Intelligent Design

Tomás de Torquemada (1420 – 1498) was the first Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition.  Steven Pinker has appointed himself as the Grand Inquisitor of the Church of Saint Charles the Bearded. As reported in these pages (see here and here), atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel’s book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False has caused quite a stir.  The New Republic reports that Pinker has taken to cyberspace to stir up the Darwinist mob against Nagel.  Every whiff of heresy against the true faith must be ruthlessly stamped out.  Torquemada had his Auto-da-fé.  Pinker has his Twitter account. Irony alert.  We can be certain that Pinker is horrified by and wholly condemns Torquemada’s Read More ›

The basic idea of irreducible complexity developed by Michael Behe is simple and elegant.  Dr. Behe posits that a biological system such as the iconic bacterial flagellum (UD’s mascot – see the picture at the top of our homepage) is irreducibly complex if each part of the system is indispensable to function.  In other words, if one removes any part of an irreducibly complex system, one winds up not with degraded function but with no function at all. This idea is important to the debate over Neo-Darwinian Evolution (NDE), because NDE is grounded absolutely in the notion that every complex biological system evolved from a simpler precursor in a stepwise fashion in which each step provided a net fitness gain. Read More ›

One of the most common metaphysical premises in evolutionary theory is the claim that similarity implies common descent. If two species share similar genes then they must share a common ancestor, from which those genes originated. Evolutionists don’t think twice about this metaphysical claim. Among friends it is taken for granted and any challenges from creationists don’t matter to begin with. Why is this claim metaphysical? Because it doesn’t come from science. There is no scientific experiment or observation that tells us that biological similarity implies common descent. And yet, in a sure sign of metaphysics at work, evolutionists are certain of this premise. Similarity must arise as a consequence of common descent. This conclusion can be trumped only by Read More ›

As we continue to stir the mathematics pot, BA 77 has given a link to a video on the significance of Godel’s discovery of incompleteness: [metacafe 8462821] (Pardon possible embed problems, the links work . . . I am doing this under travel related constraints) This one, gives a bit more of details on how Turing sharpened the theorem using the Turing machine, that led to the well known algorithm halting problem: [metacafe 8516356] The issue of the intuitive imagining mind as opposed to an algorithmic machine, is discussed. Worth pondering. At the same time, we must always bear in mind the famous Euler result: ei*pi + 1 = 0  This speaks to astonishing unity in Mathematics, for in one Read More ›

A thing that evolutionists wrongly consider a serious problem for the creation/ID worldview is the “multiple acts of creation” or – in ID terms – “multiple insertions of information” in time. Here I will argue to show that this is a false problem, or – better said – is a problem that in no way can undermine the creation/ID explanation. This issue is also related to the question when in the cosmos the information is injected by its Designer: is it fully frontloaded from the beginning or is fractionated in time? My assumption is however that we take for granted that the Designer of the universe is God. I dealt with this issue here. Moreover I consider sound the so-called Read More ›

“I disagree that Darwin’s theory is as “solid as any explanation in science.” Disagree? I regard the claim as preposterous. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to thirteen or so decimal places; so, too, general relativity. A leaf trembling in the wrong way would suffice to shatter either theory. What can Darwinian theory offer in comparison? ” David Berlinski

Why argue about evolution when we agree on so much? Everyone agrees on the scientific evidence. We agree on how the data were measured, the measurement error, and how to interpret the measurements. We also agree on the theory of evolution. Everyone agrees on what the theory states, what it predicts, and where those predictions have gone wrong. But anyone who attempts to test evolution against the empirical evidence soon finds out there is disagreement. Evolutionists believe their theory is a fact and beyond all reasonable doubt. And so with each problematic measurement and each falsified prediction, evolutionists adjust their theory to accommodate the new quandary. Now evolutionists have powerful reasons to believe in their theory. But are those reasons Read More ›

