I have been meaning for some time to set down my reasons for thinking that evolutionary psychology is only questionably a discipline. At least seven reasons occur to me (actually more, but these seven are top of mind):
In case any one accidentally comes to the (?obvious) conclusion that the finding of yet more evidently brilliant design in biology may support ID, everyone must include the customary clear homage to the creator of all life, NDE. Science Daily “Kenneth Breuer and Sharon Swartz are determined to understand the detailed aerodynamics of bat flight – and ultimately the evolutionary path that created it.” “The assumption has always been that bats evolved from some sort of flying squirrel-type animals,†says Swartz an associate professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University. “Gliding has evolved in mammals seven times…. Now it doesn’t look like bats have any relationship to these gliding things.” “Interestingly both Breuer and Schwartz remark that it Read More ›
Through a little detective work, I found out where some of the Discovery Institute’s research funding has gone. It was an obscure comment in a paper that clued me in. The funding was for an exploration into the fundamental Speed Limits of Naturalistic Evolution. What was the plight of this exploration?
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Bill asked me to introduce myself, and to describe an idea that came to me recently.
I am a graduate student, working on philosophy of biology (at a university that shall remain nameless), nearing the dissertation stage.
I am sure that everyone knows about the odious “Darwin Awards.” I have been concerned about this phenomenon for some time, because they seem to be catching on with the broader public. I encounter references to them increasingly frequently among the mostly liberal crowd I hang out with. I guess this is not too surprising, as their cynicism is certainly in tune with the times and the culture. Read More ›
I read this Huffington post which notes that the U.S. leads Europe by quite a margin in those who reject orthodox evolution as scientific fact. They go on to an unsupported conclusion that this means the U.S. must be trailing in scientific and engineering accomplishments. Au contraire, mon ami, au contraire! Read More ›
Pro-ID anti-Darwinism doctors are on the rise. Check out Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity and note their member list.
Our friend Granville Sewell keeps reworking and expanding his essay that touches on ID. Here is the latest version of it: math.utep.edu/…/sewell/…essays.pdf.
Does the following point up disconfirming evidence against the creative power of unguided evolutionary processes? What has become of this project to vindicate standard evolutionary theory? The golem@Home project has concluded. After accumulating several Million CPU hours on this project and reviewing many evolved creatures we have concluded that merely more CPU is not sufficient to evolve complexity: The evolutionary process appears to be hitting a complexity barrier that is not traversable using direct mutation-selection processes, due to the exponential nature of the problem. We are now developing new theories about additional mechanisms that are necessary for the synthetic evolution of complex life forms. Some of these new mechanisms are based on ideas of modularity, regularity, hierarchy, symbiosis and co-evolution. Read More ›
Sam Chen posted the inside story on the “Incompetent Design” video that I highlighted here at UD two days ago (go here for Sam’s post). Here’s my favorite quote from Dave Wise (not to be confused with Kurt), the designing intelligence behind this farce: Branding ID as Incompetent Design involves both humor and grit but avoids direct insult to the opposition, a mistake to be avoided in any political campaign. All the tools of political campaigns should be used: slogans, songs, bumper stickers (“Human skeletal errors: Incompetent Design or Evolution ?”), IDers will attempt to take us off-message with debates on origins of life, thermodynamics, etc., but instead we must continue to pound simple themes of obvious design failures. Science Read More ›
From Panspermia 10 January 2007 …It is not enough that companies make disclosures of financial information…. In addition it is vital that there be a set of financial intermediaries, who are at least as competent at receiving, processing and interpreting financial information … as the companies are at delivering it  Yale Law professor Jonothan Macey, writing about the financial collapse of Enron. Macey was cited in a New Yorker article suggesting that, prior to its collapse in 2001, Enron’s extreme financial fragility was not concealed from the public  it was disclosed in the company’s own financial statements. The condition went unnoticed because the disclosure information was convoluted and took great effort to understand. Almost everyone relied on Enron Read More ›
Here is a great collection of internet radio interviews by Jason Rennie of the SciPhi Show: The ID Files The ID Files is a compilation of interviews about the recent Intelligent Design Controversy taken from The Sci Phi Show (http://thesciphishow.com). These interviews are with Dr Michael Shermer of the Skeptic Society, Salvador Cordova of the IDEA Centre, Dr Mike Behe of Lehigh University and Nick Matzke from the NCSE. The individuals represent a spectrum of positions on the question of Intelligent Design and these interviews serve as a useful introduction to the issues at stake and the ideas involved.
I’m honored to have the chance to present a post-Darwinist conversion account by one of our Uncommon Descent readers, Dr. David Cook, MD. Physicians like him serve as role models to the young and are a symbol to the scientific community that highly intelligent and scientifically literate people can be skeptical of Darwinian evolution.
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Apparently the design was not so incompetent as to render these Darwinists incapable of composing (dare I say “designing”) this song and then performing it (yes, the performance is poor, but poor design is not the absence of design):
In light of the challenge proposed to ID in the previous post (i.e., “The Intelligent Design Zoo”), here is a parallel challenge directed at materialistic evolutionists: Take the goo depicted in the photo below, autoclave it until none of the organic material here belongs to living cells (i.e., till all the cells are dead), and then try to reconstitute life without teleological guidance. Origin-of-life researchers typically focus on trying to obtain more complicated biomolecules from simpler ones. Here you’ve got all the complicated biomolecules you could ever want. Go to it — show us how, out of the material here once autoclaved, to get a living being that has all the characteristics we ordinarily attribute to life (i.e., reproduction, growth, Read More ›
