Intelligent Design

A friend drew my attention to this video essay: “The animators of life”, New York Times (November 15, 2010): Building on decades of research and mountains of data, scientists and animators are now recreating in vivid and sometimes jaw-dropping detail the complex inner machinery of living cells. Essentially, the Darwinists’ problem isn’t with us. It is twofold: an ever-intensifying blizzard of disconfirming evidence from nature, plus the bad fortune to be working at a time when the Internet brings that information to people who are not inoculated against it. Essentially, time and chance do not create high levels of information through ruthless competition. Darwinism is a form of magic, and has the same success rate as the others. Here’s a Read More ›

In response to my last post jurassicmac writes: “Darwinism has nothing to say about God other than that natural processes seem to be sufficient to account for life. I find it odd that the same amount of vitriol isn’t directed at Laplace for showing that the orbits of planets can be explained without invoking supernatural intervention. Darwin did for biology what Laplace (and Newton) did for astronomy: provide an explanatory framework. Why is Darwin vilified and Laplace not?” It is true that Laplace refined Newton’s calculations and finally showed that the orbits of the planets can be accounted for by a “scientific law,” in this case, the law of gravity. But what is a “scientific law”? It nothing but an Read More ›

I commend to you Denyse O’Leary’s excellent post below concerning whether famous Darwinist Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975) was a Christian.  O’Leary demonstrates that while there is certainly no doubt about the “Darwinist” part, there is plenty of room to be skeptical about the “Christian” part. 

The problem with claiming that a Spinozan mystic like Dobzhansky was a Christian is that the claim does violence to language.  The word “Christian” classifies.  In other words some people are in the class “Christian” and some people are not.  If this were not so, the classification would cease to classify and become meaningless.  “Christian” is not simply a synonym for “agreeable fellow.”  The word has substantive content and divides people according to their religious beliefs.  

What I have said so far is uncontroversial.  Some people are Christians and some people are not.  Who could disagree with that?  The problem comes when we try to sort people into or out of the class.  Here we are faced with at least two problems:  (1) where is the border of the class; and (2) how do we know which side of the border any particular person is on? Read More ›

Casey Luskin Reports: Peer-Reviewed Scientific Paper by Michael Behe Challenges “Gain of Function” Mutations in Molecular Evolution Behe argues that we do not generally observe the evolution of new adaptive FCTs (Functional Coded ElemenTs) in the laboratory. Rather, when we observe adaptive evolutionary changes in the laboratory, they typically involve loss of function or modification of FCTs. This leads to the question, How do new adaptive FCTs arise? In two subsequent posts, I will discuss Behe’s review of FCT evolution in bacteria and viruses, as well as the implications he draws from that data.

The alacrity of the refutations to NASA’s breathless press release have been surpassed only by their vitriol. “Should not have been published“, “scathing attack“, “big idea with big holes“, “arsenic cowards” etc.  But to my googling eyes, there really are two, and only two refutations given to the Science paper, a) The technique was sloppy, and the arsenic might be just a contaminant, not a constituent of the cell, making the phosphorus levels low, but still consistent with phosphorus-starved normal life. b) Arsenic bonds are 100x less stable than Phosphorus bonds, so the claims for As replacing P in DNA are theoretically impossible. Now both comments are valid, as far as they go, but can be refuted with the simple Read More ›

Here.

Unlike Darwin’s bicentennial, here is one anniversary that is certainly worth celebrating.   Unlike Darwin’s rock pile, here is one example of how the science of today is building on the solidity of yesteryear’s durable substructure.  Anti-evolutionists are not anti-science.  But they are opposed to the beligerence of those who contumaciously refuse to accept the broader implications of science’s beautiful procession towards the truth.

Politicians and football coaches understand that what motivates people is an enemy. What better way for a leader to solidify support than by war with an evil foe. Internal failings and scandals fade in the light of an external threat. Whether it is nazism, communism or terrorism, there always seems to be an appropriate “ism” to capture and focus our attention.  Read more

The Manhattan Declaration, a manifesto asserting the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and liberty of conscience, has been discussed previously on Uncommon Descent (see here and here ). Well, it’s in the news again.

I expect many readers will have heard by now that Apple has removed the Manhattan Declaration iPhone/iPad application from the iTunes Store. The Declaration – a Christian statement drafted in 2009 that supports religious liberty, traditional marriage and right to life issues – now has 479,532 supporters. The Manhattan Declaration app was accepted by Apple and rated as a 4+, meaning that it contained no objectionable material.

