Intelligent Design

The term “self-organization” is widely used with relation to many phenomena: crystals, laser, Bénard’s heat convection cells, Prigogine’s dissipative non-equilibrium open systems, oscillating chemical reactions, Eigen’s autocatalytic cycles, chaotic systems, origin of life, cellular replication, homeostasis, morphogenesis, embryological developments… About this list there is an important conceptual distinguo to do and a possible misunderstanding to clear on the abuse of a bold term as “self-organization”. In my previous post I explained why organization is essentially different from any order. First, among the above phenomena we should distinguish what involves simple order from what involves true organization, meant in my sense. Second, we should examine what they really mean with the “self-” prefix. I suspect the main reason of this “self-” Read More ›

    We here at UD want to take a moment to thank all of our loyal readers over the past year.  We get tens of thousands of visitors here each month, and we hope that in 2014 we lived up to our motto:  “Serving the Intelligent Design Community.”   UD is a mostly volunteer effort but we do have some significant expenses, not the last of which is our hefty server fees in order handle all of that traffic quickly and efficiently.   We wish all of our readers a Merry Christmas and a happy new year and hope you will remember us in your end of year giving plan.   To give, please click on the “Donate” button Read More ›

Because while Franklin Haroldwonders in 2014 if “we may still be missing some essential insight” (given that a century of origin of life research “has failed to generate a coherent and persuasive framework that gives meaning to the growing heap of data and speculation” and has “remarkably little to show for” for all the effort expended), it was, in fact, just over a century ago when evolution’s co-founder, the great Alfred Russel Wallace, provided exactly what Harold may be looking for, to wit  Read more

The evolution of proteins such as potassium channels, according to a recent paper, occurs easily and is a good opportunity for communicating evolutionary principles, promoting evolution literacy, and refuting the misleading message of “design creationism” which is empirically unfounded and conceptually wrong. Nothing more than mutations and natural selection are sufficient to explain the origin of highly specialized proteins such as potassium channels. Those are important claims given the consistent message from both experiments and theory that protein evolution is so astronomically unlikely it can safely be put in the “impossible” category. There is only one problem: the paper is all wrong.  Read more

At the cellular level our bodies depend on a delicate balance of ions that is constantly adjusted. Potassium ions, for example, are atoms with one missing electron which are constantly streaming into or out of our cells. These positively charged ions enter and exit the cell via huge protein machines called channels which are imbedded in the cell wall and, like a donut, have a hole in the middle through which the ions flow. What is astonishing is how well these channels work. Not only do they open and close as needed, but they have two seemingly impossible design features. On the one hand they are extremely selective, allowing only a particular type of ion to flow through it. But Read More ›