Intelligent Design

This reply is too long to put in the comments section to the previous post, so I am making a new post.

Frank writes: “There is an important difference between believing things to be true a priori and having faith.”

BarryA replies: It depends on what you mean by “faith.” The first entry in the American Heritage Dictionary is what I mean: “Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.”

Take your example. Yes, it is true that you don’t accept 2+2=4 on faith. But back up a couple of steps and you’ll find faith at a deeper level. You believe this mathematical formula is true, because you believe in the law of non-contradiction, which in turn means you believe we live in a non-chaotic universe in which there is meaning and in which logic prevails. You believe this not because you can demonstrate it to be true (Popper says, correctly I think, that universal statements can never be verified), but because you have a confident belief that it is true – i.e., you believe it on faith.

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You’ve got to wonder what the staffers at the NCSE are thinking when they go to such lengths to assure the public that there’s no problem reconciling evolution and religious faith, only to have Richard Dawkins come along and utter the following (taken from his BBC program “The Root of All Evil?”): The suicide bomber is convinced that in killing for his God he will be fast tracked to a special martyr’s heaven. This isn’t just a problem of Islam. In this program I want to examine that dangerous thing that’s common to Judaism and Christianity as well. The process of non-thinking called faith. I’m a scientist [well, actually, I just talk about science these days] and I believe there Read More ›

Ironically, ancient wisdom, much of it presumably discredited by modern science, is making a comeback and vindicating itself. Consider that living matter was once thought to be fundamentally different than non-living matter. This idea was presumably discredited with the discovery of the chemical synthesis of urea (http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=5905): Urea is of major historical significance. It was the first organic chemical compound ever synthesized. The German chemist Friedrich Wöhler in 1828 attempted to make ammonium cyanate from silver cyanide and ammonium chloride and, in the process, accidentally made urea. Wöhler wrote his mentor Jöns Berzelius, “I must tell you that I can make urea without the use of kidneys, either man or dog. Ammonium cyanate is urea.” This pioneering experiment disproved the Read More ›

[From a colleague:] Hot on the heels of Embley and Martin (Nature 440, 623-630, 30 March 2006), Kurland and colleagues take the plunge and sever the link between eukaryotes and prokaryotes. Their title refers to the “Irreducible Nature of Eukaryote Cells,” which reads like an echo of Mike Behe. The logic of their argument confirms this: the structures and the genetics of eukaryotes mean that an evolutionary pathway from prokaryotes must be rejected. However, they do not again use the word “irreducible” in their paper. What is clear is that the “simple” pathway that the textbooks have proclaimed for years must now be abandoned. Surely there are lessons here about the way darwinism gives false leads in its appetite for Read More ›

This problem has been resolved by a professor of mathematics. The solution is elegant. The contest is closed. I love the Internet! –WmAD /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ I’m offering the first person who completely resolves the following conjecture $1000 cash. I need a complete error-free proof and I need to be able to use it in my writings (of course, I’ll give full credit to the mathematician who proves it). This conjecture is relevant to the conservation of information.

http://www.humanthermodynamics.com/4th-Law-Variations.html

A student of mine heard second-hand about anti-ID bumper stickers being handed out at a creationism conference. Unfortunately, my student didn’t have any details. Does anyone have any information about this conference or the actual statement on the bumper stickers?

here is a quote mine:

A Wakeup Call for Science Faculty

I believe that intelligent design should be taught in college science classes…

-Bruce Alberts, December 2, 2005

Apparently, the critics of ID are taking Albert’s words to heart because 36 universities as reported by ID at the Academy have courses with ID content in them. Joseph Campana at ResearchIntelligentDesign.org is trying to track ID content in various courses at universities in the United States and elsewhere. The list I linked to was gleaned from news sources and word of mouth. If anyone is aware of corrections or additions to the list, feel free to post them here and/or contact the authors of the list.

Unlike the public schools, the universities are viewed even by critics of ID as an appropriate place to discuss ID. Niall Shanks, Eugenie Scott, and even Bruce Alberts are favorable to the idea of ID being discussed in the universities. So “ID in the Academy” is something both sides want (albeit for opposite reasons)!

