Intelligent Design

Let me encourage you to think seriously about supporting this organization: http://www.scimednet.org. Its mission statement is “To challenge the adequacy of scientific materialism as an explanation of reality.”

[From a colleague:] There’s an interesting article in the American Scientist from last year that is worth revisiting. It examines whether the genetic code is optimized for reducing the impact of point mutations. Apparently it is according to the author. Given that there are exponentially large numbers of potential codon usages, if the genetic code really is the product of arbitrary events, anti-ID scientist face a serious problem, namely, how is it that this “frozen accident” just happens to be the best code for minimizing point mutations. Favorite quote from the article: “It seems hard to account for these facts without retreating at least part of the way back to the frozen-accident theory, conceding that the code was subject to Read More ›

Ask yourself, Why do biological systems exhibit molecular machines at the smallest level permissible by the properties of matter? “Evolution” provides less and less a convincing answer.

Molecular motors
9 November 2005

http://www.iop.org/EJ/news/-topic=1009

A new special issue of Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter edited by Joseph Klafter and Michael Urbakh contains invited papers from some of the world’s greatest experts on molecular motors.

Macro-scale thermodynamic engines convert the random motion of fuel-produced heat into directed motion. Such engines cannot be downsized to the nanometre scale, because thermodynamics does not apply to single atoms or molecules, only large assemblies of them. A great challenge for the field of nanotechnology is the design and construction of microscopic motors that can transform input energy into directed motion and perform useful functions such as transporting of cargo. Today’s nanotechnologists can only look in envy at the biological world, where molecular motors of various kinds (linear, rotary) are very common and fulfil essential roles. Read More ›

[From a colleague:] Last night CNN devoted almost 45 minutes to the ID controversy. CNN’s Religion and Values correspondent Delia Gallagher did the segment on Paula Zahn Now. Most of the show consisted of the usual spin, but Mike Behe got lots of air time and came across well. My favorite part came after interviews with his Lehigh University colleagues made it clear that he was in hot water there, and Mike was asked whether he felt ostracized. He burst into a jovial belly-laugh and said “Sure.” He asked what the point would be in arguing for something everyone already agreed with, and he explained that the history of science is filled with controversies like this. The other highlight of Read More ›

Students join debate on intelligent design Campus clubs set up to defend concept By Lisa Anderson Tribune national correspondent Published November 25, 2005 ITHACA, N.Y. — Dappled with autumn leaves, the manicured campus of an Ivy League university in upstate New York may seem far from the cornfields of Kansas or the rural towns of central Pennsylvania, but it represents the newest of these battlefields in the growing culture war over the teaching of evolution. The national spotlight recently has focused on school boards in Kansas, Pennsylvania and elsewhere that are grappling with calls for including intelligent design, a concept critical of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, in science curricula. But a significant new front in this cultural conflict is Read More ›

Intelligent Design Network Australia — www.idnet.com.au. The unveiling of this website coincides with the distribution of Unlocking the Mystery of Life to 3000 high schools.

[Update 11/23/05:] The following email is self-explanatory. I had posted it previously, but then withdrew it because it seemed that the rebuttal might still be published. It’s now been weeks and it still hasn’t happened. Note that I’ve blogged about the BAAS before (go here).

Dr. Dembski,

In the recent past the BAAS editor was brave enough to publish our articles and rebuttals. Not anymore. Read More ›

Let me humbly suggest that CNN puchase a copy of my book The Design Inference (Cambridge University Press, 1998) to determine whether its explanation for the “X” that flashed over the VPs face during his speech holds up. In particular, what are the odds that this program glitch just happened to kick in right as the VP spoke, no sooner or later, with the “X” marking his face having the appropriate size and thickness and occupying just the right position? See http://www.drudgereport.com/flash5cnc.htm.

Here’s the home page of the professor offering this course: http://members.aol.com/pmirecki/pmcv.htm

U. of Kansas Offers Creationism Study
Tuesday, November 22, 2005

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,176354,00.html

LAWRENCE, Kan. — Creationism and intelligent design are going to be studied at the University of Kansas, but not in the way advocated by opponents of the theory of evolution. Read More ›

The power of evolution to bring about remarkable biological designs never ceases to amaze me. Scratch that. The power of evolution to delude its followers into thinking it can bring about remarkable biological designs never ceases to amaze me. That’s better.

Butterfly’s Navigation Secret Revealed in Flight Simulator
By LiveScience Staff
http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/050504_butterfly_navigation.html

The monarch butterfly is known to use the angle of sunlight as a navigational guide on its annual fall migration from across North America to Mexico. But how it processes the information has been a mystery.

Now scientists have used a flight simulator and peeked inside the butterfly brain to learn that their light-detecting sensors are hard-wired to their circadian clocks, allowing the creatures to compensate for the time of day. Read More ›

The Darwin exhibition frightening off corporate sponsors By Nicholas Wapshott in New York (Filed: 20/11/2005) An exhibition celebrating the life of Charles Darwin has failed to find a corporate sponsor because American companies are anxious not to take sides in the heated debate between scientists and fundamentalist Christians over the theory of evolution. The entire $3 million (£1.7 million) cost of Darwin, which opened at the American Museum of Natural History in New York yesterday, is instead being borne by wealthy individuals and private charitable donations. MORE

The battle of Intelligent Design vs. evolution is popularly cast as Christianity vs. science, religion vs. Enlightenment. At the nation’s largest Baptist university, the battle is Christian vs. Christian, and all the bloodier. . . . MORE

Paul Myers, the Foghorn Leghorn of evolutionary thinkers, offered the following memorable quote a few months back. I preserve it here for the record books. Let the humiliation of ID proponents continue and intensify. Read More ›

Mark Psiaki comments at length on Cornell University President Hunter Rawlings’s state of the university address criticizing ID: http://www.rso.cornell.edu/idea/rawlings_speech_w_mlp_comments.pdf. For earlier postings on Hunter Rawlings’s address, search under “Rawlings” on this blog.