Intelligent Design

Two interesting papers contribute significantly to our understanding of science education debates. The first, by Joachim Allgaier, considers newspaper accounts of a UK school (Emmanuel College) that was accused of teaching creationism in science classes. The goal of the study was to find out what sources journalists used, and how the sources of education journalists compares with the sources used by science journalists. The issue is important because of the potential for media accounts of issues like this to mould public opinion and shape responses. The two types of journalists can be distinguished in a broad-brush way: “Science journalists, for instance, visit scientific conferences, talks and presentations, read and follow scientific journals and receive ’embargoed’ press releases from scientific institutions Read More ›

We’d noted his disappearance from BioLogos here and taken heat for so doing. Now Biologos president Darrel Falk, says he’s resigned from that and from his position as Professor of Physics at Eastern Nazarene College in Boston, to … create more time for writing. At some point he hopes to find a “writer in residence” position at a Boston area college, but for now he is happy with the “writer in his sunroom” position he currently holds. We at BioLogos are deeply appreciative of Karl’s seminal role in the formation and ongoing impact of this organization. Can’t say fairer than that. Update: Uncommon Descent has been in touch with Karl Giberson, who told us today: “My resignations had nothing to do Read More ›

And not even just a different story read backwards, like I thought?

Liberty University biology prof David A. DeWitt, author of Unraveling the Origins Controversy, commented on my characterization of the overlapping codes of the genome. Seeing that Christianity Today is actually taking BioLogos and yesterday’s science seriously, I had written,

A friend, a faithful Christian in science, was dismayed by the story. He is an information theorist. … The genome, to take one small point, is full over overlapping codes. (It’s as if a short story read backwards is a flawless different short story, and sections of it, read letter by letter down the right hand side are a flawless paragraph.)

and DeWitt replies,

In the mitochondrial genome the overlapping codes are for different subunits of the same protein complex (ATP Synthase). So it is not even that “backwards is a flawless different short story” it is another volume in a series of short stories involving the same characters!

which all happened, of course, merely by the magic of Darwin’s natural selection acting on random mutations. But presumably Christian Darwinists are free to dress it their unbelievable scenario in God talk as long as they feel like it.  Only,  Read More ›

Here. Pulled up off the coast of the province of Prince Edward island (Canada). Said to be a 4 million to one shot. This one’s for the aquarium, not the table. Mutation explained here. Apparently, there is a trade in blue crayfish for aquariums, but any similar trade on blue lobsters depends on finding another one, of the opposite sex. Lobster society discussed here.

Pointing out that there is probably no overwhelmingly dominant way that evolution occurs (like, for example, the natural selection of the biology textbook and the Darwin lobby literature/court cases … ) materialist atheists Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini admit that that’s not the solution a Darwin culture is looking for:

Perhaps that strikes you as not much; perhaps you would prefer there to be a unified theory – natural selection – pf the evolutionary fixation of phenotypes. So be it; but we can claim something Darwinists cannot. There is no ghost in our machine; neither God, nor Mother Nature, nor Selfish Genes, nor World Spirit, nor free-floating intentions; and there are no phantom breeders either. What breeds the ghosts in Darwinism is its covert appeal to intensional biological explanations, which we hereby propose to do without. Read More ›

Here’s my Salvo “Deprogram” column, on atheists who are not Darwinists:

To hear it from the New Atheists, Darwinism is the atheist’s creation story, the Genesis from which no Exodus follows. As Richard Dawkins is often quoted as saying, Darwinism enables an atheist to be intellectually fulfilled. If so, there are a number of atheist and agnostic thinkers out there who are intellectually deprived. Or are they?[ … ]

Other atheists get off the train to nowhere at the origin of life or the origin of the human mind. In his famous essay, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, Thomas Nagel provides a sensitive account of the limits of human understanding of animals’ minds.5 Less well known is the fact that he named Steven Meyer’s ID-friendly Signature in the Cell (Harper One) a Book of the Year for 20096 and that he questions whether human intellect is explicable on Darwinian principles.7 Yet this is a man who also says, “I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”8

– “Neither God Nor Darwin? Atheists & Agnostics Who Dare to Doubt,” (Salvo 17, Summer 2011)

I offer a suggestion about what an atheist or agnostic needs to make it work.

Also: Non-profit Salvo has just received a matching grant of $50,000, so if you donate a bit, thanks to the magic of a wealthy donor, your dollar becomes two – but only until June 30. Be magical this summer.

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Recently, as John Biello tells it in “High temperature, low oxygen and permanent darkness are no problem for a previously unknown species of nematode,” (Scientific American, June 1, 2011), researchers found a nematode worm that lives more than a kilometre underground in South African gold mines. The species, called Halicephalobus mephisto, is believed to consume bacterial biofilms that themselves consume minerals. Read More ›

They forget assumed species differences, that is.