Last month, around Thanksgiving, the Manhattan Declaration application for iPhones and iPads was suddenly dropped, after the activist group Change.org gathered more than 7,700 signatures for a petition, after claiming that the application promoted “anti-gay” bigotry and “homophobia,” and that it attacked both “equal rights and the right of women to control their own bodies.” Under a headline entitled, “Tell the Apple iTunes Store to remove anti-gay, anti-choice iPhone application,” the petition drive concluded with the words: “Let’s send a strong message to Apple that supporting homophobia and efforts to restrict choice is bad business.”

The petition seems to have had the desired effect. Catholic News Agency contacted Apple on December 2 for the reason behind its decision to pull the Manhattan Declaration application. Spokesperson Trudy Muller said via phone that the company “removed the Manhattan Declaration app from the App Store because it violates our developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people.” Strange. Why the 4+ rating, then?

I believe in calling spade a spade, so I’ll just come right out and say it: Change.org lied to its readers and to Apple about the purpose of the Manhattan Declaration.
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NASA announced several days ago, an upcoming press conference that would talk about “alien life”. This is big news. They have sent more than one mission to Mars looking for life, water and extraterrestrials. But several people, including the late Sir Fred Hoyle, have suggested that alien life was coming here, which would save a lot on expenses. The question became, how do we know it is alien? Paul Davies, working from a suggestion from my colleague Richard Hoover, has been looking for life on our planet that does something different from all other Earth life. The argument is a bit indirect, but here’s the gist of it. If life exists on our planet by accident (standard Darwinian hypothesis) then Read More ›

Being an evolutionist means there is no bad news. If new species appear abruptly in the fossil record, that just means evolution operates in spurts. If species then persist for eons with little modification, that just means evolution takes long breaks. If clever mechanisms are discovered in biology, that just means evolution is smarter than we imagined. If strikingly similar designs are found in distant species, that just means evolution repeats itself. If significant differences are found in allied species, that just means evolution sometimes introduces new designs rapidly. If no likely mechanism can be found for the large-scale change evolution requires, that just means evolution is mysterious. If adaptation responds to environmental signals, that just means evolution has more Read More ›

We continue to examine the work of authors George Johnson and Jonathan Losos in their biology textbook, The Living World ((Fifth Edition, McGraw Hill, 2008). In their chapter on evolution and natural selection, these accomplished evolutionists begin by (1) misrepresenting the relationship between microevolution and macroevolution and biological variation here, (2) making a non scientific, metaphysical, truth claim that just happens to mandate the truth of evolution here, (3) making the grossly false statement that the fossils themselves are a factual observation that macroevolution has occurred here and here, (4) making a series of misrepresentations by carefully selecting the evidence to provide to the student and protecting it with circular reasoning here, (5) misrepresenting the molecular evidence here, (6) presenting Read More ›

As I previously noted, Michael Behe has been touring the UK this week, speaking in such cities as Belfast, Bournemouth, Cambridge, Glasgow, Leamington/Warwick, London, and Oxford. On Monday, Michael Behe debated the former director of the Royal Society, Michael Reiss, before an audience of invited guests – including scientists, religious leaders and secularists. The event was hosted at the Charles Darwin house in London. Today, the audio recording of this exchange was made available via Premier Christian Radio’s Unbelievable website, who hosted the event. The audio of the debate may be downloaded and listened to, at your leisure, here. A report on the event by the New Humanist blog may be read here. The web site’s descriptor reports as follows: Read More ›

A paper written by an evolutionist from earlier this year, erroneously claiming to confirm common descent, has now been rebuked by other evolutionists. Unfortunately this is not a healthy sign of evolutionists turning to science, for the new paper is just as unscientific as the first.  Read more A paper written by an evolutionist from earlier this year, erroneously claiming to confirm common descent, has now been rebuked by other evolutionists. Unfortunately this is not a healthy sign of evolutionists turning to science, for the new paper is just as unscientific as the first.A paper written by an evolutionist from earlier this year, erroneously claiming to confirm common descent, has now been rebuked by other evolutionists. Unfortunately this is not Read More ›

I had the privilege of attending Michael Behe’s talk at Westmister Chapel in London on Monday evening.   The talk was organised by Premier Christian Radio, so it is safe to assume that most of those in attendance were Christian listeners of that radio station. The hall was almost full as Professor Behe began his talk by illustrating how we intuitively recognise design. He contrasted a ‘natural’ mountain range in Idaho with the famous sculptures of four US Presidents at Mount Rushmore, before explaining how his ground-breaking concept of irreducible complexity provides a more rigorous method of establishing whether a particular structure is the product of purposeful design by an intelligent agent. This was illustrated by his famous mousetrap and bacterial flagellum.    The workings of the latter are Read More ›