Intelligent Design

In the current Computer Simulations thread, Dr Liddle has challenged me as follows, that I profoundly misunderstand prof Lewontin’s 1997 NYRB article that crops up so often at UD: . . . as I have said several times, I don’t think it means what you think it means. In fact I’m sure you are misinterpreting it. What Lewontin clearly means (and he says so explicitly) is that the entire scientific method is predicated on the assumption that the universe is predictable. That doesn’t mean it is but that science can only proceed on that assumption. There is no indoctination here – because no doctrine. Science does not teach the doctrine that there is “no Divine Foot”. What it teaches is Read More ›

Or should we say, it is perfect, for creatively finding new ways to cram as many fallacies as possible into a single paper is precisely what “scientific” evolutionism seems to be all about. Cusack’s latest peer-reviewed contribution to the evolution literature, Preventing Dangerous Nonsense: Selection for Robustness to Transcriptional Error in Human Genes, is perfectly typical. But alas, due to the strict page limits of Darwin’s God, we are only able to provide a mere brief overview.  Read more

MSNBC.com is reporting on the discovery of a jawbone of an ancient whale in Antarctica: the oldest fully aquatic whale yet discovered. The news story reports, The jawbone of an ancient whale found in Antarctica may be the oldest fully aquatic whale yet discovered, Argentine scientists said Tuesday. A scientist not involved in the find said it could suggest that whales evolved much more quickly from their amphibian precursors than previously thought. Argentine paleontologist Marcelo Reguero, who led a joint Argentine-Swedish team, said the fossilized archaeocete jawbone found in February dates back 49 million years. In evolutionary terms, that’s not far off from the fossils of even older proto-whales from 53 million years ago that have been found in South Read More ›

A commenter who goes by “Mirrortothesun” writes: Here’s the problem with every single post on this site, including this one. They are all examples of motivated reasoning. The authors start with what they wish were the truth– that evolution is false– and then they look desperately for evidence that their wish is true. They construct arguments around that wish. Ultimately it is just intellectual dishonesty and propaganda, alas. Perhaps Mirror has never read evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin’s famous “divine foot” screed.  Here it is: We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of Read More ›

In my previous article, I presented a critique of the first of Wikipedia’s eight lines of evidence for common descent: the evidence from comparative physiology and biochemistry. In this article, I will discuss the second of those lines of argument, namely, the evidence from comparative anatomy. Click here to continue reading>>>

In this post we discover: According to Darwinian theory, new species emerge when mutations produce individuals who can outperform the stock they came from… This statement, and so many like them, reveal how Darwinian “logic” is based primarily upon hyper-imaginative speculation, and not anything that could be described as science. Here’s how Darwinian logic works: Given #1: A certain feature of a living system exists. (Let’s try a trivial example, like Mozart’s ability to write symphonies.) Given #2: Since this feature exists, it must have a survival advantage. Given #3: Since it is known (scientifically) that Darwinian mechanisms can explain everything about the history of life, there must have been a gradual pathway such that random mutations and natural selection Read More ›