In “Researchers Solve Mammoth Evolutionary Puzzle: The Woollies Weren’t Picky, Happy to Interbreed” ScienceDaily (May 31, 2011), we learn that DNA studies suggest that the woolly mammoth interbred with a “completely different and much larger” species 12,000 years ago (it went extinct 10,000 years ago). They suggest, Read More ›

One common theme which often permeates discussions pertaining to embryology and developmental biology — particularly (but not limited to) within ID circles — is the idea that an organism’s DNA sequence may not wholly be responsible for the development of the three-dimensional structure and architecture found within cells, organs and body plans. Read More>>>

Ben Shapiro, the author of the national bestsellers Brainwashed, Porn Generation, and Project President, has just written a hard-hitting expose of Hollywood, entitled Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV. From the editorial review at Amazon.com:

The inside story of how the most powerful medium of mass communication in human history has become a propaganda tool for the Left.

Primetime Propaganda is the story – told in their own words – of how television has been used over the past sixty years by Hollywood writers, producers, actors, and executives to promote their liberal ideals, to push the envelope on social and political issues, and to shape America in their own leftist image. Read More ›

At Evolution News & Views (May 31, 2011) science historian Michael Flannery reviews James Hannam’s The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution, which mostly tells us what Christians should be ashamed of not knowing:

The standard rendering that the medieval Church stood in the way of scientific advance and spent its time persecuting the leading intellects of the day like Galileo until free and open inquiry was rescued by the Renaissance humanists is shown to be utterly false.

Flannery and Hannam (who ends up falling in later, unfortunately) are quite right to say what they do. But one gets the sense that something is missing from these scholarly discussions. How about the role of, for example, Christian Darwinists in fronting the idea that any Christian who does not believe in the ape Adam and Eve depicted recently in Christianity Today is actually causing the hostility of materialist atheists? That, of course, may be true. But if so, what about it? Why is Karl Giberson allowed to feel humiliated about the Christians he feels superior to, because he is prepared to believe in such disgusting follies? Why are the BioLogians willing to alter any timeless Scriptural teaching in order to cater to them? But more, why tolerate their arrogance?

As a hack, I first smelled a rat a decade ago Read More ›

Yesterday, I received a note from a high-ranking editor at Christianity Today who was pretty annoyed at what I wrote about the magazine’s June cover story on BioLogos. He hasn’t replied to my suggestion that I publish his note and my reply. So I will publish my reply here, with a couple of comments, and link to the pieces posted here at UD. Read More ›

Crossing swords with a professional philosopher can be a dangerous thing. I’m not one, of course; I simply happen to have a Ph.D. in philosophy. But Professor Edward Feser is a professional philosopher, and a formidable debating opponent, as one well-known evolutionary biologist is about to find out.

In a recent post of mine, entitled, Minds, brains, computers and skunk butts, I took issue with a recent assertion by Professor Jerry Coyne, that the evolution of human intelligence is no more remarkable than the evolution of skunk butts. (To be fair, Coyne was not trying to be offensive in his comparison: apparently he really did have a pet skunk for several years, and the simile was the first that sprang to mind for him, as a biologist.) In my post, I cited a philosophical argument put forward by Professor Feser, that the intentionality or “meaningfulness” of our thoughts cannot be explained in materialist terms, as thoughts have an inherent meaning, whereas physical states of affairs (such as brain processes) have no inherent meaning as such. However, Professor Coyne was not terribly impressed with this argument. He replied as follows:

I’ll leave this one to the philosophers, except to say that “meaning” seems to pose no problem, either physically or evolutionarily, to me: our brain-modules have evolved to make sense of what we take in from the environment. And that’s not unique to us: primates surely have a sense of “meaning” that they derive from information processed from the environment, and we can extend this all the way back, in ever more rudimentary form, to protozoans.

He shouldn’t have said that.

Professor Edward Feser has just issued a devastating response to Professor Coyne over at his Website. I’d like to invite readers at Uncommon Descent to have a look at it for themselves, here. It’s a very entertaining read. Feser concludes:

… if one is going to aver confidently that “‘meaning’… pose[s] no problem,” he had better give at least some evidence of knowing what the philosophical problem of meaning or intentionality is and what philosophers have said about it.

Wise words, indeed.

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In “Mind Reading: Technology Turns Thought Into Action,” Jon Hamilton (National Public Radio, May 12, 2011) explains:

the experiment shows how the technology could help a very different sort of patient — someone paralyzed by a spinal injury or Lou Gehrig’s disease. ECoG could allow someone like that to operate a robotic arm with just their thoughts. The experiment also shows how many different areas of the brain get involved in things we take for granted, Schalk says. “Even for simple functions such as opening and closing the hand, there are many, many areas that contribute to the movement,” he says.

But some researchers are more enterprising than that: Read More ›