Intelligent Design

Denyse O’Leary writes about Barbara Forrest’s fact-free attack on Frank Beckwith, which recently appeared in Synthese. While Denyse focused more on Beckwith’s response to Forrest’s scholarly article diatribe, it might be worth taking a closer look not only at Forrest’s article, but the entire issue of Synthese in which it is found. First Forrest. In the abstract for her article with the breathtaking title “The non-epistemology of intelligent design: its implications for public policy”, Bar writes:

Intelligent design creationism (ID) is a religious belief requiring a supernatural creator’s interventions in the natural order. ID thus brings with it, as does supernatural theism by its nature, intractable epistemological difficulties.

Okay, so we’re only 2 sentences into the abstract and we can already see that Bar has no clue what ID is about. Read More ›

An anthology based on the NATURE OF NATURE conference at Baylor (April 12-15, 2000) has just come out (see the preceding post here at UD). All of the contributors to this anthology who were at the original conference have revised and updated their contributions, so the volume is thoroughly up to date. Many of the presenters at the original conference, however, were not represented in this volume. Mainly this was a matter of space limitations (the volume is even now at 500,000 words). As it is, the original conference had about 30 plenary speakers and another 35 or so concurrent speakers. A detailed description of the original NATURE OF NATURE conference can be found online here (scroll down) and is reprinted below:

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THE NATURE OF NATURE:

An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Role of Naturalism in Science

April 12-15, 2000

 Is the universe self-contained or does it require something beyond itself to explain its existence and internal function? Philosophical naturalism takes the universe to be self-contained, and it is widely presupposed throughout science. Even so, the idea that nature points beyond itself has recently been reformulated with respect to a number of issues. Consciousness, the origin of life, the unexpected effectiveness of mathematics at modeling the physical world, and the fine-tuning of universal constants are just a few of the problems that critics have claimed are incapable of purely naturalistic explanation. Do such assertions constitute arguments from incredulity – an unwarranted appeal to ignorance? If not, is the explanation of such phenomena beyond the pale of science? Is it, perhaps, possible to offer cogent philosophical and even scientific arguments that nature does point beyond itself? The aim of this conference is to examine such questions. Read More ›

Michael Flannery, author of a biography of Darwin’s co-theorist, Alfred Russel Wallace, reacts to my comment here regarding Wallace’s social land trust proposal,

Wallace’s idea of nationalization of land leaves me cold, however, because what most people value about their space is that, however humble – even just one half of a bedsit – it is theirs and not anyone else’s and certainly not the government’s. Maybe he had seen too many homeless people to think of that, and anyway, he himself travelled a lot.

Flannery points out that I had merely assumed that Wallace hadn’t considered the question:

I ‘m glad your linked to Gaffney’s article on Wallace and land nationalization. He notes, “Wallace’s Land Nationalization was individualist, not collectivist. Individual lessees were to have secure tenure, and tenant-rights to improvements. Rents to the state would be used, not to engross the state, but to obviate taxes.” However, like you, I’m skeptical of the idea. Wallace was well intentioned but I think he was naive to think that the state would refrain from using any type of land nationalization plan to its own advantage at centralized aggrandizement. I mean that what centralized bureaucracies do! But Wallace was genuinely concerned for the poor and the impact of the Enclosure Act (esp. upon the Welsh farmers he considered his friends and neighbors) affected him deeply. How far away was Darwin and his comfortable coterie of elites! For Wallace these poor farmers were being victimized by interest groups of power and wealth; for Darwin and others of his class they were simply “unfit.”

I replied, thanking him for the clarification, and said, Read More ›

In my second response to Arthur Hunt on the origin of the T-urf13 gene (which specifies a mitochondrial ligand-gating pore-forming receptor for T-toxin in maise), I briefly mentioned towards the end of my post Arthur Hunt’s comments on the Panda’s Thumb blog regarding the Axe (2004) result concerned with the rarity of catalytic domains within sequence space.

