Intelligent Design

Central ascribes to me this statement: “[The holocaust is] obviously evil, and if you don’t agree with me, you’re evil too.” And he asks me why I refuse to give a similar answer with respect to the Canaanites. Here is the difference between my demand for a “yes or no” answer regarding the holocaust and my refusal to give a simple “yes or no” answer regarding the Canaanites: The Nazis never claimed to be under a divine command to exterminate the Jews. They claimed their actions were based on their desire for racial cleansing within their territories. Central suggests that it is at least conceivable that someone could come up with a justification for the holocaust (e.g., the killers thought Read More ›

ID Proponent of yore: Protein synthesis is semiotic. ID Critic of yore: No it’s not. It’s purely chemical. You’re lying for Jesus in an effort to install a theocracy to control the world. ID Proponent of yore: No really, it’s semiotic. ID Critic of yore: Stupid creationist crank, when we say “information in the genome”, it’s just a metaphor. Idiot. – – – – – – – – – – – – – ID Proponent today: Protein synthesis is semiotic. ID Critic today: No it’s not, it purely chemical. You liars have been saying this same crap for 50 years (HT: Mike Elzinga). ID Proponent today: No really, I can use completely accepted observations within biology to demonstrate it. Not Read More ›

Remember the Sokal Hoax? A physics professor manages to sneak in a completely garbage paper to a “postmodern cultural studies” journal? Well, if you thought that science journals were immune to this sort of thing – or even more often than not reliable – then get ready to have some of your faith in the modern academia broken up a bit.

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All that follows is RD Miksa’s: Dear Kantian Naturalist: You said: “My position, rather, is that at present, design theorists have not done the hard work of implementing the deductive and inductive stages of inquiry that would lend empirical warrant to the hypothesis. And that means that design theory does not yet deserve serious consideration as an alternative to other explanations of biological phenomena.” Consider, then, the following: Let’s start with the abductive leap that you accept: “The abductive leap would be: ‘It is surprising that there is complex, specified information in living things, but if living things were brought about by an intelligent agent, then the presence of complex, specified information in living things would be a matter of Read More ›

Elizabeth Liddle from a prior post: “Darwinian hypotheses make testable predictions and ID hypotheses (so far) don’t.” This statement is breathtakingly false. Let us take just one example. For years Darwinists touted “junk DNA” as not just any evidence but powerful, practically irrefutable evidence for the Darwinian hypothesis. ID proponents disagreed and argued that the evidence would ultimately demonstrate function. Not only did both hypotheses make testable predictions, the Darwinist prediction turned out to be false and the ID prediction turned out to be confirmed. EL, you are entitled to your own private opinion. You are not entitled to your own private facts. And when you make it up as you go like this, be sure you will be called Read More ›

Various studies have shown that in order to produce a protein evolution would need roughly 10^70 attempts to get close enough for natural selection to take over. That is a 1 with 70 zeros after it. The number of attempts possible, on the other hand, is far less. One study concluded that 10^43 attempts may be possible. It is important to understand how tiny 10^43 is compared to 10^70. 10^43 is not about half of 10^70. It is not even close to half. In fact 10^43 is an astronomically tiny sliver of 10^70. Furthermore that study concluded that 10^43 attempts may be possible assumed, as a starting point, the existence of bacteria. In fact it assumed the Earth is covered Read More ›

I love Kantian Naturalist.  Even when I disagree with him, which is frequently, he is always good for a thought-provoking statement. Consider this exchange in the comment thread to an earlier post: Barry: [Why] do we always argue about which side of some arbitrary line of demarcation our theory falls on? If my beliefs about biological origins are true, what difference does it make to me whether Karl Popper would have said those beliefs are on one side or the other of the line? The issue is the truth of the matter, not the boxes in which we choose to put that truth. In arriving at truth we summon and employ to the best of our ability our powers of Read More ›

I am a big fan of television show Breaking Bad.  For those who are unfamiliar with the show, let me give a brief synopsis of the plot.  Walter White is a technically brilliant chemist but an underachiever at life (at least by his own lights).  He had a chance to make big money using his chemical skills, but instead he wound up teaching chemistry to bored high school students while moonlighting at a car wash to make ends meet.  He finds out he has lung cancer and probably only a short time to live.  This is especially devastating to him because he knows he will not leave enough money behind for his wife and children to live comfortably. Here is where things get really Read More ›

For me, despite 43 years of indoctrination in atheistic materialism and Darwinian orthodoxy, it was a very simple logical exercise to conclude that living systems are the product of intelligent design. The simplest living cell includes highly sophisticated, functionally integrated information-processing machinery, with error-detection-and-repair algorithms and their implementation. The notion that random errors, whether filtered by natural selection or not, can produce such technology, is a transparently absurd proposition. It’s really just that simple. The great Arthur Eddington once said that, philosophically, the notion of an abrupt beginning to the present order of nature was repugnant (referring to the Big Bang). It might have been philosophically repugnant, but it was true. Only those who find the notion that living systems Read More ›

The comments our Darwinist friends put up on this site never cease to amaze.  Consider, as a for instance, Kantian Naturalist’s comment that appears as comment 9 to kairosfocus’ Infographic: The science of ID post.  The post sets forth a simple summary of the case for ID, and KN responds:  What I like about this infographic is that it makes really clear where the problem with intelligent design lies. Here’s the argument: (1) We observe that all As are caused by Bs. (2) Cs are similar to As in relevant respects. (3) Therefore, it is highly probable that Cs are also caused by Bs. But this is invalid, because the conclusion does not follow from the premises. KN has been posting Read More ›

HT, ENV. Let’s Embed, from here:   Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually.   And, let us discuss. END