Intelligent Design

In a recent book, Michael Shermer, who ” once aspired to Christian ministry, now is one of the most hostile critics of Christianity” (according to Touchstone Magazine‘s Russell D. Moore), holds forth as follows: In a feature article in the Christian magazine Touchstone, [William] Dembski was even more direct: ‘Intelligent Design is just the Logos theory of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.’ Make no mistake about it. Creationists and their Intelligent Design brethern do not just want equal time, they want all the time they can get. First, I find the title of Shermer’s book interesting. If Darwin really mattered, Shermer wouldn’t be writing a book insisting that he does. I mean, who writes a book called Read More ›

I take a very low view of “climates of opinion.” In his own subject every man knows that all discoveries are made and all errors corrected by those who ignore the “clmate of opinion.” –C. S. Lewis, THE PROBLEM OF PAIN

Two replies to the insufferable Jim Downard: (1) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/08/the_vampires_heart_a_response.html (2) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/08/anticipatory_erudition_a_respo.html On avoiding design inferences: Before you infer intelligent design, keep in mind that grass-cutting shears share an extremely high similarity with scissors which are used to cut paper. Since a paper stencil was apparently used in the origination of the grass-pattern, it’s likely that a pair of scissors was used to cut the stencil. This makes it plausible to assume that the grass-cutting shears were co-opted from scissors, because both are clearly homologous structures based upon their similarity. Moreover, paper is made of plant material, and grass a plant. This could account for the origin of the stencil itself. Finally, Virginia has metal resources which could account for the Read More ›

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Recently, I blogged on Google videos on the ID controversy, and to entice readers, offered the video Octopus eats shark, where the eight-legged wonder surprises its keepers (octopi gave this film EIGHT thumbs up): Zoologist Norbert Smith, for whom Octopus eats shark is a favourite, offered a comment on the octopus (cephalopod) as a creature unlikely to be the victim of a stupid shark, as the zoo curators had originally assumed*: Cephalopods are certainly the most intelligent of invertebrates. While attending college, I built a 100 gallon refrigerated salt water aquarium and kept a small octopus, crabs, starfish and other tide pool critters…not an easy task for one living in western Oklahoma. The tank was divided by a vertical glass petition Read More ›

. . . from a grain of salt: Dr. Jackson Martin, Director and Professor of the Flagellum Project at the Hoboken Nature Institute, today announced completion of software that successfully demonstrates the evolution of the bacterial flagellum. Critics of evolution have claimed that the flagellum is too complex to evolve using the gradual changes required by natural selection. “The flagellum is very complicated,” said Martin. “Like a motor, it has a rotor, a stator, and complex control mechanisms.” Martin and his students have demonstrated, however, that the complex flagellum can be easily created using the forces of natural selection. “We have not only shown that the flagellum can be evolved, it’s hard not to evolve the flagellum.” In simulation software Read More ›

For those wishing to hear the thoughts by students of Cornell’s infamous Evolution and Design class, I’m pleased to announce the papers are now made available online, courtesy of their professor, Allen MacNeill.
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Which claims in the ID versus Darwinism/materialism debate are extraordinary? ID asserts that the fine tuning of the universe for life (thoroughly documented by astrophysicists in increasingly excruciating detail), the origin of living systems from non-living matter, and the evolution of a single cell into humans capable of inventing science, technology, art and philosophy, are best explained by design. Design is a straightforward conclusion that screams at most people from all quarters, which is why only a small percentage of the American populace accepts blind-watchmaker evolutionary theory. ID is an ordinary claim, and evidence for it is mounting rapidly, on scales from the astronomically huge to the submicroscopically small. Materialistic philosophy asserts that the fine tuning of the universe for Read More ›

In a survey last month, more than 12% questioned preferred creationism – the idea God created us within the past 10,000 years – to any other explanation of how we got here. Another 19% favoured the theory of intelligent design…This means more than 30% believe our origins have more to do with God than with Darwin – evolution theory rang true for only 56%. … Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London…. has been talking about evolutionary biology in schools for 20 years. For the first 10 of those he was lucky to find one student in 1,000 expressing creationist beliefs. “Now in any school I go to I meet a student who says they are a creationist…” Read More ›

Apparently, Coral Ridge Hour, hosted by Dr. D. James Kennedy, is hosting a special called Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, on the legacy of social Darwinism (= sterilizing or murdering people who are thought to be unfit, sometimes called eugenics). There is a whole history there, ably recounted in a sober way by Richard Weikart’s From Darwin to Hitler.

I think it quite worthwhile that Coral Ridge would want to explore the legacy of social Darwinism, on the “never again” principle. However, some cautions are also well advised.

Strictly speaking, the social Darwinists were completely off the wall in their understanding of Darwinism, as agnostic Australian philosopher David Stove points out.

For example, Darwin himself disapproved, apparently, of vaccination because it preserved weak people:

Consider, for example, the following paragraph from The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, (second edition, 1874).

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poorlaws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. (p. 9, quoting Darwin, c. (1874) The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (2nd edition) John Murray, London, Vol. I, pp. 205-6.)

Now, in writing as he did in this specific instance, Darwin was being a true Darwinist (though according to Stove’s Darwinian Fairytales, he often wasn’t).