As I noted in my previous post, Axe’s 2004 JMB paper is not an isolated result. I cited a number of papers which attained similar results with respect to the rarity of functional domains within sequence space. In one study, published in Naturein 2001 by Keefe & Szostak, it was documented that more than a million million random sequences were required in order to stumble upon a functioning ATP-binding protein, a protein substantially smaller than the transmembrane protein specified by the gene, T-urf13, discussed by Hunt. In addition, I noted, a similar result was obtained by Taylor et al. in their 2001 PNAS paper. This paper examined the AroQ-type chorismate mutase, and arrived at a similarly low prevalence (giving a value of 1 in 10^24 for the 93 amino acid enzyme, but, when adjusted to reflect a residue of the same length as the 150-amino-acid section analysed from Beta-lactamase, yields a result of 1 in 10^53). Yet another paper by Sauer and Reidhaar-Olson (1990) reported on “the high level of degeneracy in the information that specifies a particular protein fold,” which it gives as 1 in 10^63. In my previous post, I also strongly encouraged Arthur Hunt and others to read Douglas Axe’s excellent review article in Bio-complexity which covers this topic in more detail, as well as to read the recently-published The Nature of Nature — Examining The Role of Naturalism in Science, which is highly accessible for non-specialists.

Yesterday, I posted a short itallicised update to my previous article, having now looked somewhat closer at the article to which Hunt referred me. For those that missed it, allow me to highlight just a few of the points at which Hunt errs.

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The last decade has witnessed three contenders for the title: earliest identifiable human ancestor. These are Ardipithecus, Orrorin and Sahelanthropus. All of them generated great excitement at the time of their discovery and, for many, they were evidence that the lineage of the human genus was being clarified. However, those willing to read research papers (rather than media reports) were more aware that the research community was not of one mind about the significance of these fossil remains. Recently, Wood and Harrison have contributed a major review paper that revisits these arguments and finds that the various claims for human ancestry are not rigorous. They offer alternative explanations for these three fossil hominines. “In their paper, Wood and Harrison caution Read More ›

… seems to have sunk like a stone: An objective overview of the biggest controversy in American education.Intelligent Design is one of the hottest issues facing parents and educators to day, but it can be hard to separate the facts from the heated rhetoric. This expert and objective guide gets to the bottom of the questions: What is Intelligent Design? Should it replace or complement traditional science? What’s all the fuss about? • Explains the terms, the controversy, and the involvement of the American courts • Indispensable guide for concerned educators and parents • Written by an expert in the field About the Author Christopher Carlisle, M. Div., is a professor and the Episcopal chaplain at the University of Massachusetts. Read More ›

In two previous posts (here and here), I raised some objections to the first couple of chapters of Daniel Fairbanks’ 2010 book, Relics of Eden — The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA. I encouraged Fairbanks and others to review all the evidence pertinent to the matter at hand. As impressive the array of arguments for common descent may superficially appear at first glance, with only a cursory reading of the relevant literature, upon closer inspection they invariably fall apart.

Given the demonstrable causal impotence of neo-Darwinism to account for the evolution of novel genes and proteins, new body plans, and radical innovations in form, I have thus in recent months become inclined to be rather sceptical of the stupendous claim that all extant taxa are derivative of a single progenitor or common ancestor. If no one can tell us how such evolution from a common ancestor could possibly have occurred, then how can we be so sure that it did occur? In such a case, one would need to marshall some very spectacular evidence for common descent in order to present a persuasive argument. Unfortunately for Darwinists, however, the evidence for common ancestry is paper thin on the ground.

Chapter three of Fairbanks’ book is concerned with pseudogenes, allegedly once-functional relics of our evolutionary heritage. As with all his other “evidences” for common ancestry, Fairbanks — once again — cherry picks all the seemingly confirmatory evidence, while hand-wavingly ignoring all the obvious counter-examples in the scientific literature. Let’s turn our attention to what he has to say.

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From: David Coppedge Message: Get your own sun Recently fired NASA mission specialist Dave Coppedge* wonders whether, given the constraints, the idea of a circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ), the region where life might be possible, is too simplistic. Before listing the many constraints, he quotes lead researcher Rene Heller: “If you want to find a second Earth, it seems that you need to look for a second Sun.” * Fired mainly for being a Christian, it seems, that is, a member of a community famous worldwide for abandoning its own to persecution. Oh, by the way, here is an interesting Kepler find: Two planets sharing an orbit. Me, I’m waiting for the video footage of a planetary traffic jam.

A week ago I blogged about Arthur Hunt’s failure to refute Michael Behe on his concepts of irreducible complexity and the edge of evolution. My article quickly ignited into a heated debate which honed in on a host of different issues. Within just 48 hours of publishing the piece, more than 70 responses had ensued (as of now, there is more than 170!). Among those who commented was none other than Arthur Hunt himself, who raised a few criticisms of his own. This is my response to these criticisms.

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The Templeton Foundation has granted money for a study determining how the teaching and believing of evolution fares by comparison to creationism and intelligent design in America’s classrooms by high school biology teachers.

