Intelligent Design

In the fine tradition of quote mining (just kidding), I’d like to periodically dig up a provocative quote and observe the reaction on the net.

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Genesis 1:26 tells us something very different. We are assured that our efforts to understand nature are valid, because our hearts and minds are fashioned in the likeness of God. Read More ›

I just received a notice from the Metanexus listserve regarding the spring lecture series sponsored by the Center for the Study of Science and Religion (CSSR) at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. It looks as though Philip Kitcher, a prominent philosopher of science at Columbia University, is taking a different tack in the science wars. Recognizing he has no case to make when it comes to demarcation criteria, he’s decided to argue that ID is an instance of dead science that should remain dead, after which he’ll outline what he thinks follows for religious belief from this state of affairs. Wednesday, April 26th, 2006, 6:30-8:00 Darwin, Design, and the Future of Faith Professor Kitcher will suggest that the best Read More ›

Intelligent Design for Anthropologists Chris Toumey U South Carolina Intelligent design is a threat to the knowledge that anthropology discovers and teaches about human origins and our place in the natural world. ³Scientific creationism² was an attempt to finesse the problem of the obvious sectarian basis of old-time creationism, and intelligent design is a clever way of re-packaging ³scientific creationism² after the US Supreme Court easily saw scientific creationism¹s unconstitutional religious basis in the 1987 Edwards v Aguillard case. Even though intelligent design is an intellectual dead end, it is very attractive to religious conservatives who want to discredit or suppress the principles of naturalistic, secular and empirical explanation that guide the study of evolution and other sciences. Why Oppose Read More ›

I recently posted a brief essay entitled “Beware of Question-Begging Computer Simulations” (linked below) in which I referenced an article by Eric Anderson. Since then Eric and I have corresponded by e-mail and he offers the following comments.

Gil

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“Creationist theories about how the world was made are to be debated in GCSE science lessons in mainstream secondary schools in England. The subject has been included in a new syllabus for biology produced by the OCR exam board, due out in September.” more here…

Sahotra Sarkar (Departments of Philosophy and Integrative Biology at the University of Texas-Austin) will be debating Paul Nelson (Discovery Institute and Biola University) tonight at UT-Austin, in an event organized by the Undergraduate Philosophy Association there. The proposition for discussion is “Can the evolution of life on earth be explained by purely natural processes?” Thursday, March 9, 2006 7:30 PM, UTC 2.112A. Paul Nelson’s discussion paper is available here [link to pdf].

When Bill posted Debugging the Universe, it reminded me to post that an ID sympathetic paper had been accepted in the journal of Chaos, Solitons & Fractals Volume 25, Issue 4 , August 2005, Pages 845-859: Computational Universes by Karl Svozil of Institut für Theoretische Physik, Vienna, Austria: Suspicions that the world might be some sort of a machine or algorithm existing “in the mind” of some symbolic number cruncher have lingered from antiquity. Although popular at times, the most radical forms of this idea never reached mainstream. Modern developments in physics and computer science have lent support to the thesis …. discrete computational physics certainly represents an interesting, speculative and challenging research area. Many ideas from system science, interface Read More ›

Whether ID is science isn’t semantics
Judge John Jones gave two arguments for his conclusion that ID is not science. Both are unsound, says Alvin Plantinga
By Alvin Plantinga
(March 7, 2006)

Judge John Jones’ 139-page opinion in Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District raises questions that go far beyond the legalities of this specific case. I won’t offer an opinion on whether the judge’s decision is correct — although apparently he’s never met an objection to intelligent design he doesn’t like and some of his “findings” seem vastly more sweeping than is appropriate.

First, a general question: What sorts of issues can a judge decide just by fiat?

Jones rules, among other things, that:

* ID is just warmed-over creation science
* ID tries to change the very definition of science
* The scientific community has refuted the criticisms of evolution brought by the IDers
* ID involves a kind of dualism and that this dualism is doomed.

But how can one hope to settle these matters just by a judicial declaration? Read More ›

These three guys been reading the hate speech at Panda’s Thumb too long? Read More ›

Richard Sternberg’s Testimony (courtesy of the Discovery Institute)

Perhaps there is no field of the biological sciences undergoing more rapid change than evolutionary research. Almost every day some new finding is reported that overturns— or seriously calls into question—long-standing assumptions and models. From the genome sequencing projects and studies of how genes operate to the discovery of new fossils, evolutionary biology is in a state of transition. Examples are simply too numerous to cover adequately. But here are a few. You have leaders in the field like W. Ford Doolittle presenting evidence that there is no “Tree of Life” but, instead, a complex web of gene sharing. Likewise, Carl Woese, one of the fathers of molecular phylogenetics, thinks the data support multiple, independent origins of organisms—that the notion of a Universal Common Ancestor is erroneous. Then again, evolutionary developmental biologists like Stuart Newman have performed experiments that suggest that animal body plans originated before genomes to “encode” them. I know it sounds radical, but he and other leaders in the field of “evo-devo” think that genes support development, but they don’t provide the blueprint. Read More ›

In the Scopes trial appellate opinion, Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Chambliss noted that Scopes’ lawyers prominently featured this statement from Prof. E. N. Reinke of Vanderbilt University: “The theory of evolution is altogether essential to the teaching of biology. . . . To deny the teacher of biology the use of [evolution] would make his teaching as chaotic as an attempt to teach . . . physics without assuming the existence of the ether.” (Go here. Didn’t Einstein’s fundamental work predate the Scopes trial by two decades?) It’s comforting to realize that critics of ID like Eugenie Scott, Ken Miller, and Daniel Dennett stand on the shoulders of such towering intellects as Prof. Reinke.

http://www.liberallyspeaking.com http://www.audiomartini.com Note: this won’t be up until tonight (3.8.06).

If I am a fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.
-George Gordon Byron

Intelligent Design is a theory that follows evidence observed in nature to the existence of one or more intelligent agents who had a role in building at least some of what we observe, particularly in living systems, physical laws, and cosmology. Intellectual Honesty dictates that we follow the evidence where it leads just as we should the evidence for any theory of origins (or anything else, for that matter). Rejecting the theory out of hand only because it might imply a cause which is disallowed on philosophical grounds is not science at all; it is Intellectual Dishonesty of the worst kind and a shameful placement of philosophy ahead of a science purported to be purely objective.

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Check out the article below. It explicitly refers to a process that produces modified enzymes as “Intelligent Design.” Further, it distinguishes between directed evolution and the process introduced by these researchers: their process more thoughtfully chooses the residues to mutate. Both are in fact examples of Intelligent Design, but one has to appreciate, especially in the current climate of controversy, that the researchers are being up front about how intelligent design is at the center of their work and also that they resisted the urge to suck up to the establishment by offering ritualistic deference to Darwin and conventional evolutionary theory. At Berkeley: Intelligently Designed Molecular Evolution Contact: Lynn Yarris (510) 486-5375 lcyarris@lbl.gov BERKELEY, CA — Evolutionary paths to new Read More ›

Here are some links to the Australian radio “Science Show” where Robyn Williams (who is writing a book against ID) sets out to trash ID. He interviews a few people at the AAAS including Eugenie Scott and George Coyne. It follows a piece on the spagetti monster: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s1581473.htm http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s1581474.htm or the MP3 of the whole program http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/science_20060304.mp3