Intelligent Design

One of the things I really enjoy about UD is that it is a catalyst for new insights.

I have blogged at UD on numerous occasions about computer programs and computer programming and their relationship to ID and Darwinian theory (for example, here and here). Doug’s post, Hidden Codes Within Codes, inspired some new insights.

Michael Denton has referred to biology as “wheels of complexity within wheels of complexity.” It seems clear at this point that we have only scratched the surface of life’s vastly sophisticated program.
Read More ›

  The New York Times is reporting here on a discovery published in Nature of of a second code hidden in DNA.  According to the author, “In the genetic code, sets of three DNA units specify various kinds of amino acid, the units of proteins.  A curious feature of the code is that it is redundant, meaning that a given amino acid can be defined by any of several different triplets.  Biologists have long speculated that the redundancy may have been designed so as to coexist with some other kind of code, and this, Dr. Segal said, could be the nuclesome code.” Oops, he used the “D” word.  But let’s look beyond that  for the moment and think about what it Read More ›

John Davison of our list was referred to by one of our authors as “incorrigible” (so much so that the author hastened to print his views! – a good sign). Well, here’s another one for you. Agnostic Australian philosopher David Stove, not content to take on Darwin, apparently had the intellectual courage, as a friend puts it, to challenge the current bloviating about the “intellectual equality of men and women”. Questioning that politically correct tenet as it applies to the sciences cost Harvard honcho Larry Summers his job. Stove analyzes the case for the intellectual equality of men and women in the same slow, careful way that he analyzes the case for neo-Darwinism, and dismisses it – at least so Read More ›

Wesley Elsberry, in blogging about Denyse O’Leary’s recent coming on board here at UD, refers to her as a “pseudo-journalist” (go here)? What a curious designation. Does Wesley’s use of the prefix “pseudo” simply indicate his disapproval of O’Leary and, in particular, her failure to accept his brand of evolution? Or does the prefix indicate something substantive (Denyse, did you come on board here under false pretenses? Are you really a journalist at all? What exactly have you published in recognized media outlets?) If Denyse is in fact a real journalist, does that make Elsberry a “pseudo-blogger”?

by Denyse O’Leary ARN correspondent Lawyer Edward Sisson writes with considerable insight about the career scientist’s dilemma: There is also a unique reason why scientists are particularly averse to developing an opinion that the theory of unintelligent evolution cannot explain all of the diversity of life on earth, and that an intelligent-designer theory may be necessary to explain at least some of the diversity of life. In litigation, even if a lawyer does develop an internal belief about the data that conflicts with the presentation he or she needs to make in court, the lawyer is expected to keep that belief private. The lawyer’s obligation is not to be actually sincere but to appear sincere. Thus there is no danger Read More ›

In yesterday’s post on March of the Penguins, I quoted British Darwinist Steve Jones, noting A group of penguins standing upright looks like co-operation, but in fact the ones on the outside are struggling to get in and those on the inside are trying to stand their ground: it’s a classic Darwinian struggle. The idea that the life of a penguin is any more beautiful than that of a malaria virus is absurd. I then noted, Actually, the book narrative and the film do not depict a classic Darwinian struggle. The book states that the male penguins, left alone with the eggs in a harsh climate while the females return to the ocean to feed, spiral in and out of Read More ›

(adapted from: Analogy, Induction, and Specious Arguments.)

Equivocation is a powerful technique if one has an indefensible position. For example, here is a way that one can argue that feathers cannot be dark:

A feather is light.
What is light cannot be dark.
Therefore, a feather cannot be dark.

Around 2003, Shallit and Elsberry put together a paper attempting to refute ID’s claims. They did not succeed in their attempt, but in the process they left behind a legacy in the art of equivocation and bluffing.

