Intelligent Design

Last weekend evolutionists fired off another round of metaphysics and as usual there was no counter attack. From their hilltop position evolutionists are free to throw down their religious mandates with impunity while the low-landers do nothing but run for cover. This time it was astrophysicist Alex “Philo” Filippenko lighting off the Infinite Regress howitzer from that bastion of Enlightenment, the SETICon 2 conference in Silicon Valley. Filippenko first fired a shot across the bow with his statement that “The Big Bang could’ve occurred as a result of just the laws of physics being there.” That had the Philistines cheering and the low-landers complaining as the evolutionist had left them with nothing but the laws of physics. That’s when Filippenko brought out the Read More ›

If we believe the folks over at Anti-Evo, no: Quote [KF} And it is telling that somehow Paley’s time-keeping, self replicating watch seldom if ever gets seriously discussed by those who object to his key point. [OBJECTOR} No [mocking, “outing” dimunitive], that’s the point. Watches don’t replicate… Evidently, the objector did not pause to do his homework first or think about why I stated that there has been a strawman argument, one willfully ignoring Ch II of Paley’s 1806 work. Let me clip IOSE as just linked: ____________ >> William Paley famously contrasted stumbling across a stone in a field with finding a watch in the same field; inferring design from the characteristics of a watch that are distinct from those Read More ›

As many UDers know, I was raised as a religiously devout materialistic, Darwinian atheist. Fortunately, I eventually figured out that this stuff was utter nonsense — thanks in great part to the ID movement. My main grasp on non-materialistic reality, all through those hideously depressing years — lost in the depths of Darwinian irrationality — was my love of classical music. In a way, classical music helped save me from the inevitable despair of a Darwinian worldview. David Coppedge, with whom most UD readers should be familiar, turns out to be a superb classical musician. Not only that, he is an orchestrator, and has used digital technology to reproduce many classics. His orchestrations are very imaginative and creative. You won’t Read More ›

How should schools and universities teach their students? Pedagogy occupies the minds of all educators, although there are many different applications of this aspect of educational theory. For example, some answer the question above by advocating learning-by-doing. Students are given projects which involve a structured activity such as experimentation. This is enquiry-based learning. Others favour a process of information gathering to reach answers. This is resource-based learning. Although not recommended by educationalists, some students learn by rote or memorise the way to solve problems but this typically means the student has little understanding of what they are doing. Earlier this year, in an editorial in the journal Science, Bruce Alberts wrote about the trivialisation of science education. He commented: “Tragically, Read More ›

It all makes sense now! HT: The Skeptical Zone. Nice to see the skepticism, and humor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey7Emmddf7Y

“Design in Nature?” The Tyndale Philosophy of Religion group is hosting an important conference at Hughes Hall, Cambridge on July 14th to discuss that question. The natural world appears to be full of order from the macro-scale of the apparent ‘fine-tuning’ of the universe to the inside of the cell. Is this apparent order real and, if so, how did it get there? This one-day Cambridge Conference will feature four perspectives on different aspects of the question as to whether this apparent order should lead us to think there is intelligent design, or if it can be explained in purely naturalistic terms (e.g., in the case of biology, Darwinism). Here’s the speaker line-up: Dr. Stephen C. Meyer (Director, Discovery Institute’s Read More ›

Proteins perform a wide variety of tasks in the cell and when a particular job needs to be done the right protein is quickly synthesized by unwinding the right DNA gene, making a copy, editing the transcript, and translating the transcript, according to the DNA code, into a sequence of amino acids. Evolutionists had no explanation for this incredible and profound molecular manufacturing system (which still out performs anything scientists can come up with), but they remained steadfast. Indeed they argued all of this provided yet more proofs for evolution. Why? Because the DNA code was essentially universal. As one evolutionist explained, while the genetic code is preserved across species, it would not be if the species had been created Read More ›

Remember when evolution was a fact? Remember when your high school biology teacher explained the origin of life from a muddy pond (or maybe ocean vent) was beyond any doubt? Remember when the National Academy of Science declared that “For those who are studying the origin of life, the question is no longer whether life could have originated by chemical processes involving nonbiological components. The question instead has become which of many pathways might have been followed to produce the first cells”? [1] Remember when Carl Zimmer wrote that scientists “have found compelling evidence that life could have evolved into a DNA-based microbe in a series of steps.”  Read more