Intelligent Design

Over at PhysOrg.com, there’s a study being reported highlighting a 520 million year old fossil arthropod with a highly-developed brain. So soon in evolutionary time, and an already developed brain??? (To go beside the very complex eye of the Trilobites) Here’s what one scientist said: “No one expected such an advanced brain would have evolved so early in the history of multicellular animals,” said Strausfeld, a Regents Professor in the UA department of neuroscience. Sorry, Darwinists, but IDers would expect it. And, to add insult to injury for our Darwinist brethren, here’s this confirmation of “genetic entropy” and Behe’s QRB “rule”: “The shape [of the fossilized brain] matches that of a comparable sized modern malacostracan,” the authors write in Nature. Read More ›

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you know I like to play poker.  I have read numerous poker books and articles over the years, and the concept of “expected value” is at the core of every one.  Expected value theory helps skilled players calculate whether a particular play will, in the long run, be profitable.    Here’s a simple example.  Suppose I’m playing Texas Hold ‘em and my hole cards are the king of hearts and the three of hearts.  The flop comes and the community cards are the ace of hearts, the four of clubs and the nine of hearts.  My opponent is in front of me and bets out for $10 into a pot of Read More ›

The worm-like molluscs, the Aplacophoria, are not well known to most of us, and they are a difficult group to study because they live in deep waters. Their taxonomy has been somewhat controversial, with little agreement on their relationships with other molluscan groups. However, the consensus has been that they are the “most primordial molluscs to be found on earth”. There is an evolutionary story that helps to promote this understanding: the other molluscan groups appeared during the Cambrian Explosion, and they have armour of some kind. It is reasonable to postulate a simpler kind of mollusc that had no armour – which appears to be exactly what we have in the aplacophorians. New research, however, has brought a change Read More ›

George Gilder has a new article up at National Review titled Unleash the Mind, which, though it never mentions Intelligent Design, is an direct application of ID thought to economics. In fact, for those more interested in technical definitions for what Gilder calls “surprise” and “creativity”, you might check out my talk on modeling non-materialistic representations of the mind at the Engineering and Metaphysics conference earlier this year. Anyway, I’ll leave you all to read the article, but here are a few interesting quotes: Increasing revenues come not from a mere scheme of carrots and sticks but from the development and application of productive knowledge With fewer resources diverted to government bureaucracy, they can conduct more undetermined experiments, test more Read More ›

If you remove the caterpillars from an evening primrose population, the plants will adjust, and adjust fast. Within even a few generations intelligent changes arise reflecting the absence of the predator. For instance, in plots protected from insects, the flowering time and defensive chemicals against the insects adjust. The plant’s resistance to insects is reduced, which makes sense since the insects are no longer attacking the plant. And in exchange, the plant’s competitive ability is improved. In other words, remove a threat that the plant had to defend against, and the plant population immediately and intelligently exploits the opportunity. It is yet another fascinating example of biology’s many built-in adaptation capabilities. Yet evolutionists claim it demonstrates evolution occurring in “real Read More ›

Sacramone rips up the latest evolutionary psychology spewings over at Strange Herring.  

1. Here’s a sure sign of a Darwinist losing an argument with the evidence: He (or she) rattles on that it will help “creationists.” It’s not like they care what the true story is or anything. 2. Remember Ben Carson? That brilliant neurosurgeon who sparked a Darwin hatefest at Emory University? He has a book out now, a bargain on Kindle at $4.63. 3. Decode ENCODE (= there is NOT much of the “junk” DNA Darwinists believed in) with embryologist Jonathan Wells Also ran: What Darwinists say about ENCODE (don’t seem knowledgeable) and Wells (“creationist clown”). This is what happens when you are right. 4. NCSE, the U.S. Darwin in the schools lobby, is really going big into climate change Read More ›

1. Dawkins claims in public, ignoring his OWN writings, that “little junk DNA” is just what Darwin’s followers would have expected. 2. Christian Darwinists, including Francis Collins, misrepresent C.S. Lewis. Never really supported Darwin. 3. Claim in Nature: Human moral compasses are easily confused. Study really shows that most people don’t read carefully if they don’t care much 4. TED talks creator Wurman says they’ve lost their jazz. Now plans new type of event most of us can’t afford. 5. Oldest galaxy ever detected? 6. Wikipedia in (inevitable) corruption scandal ======================== 1. Dawkins claims, in defiance of evidence from his OWN writings, that “not much junk DNA” is just what Darwin’s followers would have expected In “In Debate, Britain’s Chief Read More ›

On Sept 23rd, I put up an essay challenge as captioned, primarily to objecting commenter Jerad. As at October 2nd, he has definitively said: no. Joe informs us that Zachriel has tried to brush it aside: Try Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859). It’s a bit dated and longer than 6,000 words, (the 6th edition is 190,000 words), but Darwin considered it just a long abstract, and it still makes for a powerful argument. This is, frankly, a “don’t bother me” brush-off; telling in itself, as a definitive, successful answer would have momentous impact on this blog. Zachriel’s response reminds me, all too strikingly, of the cogency of  what Philip Johnson had to say in reply to Lewontin’s claims in his Read More ›

Yesterday, I came across a fascinating article on hearing in whales and dolphins that blew my mind away, entitled, A New Acoustic Portal into the Odontocete Ear and Vibrational Analysis of the Tympanoperiotic Complex by T.W. Cranford, P. Krysl and M. Amundin (PLoS ONE 5(8): e11927, 2010, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011927). Odontocetes, for those who may be wondering, are commonly known as toothed whales – a category that includes porpoises and dolphins. And the tympanoperiotic complex is the so-called “ear-bone” of whales, porpoises and dolphins (see here for a more technical definition). The article revealed that hearing in whales and dolphins is a staggeringly complex process, which scientists are still struggling to understand. There is an old Chinese proverb that a picture is Read More ›

Evolutionnews.org just published an article by me titled “Design Inference vs. Design Hypothesis.” Here is an excerpt: The logic of the design inference moves from a marker of intelligence (specified complexity) to an intelligence as causal agent responsible for that marker. The direction of this logic can, however, be reversed. Thus, instead, one can postulate an intelligence operating in nature and therewith formulate predictions and expectations about what one should find in nature if that postulate is true. The logic in this case takes the form of hypothetical reasoning, where a hypothesis is put forward and then its consequences are drawn out and the explanatory fruitfulness of the hypothesis is seen as a way of advancing science and giving credibility Read More ›