Intelligent Design

The video below documents, in detail, three separate chapters in the story of the treatment my Applied Mathematics Letters article has received in the last two years. It is a story about how the scientific consensus can be maintained on controversial issues, even when it is bad science. After seeing this, Tom Woodward, during a recent interview with me on his radio program, said “It is almost like we are in the midst of a Soviet-run propaganda system, where anything that does not line up with the party doctrine is squashed.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFMXR6PqGtg

Recently we discussed a paperfrom 2008 in which evolutionists claimed to have solved the long-standing question of how the eye evolved. It is a problem that famously once made Darwin shudder but the evolutionists claimed that now, with our advanced scientific knowledge, “the gap in understanding of the molecular evolution of eye components is all but closed.” That was quite a claim and, not surprisingly, there was no such breakthrough. In fact, the “explanation” that the evolutionists provided was simply that the key cellular signal transduction pathway in our eyes came from a very similar pathway in yeast that senses certain types of signaling chemicals known as pheromones. The evolutionists had no explanation for how the yeast pathway arose in the first Read More ›

From time to time on this site we discuss the theodicy — how is it possible to reconcile the existence of a good God with the existence of evil in the world.  It is a difficult problem, and anyone (in either camp) who says it is not plainly hasn’t thought about it enough.  Pain.  Suffering.  Misery.  Like a cruel and irresistible tsunami, the problem of evil threatens to engulf and overwhelm our minds.  Yes, there have been many excellent efforts at theodicy, and they are often helpful, but none is completely satisfactory.  The solution to the problem of evil is one of those things we see “through a glass darkly,” and we are not conceding defeat when we admit our Read More ›

The theory of evolution states that the species arose spontaneously, one from another via a pattern of common descent. This means the species should form an evolutionary tree, where species that share a recent common ancestor, such as two frog species, are highly similar, and species that share a distant common ancestor, such as humans and squids, are very different. But the species do not form such an evolutionary tree pattern. In fact this expectation has been violated so many times it is difficult to keep track. These violations are not rare or occasional anomalies, they are the rule. Entire volumes have been written on them. Many examples are the repeated designs found in what, according to evolution, must be Read More ›

In another post Mung points out this interesting quote to Kantian Naturalist (an atheist):  “That crude matter should have originally formed itself according to mechanical laws, that life should have sprung from the nature of what is lifeless, that matter should have been able to dispose itself into the form of a self-maintaining purposiveness – that [is] contradictory to reason.”  Immanuel Kant   Kantian Naturalist replies:   [Recently] I read “Bio-agency and the problem of action” by J. C. Skewes & C. A. Hooker (Biology and Philosophy 24 (3):283-300, 2009). I won’t get into all the details right now; suffice it to say that the way they set up the problem in what I find to be a deeply compelling fashion. Namely, Read More ›

In my prior post Timaeus responds to nullasalus and asks some profound questions.  What follows is all Timaeus: nullasalus: Let me step back from evolution for a minute, and see if I can make my point in a more indirect way. You are aware, of course, that many TEs have attacked ID and creationism for postulating “god of the gaps” explanations, i.e., allowing science to explain certain phenomena wholly in terms of natural causes, but then, in certain cases, saying, “Science has not come up with a natural-cause explanation for this, so God must have done it.” I am sure you know this drill very well: this sort of argument is a “science-stopper” so it’s bad for science, and it’s bad Read More ›

As I pointed out in my earlier post, Stephen Barr believes God plays dice with the universe, but he’s OK with that because the dice are loaded.  Barr affirms the standard Darwinian line that life came about through a random undirected process, and at the same time Barr says God directed the process at a deeper level of reality so that a process that appears random to us is in reality directed by God. To be consistent Barr would have to disagree with Stephen Jay Gould.  Gould asserted that if one were to rewind the tape of life and play it over, things would almost certainly turn out very differently.  If Gould was right, the randomness of Darwinism would be Read More ›

