Intelligent Design

http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/060110_bee_fight.html

Proponents of intelligent design, which holds that a supreme being rather than evolution is responsible for life’s complexities, have long criticized science for not being able to explain some natural phenomena, such as how bees fly.
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Proponents of intelligent design, or ID, have tried in recent years to promote the idea of a supreme being by discounting science because it can’t explain everything in nature.

“People in the ID community have said that we don’t even know how bees fly,” Altshuler said. “We were finally able to put this one to rest. We do have the tools to understand bee flight and we can use science to understand the world around us.”

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. . . “There are cultural forces at play here which go very deep,” Dembski said. “This is about our creation story, how we came about.” Dembski cautioned that any school board that adopts intelligent design in its curriculum must justify it on scientific, rather than religious, grounds to survive a legal challenge. http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060111/NEWS0101/601110436

. . . Dembski is the author of “The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design” and a senior fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture in Seattle. Organizers asked three Kansas University scientists critical of intelligent design to also speak at the event, but all declined. Brown said organizers could have used corporate funds distributed by the university for the event if there had been KU scientists on the roster. Brown said he offered to change the speaking format to make the invitation more attractive to the KU professors, but that didn’t work. MORE

Hubert Yockey, who at the Mere Creation conference in 1996 expressed to me some sympathy for ID and indicated at the time that he was not publicly coming out in favor of ID because he thought he could do the movement more good by working on his own program, has steadily been reversing himself on ID. Note that his love for the other side has not increased either. Here’s his latest. Scientific Reality vs. Intelligent Design’s False Claims—The Problem Is Getting Caught in Behe’s Tar Baby, Not Darwin’s Black Box Nuclear physicist and bioinformatician Dr. Hubert P. Yockey shows why Michael Behe and his ilk are wrong in his books, Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life (Cambridge University Read More ›

Fairly balanced reporting of the recent conference Dr. Dembski attended:

On a recent Tuesday evening, Moshe Tendler, an influential Orthodox rabbi and Yeshiva University biology professor, ambled onto the stage at Kovens Conference Center in North Miami. A stately figure with a wispy white beard and heavy glasses, he surveyed the 300-strong crowd of scientists and intellectuals — most clad in yarmulkes and dark suits with tallith tassels dangling about their waists — and urged them to spread the word that Darwin was wrong. “It is our task to inform the world [about intelligent design],” he implored. “Or the child growing up will grow up with unintelligent design…. Unintelligent design is our ignorance, our stupidity.” Read More ›

It appears that Ken Miller is contacting people about how I got the copy of that check for $7000 that Playboy Enterprises made out to Michael Ruse for writing a pro-evolution anti-ID article (go here for an image of the check). He could simply have asked me. Hef is actually a long-time Chicago buddy of mine (he and my Dad were at the UofI in Champaign-Urbana after WWII). Hef showed it to me the last time I was at the Mansion. Read More ›

From yesterday’s state of the commonwealth address by Gov. Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky: Our founding fathers recognized that we were endowed with this right by our creator. So I ask, what is wrong with teaching “intelligent design” in our schools. Under KERA, our school districts have that freedom and I encourage them to do so. This is not a question about faith or religion. It’s about self-evident truth. http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060110/NEWS0104/601100335/1008

People writing things like this are not welcome here. The two-faced Mr. Christopher will fit right in at Panda’s Thumb.

Victoria Clark of the “Epoch Times” published an article today on the battle between Darwinism and Intelligent Design. Although she equates ID with Creationism, she does a nice job of highlighting the religious zeal with which hardline Darwinian fundamentalists hold to their “theory”.

Since the term “science” as we use it today is a 19th century invention, and since the older term is “natural philosophy,” I’m happy for high school courses to teach “Natural Philosophy of Design” courses. The following class, then, is at least a step in the right direction. California high school class discusses intelligent design LEBEC, Calif. A small high school outside of Bakersfield has jumped into the national debate about whether “intelligent design” belongs in the classroom. Officials at Frazier Mountain High School in Lebec contend that the class, called “Philosophy of Design,” is not being offered as science. The teacher of the course is Sharon Lemburg. She says in the course syllabus — quote — “This class is Read More ›

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/audio. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to download this interview/debate.

The Huxley Memorial Debate held at Oxford Union on 2/14/86 pitted two creationists (Edgar Andrews and A.E. Wilder-Smith) against two evolutionists (Richard Dawkins and John Maynard-Smith). They debated whether “the doctrine of creation is more valid than the theory of evolution.” For further information and to order an MP3 CD of the debate (3 hrs. and 49 min.) see http://www.tonguesrevisited.com/oxford_union_debate.htm. See also http://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/pdf/2003/cm08_04_rp.PDF. I regard this debate as relevant to ID because A.E. Wilder-Smith employed information-theoretic ideas to argue that intelligence is required to originate biological complexity.

This leads to the WordPress dashboard. All registered users here can use it to facilitate tracking new comments. I didn’t know it existed before a few days ago.

I can’t quite decipher what Jeb Bush is really recommending here except that educators should make the ultimate decision. It seems he is greenlighting classroom discussion of ID in we should encourage the vigorous discussion of varying viewpoints in our classrooms but isn’t explicit about it. Clearly though, the topic of ID has risen to where the governor of yet another large state has come out with a statement mentioning it. This is very encouraging. ID isn’t fading away, it’s growing in stature in the public square. PRESS RELEASE December 30, 2005 Russell Schweiss (850) 488-5394 Statement by Governor Jeb Bush Regarding Sunshine State Standards for Science TALLAHASSEE — “A national debate is ensuing about whether evolution or intelligent design Read More ›