Intelligent Design

Darwinists are drunks looking for their keys under a lamppost, when their keys are not even in the same neighborhood as the lamppost. Math represents the most rigorous of all the sciences. Without a logical and clearly defined proof, nothing in mathematics is taken seriously. This is in direct contradiction to Darwinism, which proposes an unlimited universe of thoroughly unsubstantiated speculation, none of which is subject to any rigorous analytical scrutiny. Yet, we are told that anyone who even questions this unlimited universe of unsubstantiated speculation is “an enemy of science.” The reverse is precisely the case. Darwinism is the quintessential enemy of science. Science is the pursuit of knowledge about the way things really are, and when logic, evidence, Read More ›

… the drunk looking for his keys under the lamppost (in connection with mathematics invading biology): There is another old joke, about a drunk searching under a lamp post for his keys. “Did you drop them here?” “No, but this is the only place where there’s enough light to look.” The original context, in Computer Power and Human Reason by Joseph Weizenbaum, was an analogy with science, and his point was the exact opposite of the usual interpretation of the joke. In science, you have to search under the lamp post, or you’ll never find anything. Even if the keys are somewhere along the road in the gutter, you might find a torch under the lamp post. Then you can Read More ›

I don’t often find myself siding with a “Gnu Atheist” against one of their most brilliant critics – especially when the Gnu Atheist in question is none other than Professor Jerry Coyne, and the critic is Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart, the author of Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies who recently penned a biting online critique of the New Atheists entitled, Believe It or Not (First Things, May 2010). Readers will recall that on several occasions, I have written posts critical of Professor Coyne’s views, but this time I have to say that Coyne is right and Hart is wrong. It’s as simple as that. Hart’s errors, some of which relate to St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.), exhibit the same kind of shoddy scholarship found in the writings of theistic evolutionists who cite Augustine in support of their views.

Regular readers of Uncommon Descent will be aware that David Bentley Hart is not a fan of Intelligent Design theory, which he disparaged as “an argument from personal incredulity” in a mostly positive review (First Things, January 2010) of Professor Richard Dawkins’ book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. When I read Hart’s review, I was disappointed at his failure to grasp the abductive logic which underlies the case for ID: the inference to intelligent design is only made after alternative explanations have been methodically ruled out. But in Hart’s defense, it might be argued that he was talking about matters outside his field of expertise.

This time, however, David Bentley Hart has been caught with his pants down, making several egregious blunders on matters relating to his own specialty: theology.
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In “Scientists Think Spirituality Is Congruent With Scientific Discovery, Religion Is Not” Medical News Today (06 May 2011), we
learn,

More than 20 percent of atheist scientists are spiritual, according to new research from Rice University. Though the general public marries spirituality and religion, the study found that spirituality is a separate idea – one that more closely aligns with scientific discovery – for “spiritual atheist” scientists.

[ … ]

For example, these scientists see both science and spirituality as “meaning-making without faith” and as an individual quest for meaning that can never be final. According to the research, they find spirituality congruent with science and separate from religion, because of that quest; where spirituality is open to a scientific journey, religion requires buying into an absolute “absence of empirical evidence.”

This story encapsulates the cleverest riff that materialist atheists have ever constructed to deny the reality of the mind and substitute the notion that apes r’ us: Getting everyone to accept that  “faith is based on buying into an absolute ‘absence of empirical evidence.’” Countless Christian academics play house with materialist atheists, constructing “existential” theories about faith that gut the traditional “show me a sign” demand for evidence.

For years, I laboured as co-author of a book that fruitfully assumed the exact opposite. We found that: Read More ›

Will Provine, history of biology prof, has won the first-ever awarded David L. Hull Prize for

his “extraordinary contributions to scholarship and service in ways that promote interdisciplinary connections between history, philosophy, social studies and biology, and that foster the careers of younger scholars.” – Krishna Ramanujan, Cornell Chronicle May 4, 2011

Hull was a famous Darwinian evolutionist. In a world where Christian Darwinists struggle to convince Christians to jettison deeply held beliefs in order to embrace Darwin, Provine has done his best to tell the truth. To make clear that 78% of evolutionary biologists, following in Darwin’s footsteps, believe not only that there is no God but that there is no free will. Like himself.  Read More ›

… this any more: The winged queen ant collected in the Green River Formation in Wyoming is “about the size of a small bird — about the body mass of a small bird as well,” said Bruce Archibald, the Simon Fraser University researcher who identified it. “It’s pretty impressive.” Possibly 50 million years old, and similar to giant Eocene ants in Europe. It’s assumed they migrated to North America, but just how is unclear. See abstract here. Some blame a brief bout of prehistoric global warming.

Here at MercatorNet, William West asks, “Has science buried God?” and answers, “No, far from it, an Oxford professor insists” (5 May 2011). He is reviewing the work of serious Christian Oxford mathematician and ID sympathizer John Lennox.

Lennox goes through all the theories put forward to give credence to the idea that all of this could have happened by chance and, as a mathematician, indicates that such scenarios are basically laughable. He says that the conclusion that a super intellect is at work in the creation of life may not be verified by scientific “induction” or experiment, but it is a valid inference to the best explanation (“abduction”).