After critiquing Libby Anne’s atheism and faulty epistemology in my previous post, I propose to complete my examination of her philosophy by critiquing her views on ethics, and in particular on human persons and the morality of abortion. Readers will recall that a few days ago, Libby Anne put up a post that subsequently went viral, describing how she had lost faith in the pro-life movement. What I aim to show in this post is that her views on ethics (and in particular, on abortion) are riddled with contradictions, and that her philosophical understanding of the pro-life ethic is very poor. I shall also address the question of how a non-religious person might go about trying to determine what is Read More ›

Christians have traditionally believed that the design of living things is evidence of God’s handiwork.  For millennia they agreed with the psalmist who gave thanks to God for the obvious and exquisite design of his body:  “For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.  I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made . . .”  Psalm 139:13-14.  Honest atheists do not dispute the Christian belief that living things appear to be designed.  Even world famous arch-atheist Richard Dawkins concedes this point, writing that “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”  Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker.  Dawkins does not mince Read More ›

Evolutionists now understand how the eye evolved. While skeptics have been claiming something doesn’t come from nothing, evolutionists have been busy tracking down the details. As one paper explains, “the gap in understanding of the molecular evolution of eye components is all but closed.” That is amazing. For understanding eye evolution at the molecular level is the holy grail, or at least a holy grail. As we have discussed before, vision is profoundly complicated and it is not clear how it could spontaneously arise as evolutionists believe it did. And vague speculation, with cartoon illustrations, of light sensitive patches magically morphing into a series of increasingly sophisticated eyes do not help much. What is needed is a plausible explanation of how such Read More ›

Kudos to Daniel Sarewitz for his must-readcomment on the problem of bias in scientific research where he discusses mounting evidence that bias in science is not random. If it were then multiple studies would serve to cancel it out. Instead false positive results persist and to make matters worse, science’s attempts at internal controls, such as conflicts of interest disclosure, are not keeping up with the problem. Sarewitz points out that industry teams, who seek actually to implement scientific findings, are consistently unable to confirm what were thought to be “landmark” findings. As John Ioannidis has put it, “claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.”  Read more

Over at his “step-by-step” post Upright BiPed muses over the irony of Elizabeth Liddle calling herself “skeptical” and naming her blog “The Skeptical Zone” when she clings to conclusions driven by her deeply held ideological predispositions in the teeth of logic and evidence and with a dogmatic fervor that would make a medieval churchman blush.  The dictionary defines “skeptical” as “an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object.”  That last phrase is the key.  When a person says they are skeptical, they may mean they are generally skeptical or particularly skeptical.  UB obviously believes that a person who takes on the mantle of skepticism is using the word in the former sense, Read More ›

The deep sea harp sponge has a series of vertical vanes that maximize surface area for passive suspension feeding. As onereport explains:  Read more

The Central Dogma has had an enormous impact on the way genetics research has developed over the past 50 years. Basically, the dogma states that DNA genes encode mRNA, and mRNA allows proteins to be constructed, and proteins do all the work needed for cells to function. There is a linear logic here that fits into a view of the genome that is static throughout its life and provides a blueprint for life. This is how Franklin and Vondriska introduce their paper: “Arguably the greatest postmodern coup for reductionism in biology was the articulation of the central dogma. Not since “humors” were discarded from medical practice and logic and experiment instituted as the cornerstones of physiology (which they remain today) Read More ›

Who is Libby Anne? That’s what you’re wondering, isn’t it? I’ll let her introduce herself: As a brief introduction, I was raised in a large homeschooling family influenced by the Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements. I grew up an evangelical Christian, though with some fundamentalist aspects. I found my beliefs challenged in college and am today an atheist and a feminist. I am in my mid-twenties, married to a wonderful man… and busily raising young children… I am also in graduate school getting my Ph.D. in a humanities field. (I’ve omitted the names of family members, out of respect for their privacy.) Libby Anne has a Web site called Love, Joy, Feminism. I would recommend that readers take the time Read More ›