In the courtroom, the science of evolutionary biology has won every battle with creationism and Intelligent Design. In the classroom, however, scientific orthodoxy remains besieged and defensive to a startling degree.

That’s the striking conclusion of Penn State political scientists Eric Plutzer and Michael B. Berkman, authors of Evolution, Creationism, and the Battle to Control American Classrooms, a book based on their survey of 926 public high school biology teachers.

“We find that about 13 percent of public high school biology teachers are active advocates for creationism or Intelligent Design,” Plutzer tells TR. “They emphasize to their students that these are ‘valid scientific alternatives’ to mainstream evolutionary biology, and devote at least some formal class instruction to the topic. An additional five percent of teachers take the same position, though typically in brief responses to student questions.”

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In this week’s issue of Nature Physics, a small article appears highlighting the discoveries—or, rather, the lack of discoveries—at the LHC in Geneva, Switzerland. As they have amped up their energies, more massive particle should have been discovered. Supersymmetry (SUSY) theory predicts symmetrical partners to the standard model’s particles, but of more mass. But they’re not finding any. Here’s a few (for us) interesting quotes: SUSY’s utility and mathematical grace have instilled a “religious devotion” among its followers, says Adam Falkowski, a theorist at the University of Paris-South in France. But colliders have failed to turn up direct evidence of the super particles predicted by the theory. And, then: “This is a big political issue in our field,” [adds] Alessandro Read More ›

I’m currently reading Francis Collins’ latest book, The Language of Life — DNA And The Revolution In Personalised Medicine. I have to confess to a certain element of surprise when I read this statement in chapter 1 of his book: The discoveries of the past decade, little known to most of the public, have completely overturned much of what used to be taught in high school biology. If you thought the DNA molecule comprised thousands of of genes but far more “junk DNA”, think again. Is this really the same Francis Collins who wrote The Language of God, in which he tells us that it “strains credulity” to think that more than a few pieces of “junk DNA” could be functional Read More ›

In response to my last post, markf wrote:  It is a possibility that we are under a total delusion about scientific evidence. But key difference between religious evidence and scientific evidence is that our scientific evidence is grounded in repeatable observations that engage with reality all the time in very concrete way. To which bornagain77 aptly replied:  Yet ironically, belief in an orderly universe, where the transcendent laws of physics are non-variant, is a Theistic belief, and in fact atheists fight tooth and nail trying to show that there is no such inherent transcendent order in the universe. Thus you have in fact falsely assumed a primary theistic belief into your atheistic argument for an orderly universe when you stated,,, Read More ›

tjm, here, comments on crickets’ 100 million years of stability:

Interesting isn’t it? Evolution can explain any result at all. It explains stasis over 100 million of years and it explains change over 100 million years. As they say, a theory that explains anything, explains nothing. Living fossils should falsify evolution. Unchanged fossils, like this one, that are supposedly ancient, should falsify evolution, but no, it gets twisted into evidence for evolution.

Hmmm. Not sure if that’s quite fair.

Stasis, where demonstrated, shows that there is no consistent “force” driving evolution.* Evolution happens where there is pressure for it and it is possible; where there is no pressure, the result is stasis, and where there is pressure but evolution is not possible, the result is extinction.

In this respect, evolution can be contrasted with the rise of warmer molecules in the atmosphere over colder ones. We can explain many things, even about as uncertain a process as the weather, just by knowing that this process will always be observed, anywhere that it is not hindered. Evolution is not like that. It need not happen and usually does not happen.

However, many literary artists whom students will (should) study in school, like playwright George Bernard Shaw, believed in Evolution, a driving force, ever onward and upward, etc. These beliefs can be inspirational, but can also do considerable harm, especially when people conclude (as they do) that they have now found science evidence for their own superiority to their neighbours. Teaching evolution based on the general picture of the evidence would help counter that tendency.

It ought to be obvious to everyone who is not Read More ›

In a recent article, I criticised Daniel Fairbanks for his selective disclosure of relevant evidence with regards to the chromosomal fusion evidence for human/chimp shared ancestry. In this article, I want to consider Fairbanks’ central argument in chapter 2 of his book (Relics of Eden — The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA), in which he covers jumping genes (transposable elements). In regard to this topic, as we shall learn in due course, Fairbanks not only applies his reasoning inconsistently, but conveniently omits to inform his readers of those papers which (a) serve to substantially undermine his core thesis, and (b) provide extremely potent counter-examples to much of the evidence which he marshalls in defense of it.

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