Intelligent Design

This [quantum uncertainty] is something biologists, almost universally, have not yet come to grips with. And its consequences are enormous. It certainly means that we should wonder more than we currently do about the saying that life is made of “mere” matter….

This means that absolute materialism, a view that control and predictability and ultimate explanation are possible, breaks down in a way that is biologically significant. Read More ›

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0603/15doublehelix

According to Variety, the studio just hired Ronald Harwood to write a screenplay based on last year’s court decision ruling that a Pennsylvania school board didn’t have the right to force teachers to teach intelligent design. (Interestingly, the film’s producer was thinking “movie” from the very start, so much so that she actually sent someone to watch and take notes on the trial – does that show clever foresight or a disturbing tendency to turn every major news story into tomorrow’s blockbuster? Both?) In Harwood’s eyes, his benchmark is Inherit the Wind, the play and film that told the story of the famous Scopes trial, which allowed evolution into (Tennessee) classrooms in the first place. “Our aspiration is to make Read More ›

http://www.idnet.com.au/files/pdf/Doubting%20Yockey.pdf

JOHN D. BARROW WINS 2006 TEMPLETON PRIZE

NEW YORK, MARCH 15 – John D. Barrow, a noted cosmologist whose writings about the relationship between life and the universe, and the nature of human understanding, have created new perspectives on questions of ultimate concern to science and religion, has won the 2006 Templeton Prize. The prize, valued at 795,000 pounds sterling, approximately $1.4 million, was announced today at a news conference at the Church Center for the United Nations in New York.

Barrow, 53, who serves as Professor of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge, has used insights from mathematics, physics, and astronomy to set out wide-ranging views that challenge scientists and theologians to cross the boundaries of their disciplines if they are to fully realize what they may or may not understand about how time, space, and matter began, the behavior of the universe (or, perhaps, “multiverses”), and where it is all headed, if anywhere.

His work – including 17 books translated into 27 languages and written in accessible, lively prose, hugely popular lectures, and more than 400 scientific papers – has illuminated understanding of the universe and cast the intrinsic limitations of scientific inquiry into sharp relief. It has also given theologians and philosophers inescapable questions to consider when examining the very essence of belief, the nature of the universe, and humanity’s place in it.

As Thomas Torrance, himself a Templeton laureate (1978), wrote in his nomination of Barrow, “The hallmark of his work is a deep engagement with those aspects of the structure of the universe and its laws that make life possible and which shape the views that we take of that universe when we examine it. The vast elaboration of that simple idea has lead to a huge expansion of the breadth and depth of the dialogue between science and religion.” Read More ›

Information Forensics (IF) — another branch of ID: http://www.ieee.org/portal/site/tionline/menuitem.130a3558587d56e8fb2275875bac26c8/index.jsp?&pName=institute_level1_article&TheCat=2201&article=tionline/legacy/inst2006/mar06/fforensics.xml

Campbell at JMU

Can you believe it? I was there that night also. I offer my competing account of the event.

Campbell argued that Darwin’s idea can’t be fully understood without understanding the idea Darwin was seeking to replace, namely (using today’s jargon) intelligent design. Thus to learn about Darwin correctly, one must learn about intelligent design.
Read More ›

Andrew Rowell over at ID in the UK has done a very good job of exposing the problems with having methodological naturalism as the exclusive methodology for the natural sciences:

The faith of the methodological naturalist.

The basic articles of faith for a methodological naturalist go something like this:

We have found excellent naturalistic explanations for many phenomenon in nature.

Therefore

we believe every phenomenon in nature will have a naturalistic explanation.

Therefore

we make it a strict rule that science is exclusively the study of possible naturalistic explanations for what can be observed in the universe.

Science is not the search for the truth about the origin, operation and destiny of the universe it is limited exclusively to purely naturalistic explanations of the origin, operation and destiny of the universe.

The methodological naturalist will choose a naturalistic explanation over a meta-nature explanation to be taught as the truth in science lessons even if it is not actually true. Read More ›

In addition to the excitement of the NCAA Basketball tournament, there will be lot’s of ID in March.
Paul Nelson in Jacksonville University, March 14

William Dembski at UC Berkeley March 17, 18

“ID Week” at JMU with John Angus Campbell, March 12-15 featuring debate teams from 20 colleges to debate ID:

Cornell University
Yale University (two teams)
Pepperdine University
University of Notre Dame
George Mason University
Read More ›

Notable Book Reviews (by Jason Rosenhouse) shows that attempts are being made to discredit Hubert Yockey’s work, particularly his last book on the origin of life published in 2004:

reviewer Chris Adami:

many derivations in this book (all of them already present in the 1992 version) are deeply flawed either mathematically, or by the use of inappropriate biological assumptions, or both.

What is most surprising is that such a volume could pass an impartial peer review process. Cambridge University Press would do well to examine the circumstances of this and the previous book’s approval and editing process.

Adami is recommeding an investigation into Yockey’s 1992 book, Information Theory and Molecular Biology? Come on guys, why wait this long? Read More ›

On the Front Lines in the War Over Evolution Proponents of creationism and defenders of Darwinism seek recruits in new territory Related materials Text: An open letter concerning religion and science By RICHARD MONASTERSKY In a packed IMAX theater in St. Louis last month, a middle-school teacher took the stage and lectured some of the leaders in the American scientific establishment. In a friendly but commanding style honed by three decades in the classroom, Linda K. Froschauer told scientists that it was time for them to get involved in elementary and secondary education. “Go home. Identify science teachers in your own neighborhood. Offer to help them,” she said. “Go to the board of education and speak up.” It was a Read More ›

Darwin smacked in new U.S. poll Whopping 69 percent of Americans want alternate theories in classroom.

idea.berkeley.edu

“Neo-Darwinism is firmly accredited and highly regarded by science, though there is little direct evidence for it, because it beautifully fits into a mechanistic system of the universe and bears on a subject — the origin of man — which is of utmost intrinsic interest.” (Personal Knowledge, p.136)

On Common Descent v. Intelligent Design theories: Neither theory is proven, nor perhaps even provable, but both deserve to be on the table for discussion with equal value. The hysteria of Darwinists and atheists toward even discussing the concept of intelligent design exhibits a lack of confidence in their position, which, in and of itself, should be a part of the debate. It is unfortunate that so many public schools have capitulated to the pressures of the Darwinist-atheist coalition in its crusade to squelch any academic debate that may cast a shadow over its narrow, intolerant and tenuous suppositions. more here