He points out that the probability of a purely random origin for any sequence of even the most basic biological significance is “so small as to be negligible”: “It could therefore be argued that the molecular biology of the cell shows the same order of fine-tuning that we saw in connection with physics and cosmology.” Read More ›

What do I mean by reality? I mean that which has existence apart from any idea any mind may have of it, and which would exist if there were no mind anywhere to entertain a thought of it. That which is real has being in itself. It does not depend upon the observer for its validity. I am aware that there are those who love to poke fun at the plain man’s idea of reality. They are the idealists who spin endless proofs that nothing is real outside of the mind. They are the relativists who like to show that there are no fixed points in the universe from which we can measure anything. They smile down upon us from Read More ›

For one thing, “The end is far” is “science^TM,” not “religion^TM.”

Here, The Atlantic‘s Graeme Wood reports on “What will happen to us?: Forecasters tackle the extremely deep future” (Boston Globe, May 1, 2011), featuring recent Templeton winner Martin Rees and others on deep and distant futures, the theory being that it is now possible to be much more certain of the distant future than in the past:

The community of thinkers on distant-future questions stretches across disciplinary bounds, with the primary uniting trait a willingness to think about the future as a topic for objective study, rather than a space for idle speculation or science fictional reverie. They include theoretical cosmologists like Sean Carroll of the California Institute of Technology, who recently wrote a book about time, and nonacademic technology mavens like Ray Kurzweil, the precocious inventor and theorist. What binds this group together is that they are not, says Bostrom, “just trying to tell an interesting story.” Instead, they aim for precision. In its fundamentals, Carroll points out, the universe is a “relatively simple system,” compared, say, to a chaotic system like a human body — and thus “predicting the future is actually a feasible task,” even “for ridiculously long time periods.”

Past is past now …  Read More ›

The controversial textbook, The Design of Life came up recently. (Did an origin of life researcher actually read it? Stunner.)

Instead of the approved textspeak about how hardworking scientists are slowly piecing together the origin of life, it contains eye-openers like these: Read More ›

Douglas Axe has posted a response to criticisms of his work from Arthur Hunt and Steve Matheson, regarding his 2004 JMB paper, on the Biologic Institute website. In August of 2004 I received an email inquiry from plant biologist Art Hunt. He had written a draft for a blog piece aimed at reviewing a research article of mine that had just appeared in the Journal of Molecular Biology [1], and he wanted to know whether he had understood my work correctly. He clearly aimed to refute claims that were beginning to surface that my paper supported intelligent design, but he also wanted to make sure he wasn’t misconstruing my work in the process. He didn’t expect me to oblige—“I will understand Read More ›

Sunrise over the Dead Sea seen from Masada, Israel. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

I’ve written previously about Christopher Hitchens’ challenge: “Name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever.” Professor Jerry Coyne has come up with a new challenge of his own: “Tell me exactly what ‘knowledge’ religion has provided that is not derivable from secular reason.”

I’d be happy to oblige. I’ll submit two statements. The first is known to everyone. The second is taken from Professor Coyne’s own blog.

1. The sun will rise tomorrow.
2. Killing an unarmed man who does not resist arrest in a way that endangers his captors is murder and therefore wrong, even if that man happens to be Osama bin Laden.

For the record, I think Professor Coyne is right about the second statement, and I applaud his courage for making it. While I’m quite sure that Osama bin Laden got his just deserts, he should have also gotten a trial, if it was possible to capture him alive.

Now, Professor Coyne seems to be quite sure about the second statement, so I presume he would count it as “knowledge.” So my reply to Professor Coyne’s challenge is: can you derive either of the above two statements from secular reason?
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The most recent Stephen Jay Gould prize has been awarded to anti-ID Catholic biochemist Ken Miller of Brown University:

Through his writings, teaching and appearances in court, Dr. Miller has proved an eloquent and passionate defender of evolution and the scientific method.

Some Miller comments:

The argument for intelligent design basically depends on saying, ‘You haven’t answered every question with evolution,’… Well, guess what? Science can’t answer every question. – Kenneth MillerThe new strategy is to teach intelligent design without calling it intelligent design. – Kenneth Miller

There is no controversy within science over the core proposition of evolutionary theory. – Kenneth Miller

Bradley Monton, atheist philosopher and author of Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design (Broadview Press, 2009), who thinks carefully about intelligent design, has some thoughts on Miller’s arguments:

Now, Miller thinks that naturalism is an essential part of science. He holds that if one drops the constraint of methodological naturalism, then science will stop, because one can imply appeal to God as an explanation of any scientific phenomenon. Miller writes:

A theistic science … will no longer be the science we have known. It will cease to explore, because it already knows the answers. Read More ›

Look, it’s the armchair, okay? It’s got to go. There are real philosophers out there, besides which great scientists have taken the philosophy of science very seriously.

Undeterred by that history, Stephen Hawking recently dismissed philosophy in The Grand Design (with Leonard Mlodinow). In his view, philosophy did not contribute to knowledge compared with science. His view garnered a good deal of disapproval. The Economist sniffed,

There are actually rather a lot of questions that are more subtle than the authors think. It soon becomes evident that Professor Hawking and Mr Mlodinow regard a philosophical problem as something you knock off over a quick cup of tea after you have run out of Sudoku puzzles. Read More ›

It would seem Dawkins and BCSE have kissed and made up – well a small truce at least. How sweet. Dawkins asks people to sign the BCSEs petition that seeks to ban creationism and ID from being presented with any integrity (i.e. as being real and scientific) in the school classroom in British (English) schools. http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/620663-please-sign-this-anti-creationist-petition This is both regretable and ironic. They have clearly lost the battle to convince a large section of the population of the truth of Darwinism so resort to the law to enforce it. In so doing they seek to restrict freedom to think through the scientific evidence. A bit like a child who can’t win a game of footy, so he picks up the ball and goes home and spoils the Read More ›