Read More ›

ID advocates and Darwinists can look at the same evidence and see different things. The recent National Geographic film March of the Penguins created a minor furore because some thought of it as pro-ID, though the filmmakers denied that. One difficulty is that, denial or not, elements of the penguins’ behavior inevitably raise questions about Darwinism. However, some Darwinists respond to the problem simply by reinterpreting those elements along Darwinist lines. For example, responding to the idea that the male penguins co-operate to share the body warmth, the well-known Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, replies, A group of penguins standing upright looks like co-operation, but in fact the ones on the outside are struggling to get Read More ›

Here is an ID research paper published in PNAS. Note that some important principles of evolutionary theory are criticized in the abstract. This research shows how ID is capable of being applied in biology. Genetics The regulatory utilization of genetic redundancy through responsive backup circuits ( evolution | gene duplications | modeling | systems biology | noise ) Ran Kafri *, Melissa Levy *, and Yitzhak Pilpel Department of Molecular Genetics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel Communicated by Marc W. Kirschner, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, June 12, 2006 (received for review March 6, 2006) http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0604883103v1 Functional redundancies, generated by gene duplications, are highly widespread throughout all known genomes. One consequence of these redundancies is a tremendous increase Read More ›

In his post about the fossil record, Barry raised an important point concerning honesty and integrity in science. Proponents of a scientific theory should consider all the evidence and weigh its overall implications, not choose evidence selectively to support a conclusion that has already been reached. This is a basic axiom in the scientific enterprise. There are mountains of evidence supporting long periods of stasis and sudden emergence in the fossil record, especially where the record is most complete. This is usually ignored. Instead, emphasis is placed on putative, rare (especially in comparison to the entire known record) “transitionals,” with no means of establishing ancestor/descendent relationships except through the use of imagination.

David Berlinski refers to the fossil record as “completely mystifying.” The same could be said of the existence of life’s complexity, functional integration and information content, at least in the absence of design.

Read More ›

Recently, National Review‘s John Derbyshire took on George Gilder’s case against Darwinism and for ID. To Gilder’s “Darwinian Theory has Become an All-Purpose Obstacle to Thought Rather than an Enabler of Scientific Advance” (his subtitle, actually), Derbyshire ripostes against ID, After being around for many years, it has not produced any science. George’s own Discovery Institute was established in 1990; the offshoot Center for Science and Culture (at first called the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture) in 1992. That is an aggregate 30 years. Where is the science? (Now, combining the figures in this way to get “thirty” is a bit dodgy. I mean, in the same way, you could combine my age with my two daughters’ Read More ›

I am reading Douglas Futuyma’s Evolution, which, like his previous textbook Evolutionary Biology, will probably become the standard college text on evolution. On pages 48 and 49 Futuyma lists the “proofs” of evolution. I find the list interesting not so much for what it includes but for what it excludes – transitions in the fossil record. If the leading college text on evolution no longer appeals to transitions in the fossil record as proof that evolution occurred, is it safe to say that the case on the fossil record is now closed, and the Darwinists have ceded the field to their victorious opponents? Just asking.

As Bill Dembski noted here, I will be sharing the task of moderation with him. Joining us will be Bill’s research assistant, Joel Borofsky, who can say a bit more about himself in his own posts. Anyone wondering what sort of changes will ensue at UD should note that I am a journalist and my main interest is in promoting a responsible public discussion of ID. I am not qualified to evaluate hypotheses in mathematics, biochemistry, or exobiology. But I am well qualified to study public issues and attempt to pull a discussion back from the abyss. My approach will combine “editor of the Letters section” and “moderator of a discussion group.” In my experience, this approach best serves the Read More ›

This story is utterly implausible since we don’t know who made the quilt maker. The art of quilting By Tanya Foubert Wednesday July 19, 2006 Barbara West stands in front of her quilt called Myths of our Time: Intelligent Design, which won the National Award of Excellence for innovative quilts from the Canadian Quilters Association. Canmore Leader — The story goes that a well-known scientist was giving a public lecture on astronomy. The talk went through the planets and how they orbit the sun and in turn the sun orbits our galaxy. When the scientist, who some say was Bertrand Russell, finished, a little old lady says to him: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really Read More ›

Check out this slide show at Slate.com: http://slate.com/id/2145813. It’s about bio-inspired design. If a system inspires us to design something, is that evidence that the system itself was designed? When or when not?