment of evolution in the K-12 public classrooms. Click here to give your support.

Here’s a critique of the mathematics of the design inference from an assistant professor of religious studies. The combination of ignorance and arrogance on the part of this individual is staggering. Compare here with the following: You¹re probably referring to the pseudo-mathematical posturings of William Dembski. Dembski is a fraud whom nobody should take seriously. Here¹s why: Dembski¹s model of ³specified complexity² assumes that when attempting to determine the likelihood of a given pattern coming about randomly, that you have the pattern in mind from the outset. In other words, that evolution is a teleological process. But evolution is NOT teleological. It is not more unlikely, from a mathematical perspective, that, say, an eye should develop from a process of Read More ›

I’ve enjoyed following the ID debate in the UK, and especially David Anderson’s BCSE Revealed blog. The BCSE is the British Centre for Science Education, whose role in the UK appears to be analogous to that of the NCSE in the US.

David recently posted the comment below the fold concerning BCSE’s portrayal of him, his blog, and fundamentalists. I particularly enjoyed the sewer rat comment.
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Cardinal Schoenborn suggests that Darwinists are every bit as dogmatic as the Catholic Church has been accused of being. February 8, 2007 Cardinal: Schools Quiet Evolution Debate By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 12:28 a.m. ET NEW YORK (AP) — An influential Roman Catholic cardinal whose comments on evolution are closely followed condemned a court decision Wednesday that barred a Pennsylvania school district from teaching ”intelligent design” in biology class. Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna said in a lecture that restricting debate about Darwin’s theory of evolution amounts to censorship in schools and in the broader public. ”Commonly in the scientific community every inquiry into the scientific weaknesses of the theory is blocked off at the very outset,” Schoenborn said Read More ›

SciPhi guy Jason Renie has put up a free online Audiobook, actually a set of four interviews with proponents and detractors of ID. The other two Interviews are with Michael Shermer and Nick Matzke. Go here.

Comments I just posted at the site:

“First let me applaud Jason Rennie for some interesting dialogues. In his opening remarks, his pro ID perspective shows, but in the interviews he remained largely neutral. That kind of interview approach works well in this type of controversy, where emotions run high. Personally, if it were I interviewing Michael Shermer, I fear I would have become unrestrained, and challenged him on many of the points he made. But for this kind of objective comparison, Rennie’s approach is best. Read More ›

Design errors stemming from slightly incompatible versions of the same computer-aided design program will cost Airbus two years and $6 billion in lost profits (go here). Airbus engineers, working with programs simulating real, tangible objects and physical laws which are nearly perfectly understood cannot manage to model the correct length of wires for its lighting without making small errors that result in catastrophic setbacks. Meanwhile, climatic scientists have nevertheless created absolutely perfect models for the world’s weather patterns extending 100,000 years back and forwards in time (and yet they still can’t tell you if it’s going to rain on the weekend). Likewise, Darwinists have conclusively shown that living creatures, far more complex than the new Airbus plane, are the result Read More ›

Hoax of Dodos Randy Olson, who in his film Flock of Dodos portrays biologist Jonathan Wells as a fraud for claiming in the book Icons of Evolution (2000) that modern biology textbooks continued to reprint Haeckel-based drawings. But it turns out that Olson is the one who is promoting a fraud…. Olson must believe his viewers are a bunch of “dodos” if he believes they are going to fall for such a complete rewriting of history! Visit www.hoaxofdodos.com And watch this video Hoax of Dodos Video

Michael G. Todhunter, a creationist and geneticist had his letter to the editor published in Physics Today. He was responding to Addressing the public about science and religion by Murray Peshkin.

See: Volume 60, Issue 2, “Debate About Science and Religion Continues”

Being a PhD geneticist and a creationist, I was disappointed that Murray Peshkin did not give references for the statement “Hundreds of Darwin’s predicted missing links have been found.” I find quite the opposite.
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Over at Larry Moran’s blog, where I am identified as one of the ID movement’s stellar idiots, there is a picture of Darwin’s tombstone with the caption: “Here’s a photo of Darwin’s final resting place in Westminster Abbey.” I posted the following comment: Darwin doesn’t have a resting place. When he died he entered eternal oblivion. Nothing he did, and nothing that any of us do, has any lasting significance or meaning. One day our sun will turn into a red giant. When that happens its corona will expand beyond the orbit of the earth. The earth’s atmosphere will be stripped away, the seas will boil away, the sands will fuse into glass, and all life will be exterminated. There Read More ›

Here you go: Irreducible complexity for free by a (carefully programmed) accident: stellaralchemy.com/ice.

A commenter, at the bottom of this collection of news posts on the ID controversy, asks me whether I think that long-running atheist bore Richard Dawkins really exists. Well, I’ve given some thought to how to respond to such a sensitive question, because I do so dislike hurting anyone’s feelings. So, here’s the straight dope:

It makes me feel more intellectually fulfilled to assume that Dawkins does exist. But, unlike some people, I will not assume that a correct answer to this question will necessarily make me feel intellectually fulfilled, or you either. We must have better evidence than that. Read More ›

This Wednesday, there’ll be an ID symposium at Grove City College:

GROVE CITY, Pa. – The Grove City College Society for Science, Faith and Technology and The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College will host a one-day conference Feb. 7 on “Creatively Seeking a Creation Story: Evolution and Intelligent Design in America.” All lectures will be given in the Sticht Lecture Hall in the Hall of Arts and Letters on campus and are free and open to the public. Read More ›

One of our readers, who goes by the call sign “late_model” asked for a thread on Wheeler’s thesis that information is more fundamental than matter and energy. Wheeler, was highlighted in Wired Magazine’s 2007 edition: Wired: What we don’t know.
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