Intelligent Design

In “Dutch Scientist Fired for Faking Data” (The Scientist , September 8, 2011), Tia Ghose reports “A psychologist whose splashy findings on human nature routinely made the news has been dismissed for falsifying data.” Diederik Stapel, who headed the Institute for Behavioral Economics Research at Tilburg University, routinely published controversial findings that seemed to get at fundamental aspects of human nature. In April, he published a Science study showing that messy or chaotic environments make people more prone to relying on stereotypes. But late last month (August 27), researchers in his lab contacted the Rector of the university, Philip Eijlander, and alleged that some of the data was fabricated, ScienceInsider reports. Makes sense. Applying common sense, we assume that messy Read More ›

In “What does original sin mean in the light of modern science?” (Science Blogs, September 7, 2011), Jasen Rosenhouse comments, One of the many problems modern science poses for Christianity is the question of how to understand original sin. The traditional teaching, which holds that Adam and Eve were the only humans on the planet when they were created on day six of Creation Week, that the ground was cursed and they were expelled from Eden as a result of a specific sin they committed, and that this corrupted state was in some way passed down to all future human beings, is no longer tenable. A variety of lines of evidence make it clear that the human population has always Read More ›

New research is showing that P transposable elements have some interesting insertion site hotspots. Specifically, in the fly genome these transposons often show up in the promoter region of a few hundred seemingly unrelated genes. One common theme, however, is that many of the P element target sites serve as starting points for the DNA replication process that creates a duplicate copy of the genome prior to cell division. So there is a correlation, in this case, between the transposon insertion site preference and DNA replication. This finding has implications for how the P elements spread through a population. And it is yet another indication of, in contrast to evolution’s it’s-all-just-a-random-fluke view, how much really goes on under the hood. Read More ›

From electron microscopes to earth-orbiting observatories, scientists use a variety of instruments to study nature by measuring, observing and yes, rendering. Measurements are graphed and fitted with mathematical models. Renderings, on the other hand, are not so easily quantified. This can make them less useful for the business of building quantitative models and making predictions. But renderings can, in an instant, convey a powerful message. A picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words.  Read more

Dennis Venema, the “heavy hitter” of Biologos when it comes to evolutionary theory — hands up, professors of evolutionary biology at Chicago, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, etc., if you have heard of Dennis Venema — has recently issued some remarks about ID in an interview.  The remarks can be found on the website of Rachel Held Evans, a pleasant and personally engaging writer and former student of English who has in the past served as a sort of lay cheerleader for the Biologos project. In the interview, Venema says: ‘The ID Movement is a “Big Tent” approach for all and sundry who reject at least some part of evolutionary biology. As such, there are Young-Earth Creationists, Old-Earth Creationists, and Read More ›

Here’s a quote from a paper I ran into a few months back. I’ve been meaning to post it. I certainly have Liz Liddle in mind as I do so.

I would ask that you resist your urge to ‘google’ the quote, and simply ask yourself the question: when was this paper published. Then have a gander. It’s a paper by Hampton L. Carson. From the abstract:

The experiments reported in this paper are designed to test the effect of raising
the genetic variance in experimental populations in a different way, namely, by
the use of large doses of X-rays delivered frequently to all the adults in the popu-
lation. The populations were thus closed ones in which the mutation rate was
artificially maintained at a very high level. Under these conditions, the experi-
mental populations represent a sensitive system for the detection of the effects of
newly induced genes that cause increase in fitness, whether these effects may be
manifested in the heterozygous condition, the homozygous condition, or both.
The results clearly show that there is no sustained increase in fitness despite an
increased genetic variance as indicated by an observed increase in genetic load.
There is thus no evidence for single-gene heterosis or for the induction of new
genes having a favorable effect on any of the fitness characters.

Read More ›

I have written this essay in response to a skeptical critic of Intelligent Design, who denies that the cosmos is beautiful in any objective sense. My aim is to defend two propositions: (i) mathematical beauty is an objective reality; and (ii) the cosmos instantiates this kind of beauty, and can therefore be called objectively beautiful. I will then endeavor to show that Intelligent Design is the only hypothesis which satisfactorily explains these truths. In my essay, I shall be quoting liberally from the writings of a number of atheist mathematicians and physicists, some of whom are pictured above: Bertrand Russell, G.H. Hardy, Paul Erdos and Steven Weinberg (with acknowledgements to photographer Larry D. Moore for the image of Professor Weinberg). Read More ›

As you remember from high school biology plants take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, and animals take in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide. But what about the recently discovered loriciferans—tiny animals at the bottom of the ocean where oxygen is hard to come by? The loriciferans, living two miles under the surface of the Mediterranean Sea, apparently spend their entire existence in anoxic conditions.  Read more