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A colleague of mine posted this on list to which I subscribe. It raises some interesting questions about the limits of adaptability, the limits to preadaptation/exaptation, and the extent to which selection presupposes adaptability. I’m not sure I buy the entire argument here (see the post on this blog about the evolution of nylonase), but I would like to see the insights below vigorously discussed on this blog. Are organisms simply more adaptable than can ever be explained on a purely evolutionary basis? For example, we’ve all heard of the experiments where human subjects wear goggles that flip their visual experience upside down. After some period of time the brain/mind/soul flips things upright. Since never in evolutionary history could anything Read More ›

Arthur Asuncion sends some links about the recent University of California, Irvine ID colloquium. I had the opportunity to attend, and reported on the event in a previous UD blog posting. Gil Arthur’s informal summary: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~aasuncio/2006/05/colloquium-on-origins-was-success.htm Arthur’s colleague’s informal summary: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~aasuncio/2006/05/thoughts-on-wednesdays-origins.htm The New University Article (campus newspaper): http://www.newu.uci.edu/article.php?id=4742 Daily Pilot Article (affiliated with LA Times, and more pro-evolution): http://www.dailypilot.com/education/story/45788p-69359c.html Perspective from Robert Camp (a skeptic): http://litcandle.blogspot.com/2006/05/what-if-they-held-colloquium-on-id-and.html

Nanotube bundles could be used as motors for nanodevices from PhysOrg.com
Even the smallest devices, assembled at the molecular level, need motors and oscillators. UC Riverside Mechanical Engineering Professor Qing Jiang thinks bundling groups of carbon nanotubes together could make an ultra-efficient and accurate nano-oscillator.
[…]

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Good news Haeckel lovers and everyone else who is fascinated by morbid 19th century charlatans. We all know Ernst Haeckel’s ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny/ embryonic recapitulation/doctored drawings. But one of his lesser known contributions to literature is a book called The History of Creation (this is the short title; the long title is set forth below), in which he divides people up into different species. The book was on most Nazis’ “must read” list. Dr. David C. Bossard has graciously scanned in both volumes of the massive work. It is very interesting reading. Here’s the full title of the book Dr. Bossard has scanned in: Ernst Haeckel, The History of Creation: Or The Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants by Read More ›

J.B.S. Haldane first described the ‘cost of substitution’ and its limitation on the speed of evolution. That gave rise to a problem (see, for example, Dodson), known today as Haldane’s Dilemma. The problem is more severe in organisms with low reproduction rate and long generation time, such as the higher vertebrates: elephants, whales, apes and humans, etc. Evolutionary geneticists saw this as a compelling issue. Maynard-Smith and Kimura each cited it as the main reason for their revolutionary new views of evolutionary process.

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This weekend I received the following letter (reprinted here in its entirety) as a pdf file from Kevin Padian: Dear Bill, The May 10 posting on your weblog makes a vicious, false, and defamatory accusation against me based on factual errors and a thorough distortion of my actual statements. Your smear of my character demands an immediate retraction and apology. In the first place, you completely distorted what I said by quoting out of context. The contrast that I drew between the demographics of your audience and mine made a point completely different than your insinuation. What I said (in toto, not simply in the isolated snippets that you distorted) is that your audience – which I described accurately and Read More ›

“Quote Mining” is a pejorative term used to refer to the practice of compiling quotations, often from one’s opponents. As anyone who has studied evolution for any length of time knows, one need not quote ID proponents or creationists for authority against evolution or Darwinism. The Darwinists themselves can be quoted for practically every proposition that an ID proponent or a creationist would advance. When this is done, however, Darwinists often level the charge of “quote mining,” and accuse their opponents of taking the quotations out of context. For example, in his 1973 article “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.” Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote:

Their [i.e., creationists’] favorite sport is stringing together quotations, carefully and sometimes expertly taken out of context, to show that nothing is really established or agreed upon among evolutionists. Some of my colleagues and myself have been amused and amazed to read ourselves quoted in a way showing that we are really antievolutionists under the skin.

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