Over at Why Evolution Is True, Professor Jerry Coyne has written a rather silly post entitled, Muslim anti-vaxers slow eradication of polio, in which he chronicles what he refers to as “Muslim opposition” to oral polio vaccination in Asia and Africa. Coyne begins his provocative article with the claim that “There’s always been some religious opposition to vaccination.” He goes on to assert that Edward Jenner often faced opposition from churches which declared smallpox vaccination to be a “delusion of Satan” and a “violence to the law of nature.” In a perfunctory attempt to be fair, he notes in passing that “some religious people, like the pro-science New England preacher Cotton Mather, did promote smallpox vaccination.” [Note to Professor Coyne: Read More ›

This has never happened to me until today.  I made a prediction about Darwinist debating tactics and the prediction was fulfilled in the very post in which I made it!!!  In this post I describe the common Darwinist “literature bluff” tactic:  Note carefully the common Darwinist tactic here: Literature bluff: There are thousands of books and articles demonstrating Darwinist proposition X. Calling the bluff: OK, show me exactly where in just one of those books or articles this proposition is established. Inevitable Darwinist response: [crickets] Then in the comments section Alan Fox posts this link “beneficial mutations drosophila” in comment 8, and in comment 9 he says:  “One or two article in there must be worth a glance, or am I Read More ›

Remember when it was discovered that most of our DNA does not code for proteins and evolutionists said it was probably junk? And remember when it was discovered that most of that non coding DNA is nonetheless transcribed and evolutionists said it was probably erroneous transcription? Well it turns out that this non coding DNA continues to surprise, as not only is it transcribed, but it reveals all kinds of function. For instance, as one recent reportexplained, thousands of long segments of non coding DNA have, err, “a crucial role in turning genes on and off.”  Read more

The Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Instituteannounces two intensive 9-day seminars for college students to be held July 12-20, 2013.  Read more

Because the only thing worse than having all your points refuted, is having all your points refuted before you even make them. In this telling exchangeEnglish professor Terry Scambray first shows Chemistry professor George Kauffman the door (“It’s disappointing to read George Kauffman assert … that everyone should accept Darwin’s “creation” story because a … congressman had a House Resolution passed saying that we should! Professor Kauffman … must know that House Resolutions are decorative statements, done to enhance politicians’ résumés. I hope that we could all agree that if members of Congress had to pay the cost to produce such trivia, none would exist.”) and then proceeds to anticipate and demolish the sophomoric, non scientific rebuttals that would come from Biology professors Paul Crosbie Read More ›

Remember when microRNA burst onto the scene a few years back and revolutionized our knowledge of cellular regulatory processes? Evolutionists had to scramble because, after all, when you say your theory explains something and it turns out you don’t really understand that something, well it looks like you don’t know what you’re talking about. It wasn’t much of a scramble though, because evolutionists can pretty much say anything they want, at any time, about their theory. So when microRNA burst onto the scene, evolutionists said “oh, evolution did that.” Well now it is happening all over again, but this time with long RNA which often interacts with microRNA, and this week it was with long RNA that is circular.  Read more

I already wrote about some internal contradictions of evolutionism here here here here and here. Today I deal with another logical inconsistency of Darwinism that is directly related to its foundations. Darwinian evolution, which is supposed to have created purposelessly all the biological complexity on Earth, would work according to genetic variations and natural selection. Organisms with traits that give them a reproductive advantage over their competitors pass these advantageous traits on, while traits that do not confer an advantage are not passed on to the next generation. Natural selection is the process in populations by which advantageous traits that enhance reproduction are selected for and are passed on to the next generation. These traits would arise because of many Read More ›

Professor James M. Tour, who is one of the ten most cited chemists in the world, has been publicly criticized for forthrightly declaring in an online essay that while microevolution (or small changes within a species) is well-understood by scientists, there is no scientist alive today who understands how macroevolution is supposed to work, at a chemical level: “I do have scientific problems understanding macroevolution as it is usually presented. I simply can not accept it as unreservedly as many of my scientist colleagues do, although I sincerely respect them as scientists. Some of them seem to have little trouble embracing many of evolution’s proposals based upon (or in spite of) archeological, mathematical, biochemical and astrophysical suggestions and evidence, and Read More ›