That is, if you believe that natural selection is the main force that creates diversity and adaptation in the world, you should not interfere via eugenics. After all, the prison sociopath’s selfish genes are probably much better adapted to sheer survival and continuance than are those of the musical genius. The prison socio may well produce eight children on his “trailer weekends,” whom he compels other men to support. The musical genius, by contrast, may produce one or two at best, but very often none.

Yet most human beings who have ever lived would prefer to forego the evolutionary benefits of the sociopath’s selfish genes. Whenever they can, they execute him or keep him locked up, and offer awards, prizes, and fan clubs to the musical genius instead. That approach to human survival seems quite sound to me – but it is hardly Darwinism.

Here’s where the social Darwinists went wrong: They took from Darwinism the lack of respect for the human being as anything other than a brainy ape. But they still wanted to smuggle into Darwinian philosophy at least some respect for human culture and decency, because they were not willing to give all that up. So they developed the worst possible solution: Read More ›

(this also servers as a partial response to a formal request for a response fielded by the UDer’s mortal enemies, the Pandas, specifically Dave Thomas in Take the Design Challenge!)

This is part 2 a of discussion of evolutionary algorithms. In (part 1): adventures in Avida, I exposed the fallacious, misleading, and over-inflated claims of a Darwinist research program called Avida. Avida promoters claim they refuted Behe’s notion of irreducible complexity (IC) with their Avida computer simulation. I discussed why that wasn’t the case. In addition, I pointed out Avida had some quirks that allowed high doses of radiation to spontaneously generate and resurrect life. Avida promoters like Lenski, Pennock, Adami were too modest to report these fabulous qualities [note: sarcasm] about their make-believe Avidian creatures in the make-believe world of Avida. One could suppose they refrained from reporting these embarrassing facts about their work because it would have drawn the ridicule the project duly deserves from the scientific community.
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You may recall that summer of 2003 Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett proposed a new “happy” designation for themselves as atheists — a term that does for atheism what “gay” does for homosexuality (the comparison is theirs!). They decided on the word “bright.” For Dawkins’s and Dennett’s opeds, where they originally made this proposal, go here: www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bright/bright_index.html. A band of D&D devotees ran with their idea of recasting atheism’s image to form www.the-brights.net. Nonetheless, some D&D supporters thought this was a bit much (see, for instance, Chris Mooney’s piece at CSICOP: www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/brights). All in all, I would say Dawkins’s and Dennett’s proposal of “the brights” never really took off — until now. It appears there is a quasi-secret society inspired Read More ›

Here’s a link to the 10 weirdest cosmology theories (that New Scientist is prepared to take seriously enough to publish), and yes they are weird. Here’s one: 10. In the Matrix Maybe our universe isn’t real. Yale Philosopher Nick Bostrum has claimed that we are probably living inside a computer simulation. Assuming it ever becomes possible to simulate consciousness, then presumably future civilisations would try it, probably many times over. Most perceived universes would be simulated ones – so chances are we are in one of them. In that case, perhaps all those cosmological oddities such as dark matter and dark energy are simply patches, stuck on to cover up early inconsistencies in our simulation. Right, prof. Right. Uhhh … Read More ›

Here’s a note from a Cambridge University Press editor to Michael Ruse regarding our co-edited anthology DEBATING DESIGN: FROM DARWIN TO DNA. Note that HB = hardback, PB = paperback. From: SNIP [mailto:SNIP@cambridge.org] Sent: Monday, August 14, 2006 3:12 PM To: Michael Ruse Subject: Re: darwinism and its discontents Michael. I’m watching sales of “Debating Design.” It continues to sell well in HB. As soon as sales fall off, we will go into PB. SNIP

Last night I was out giving a talk on the origin and development of the intelligent design controversy, when an engineer audience member asked me, “How long do you give Darwinism before it collapses?”

I found providing an answer difficult because I am not psychic, so I must rely on near term, high impact information when making predictions.

(For example, I figured that ID would become big news in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century because events recorded around 1991-2001 in the United States could have no other outcome – absent, of course, a nuclear holocaust or some other “all-bets-are-off” scenario, but you can’t let unlikely events distract you when you are making predictions based on the flow of normal events.)

In response to him, I pointed out that the Catholic Church is now spreading the news on prayer cards in many languages around the world that “we are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution Each of us is the result of a thought of God”. That is certain to have impact, but I am uncertain how to evaluate its strength.

So finally, I told him, “Look, I don’t think we are going to get anywhere understanding the origin of life or of species until we understand what information is and how it relates to the other factors in the universe.”

Information in life forms clearly does not arise the way Darwin thought it did. Even species don’t seem to arise the way Darwin thought they did. The recent challenge to demonstrate it on this blog did not turn up much. And that was supposed to be Darwin’s big contribution … sigh …

But aw, it’s been worse. The Washington Post was reduced to flogging up the idea that the introduction of Ontario squirrels to the Washington area by an ill-advised naturalist in the early twentieth century was an instance of natural selection at work. Yeah. Read all about it ….

Not  quite sure how to answer the guy’s question, I was reminded  of someone I had quoted in By Design or by Chance?: Read More ›