Intelligent Design

   Evolution was a known concept before Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859. But Darwin’s work on evolution pushed it from obscurity to a widely known and accepted concept. Part of what helped Darwin in pushing through evolution was the credibility he had acquired from publishing lots of specialized scientific treatments (such as an extended treatise on barnacles) before publicly wading into evolution. Fast forward to the beginning of the 21st century. Robert Marks has built a career establishing his credibilityas a foremost thinker and researcher on the topic of computational intelligence. He has amassed an enviable publication record and huge set of government research grants. No one can question his scientific bona fides. And now, with his Evolutionary Informatics Read More ›

Genome sequencing has allowed families of genes to be mapped across the phyla, and it is presumed that the presence of a specific gene in different animal groups signifies a shared common ancestor. Over the years, it has become apparent that many significant genes are widely shared in the animal kingdom, and this blog is concerned with two more cases recently published. Pax genes are typically linked to eye development, although they have a variety of other functions. Pax-6 is regarded as a master control gene known to turn on eye development in the arthropoda, the mollusca, and the vertebrata. The new work extends the analysis to a jellyfish. “Here we have isolated three Pax genes (Pax-A, Pax-B, and Pax-E) Read More ›

In a bizarre, perverse inversion of the legitimate goal of science — to find the truth wherever the evidence leads — Darwinists continue to turn things upside down. We are constantly assured that if the unwashed, low-IQ masses could just be “educated,” and become “scientifically literate,” they would embrace the chance-and-necessity Darwinian anti-gospel with open arms and no dissent. The endless, droning mantras about the infinitely creative powers of natural selection, the ubiquitous “scientific consensus,” the “finally discovered fossil that finally proves evolution” news releases that appear every few weeks, and all the rest, have nothing whatsoever to do with scientific literacy. Real scientific literacy about biological systems comes from understanding the discoveries of empirical science in the last half Read More ›

Some people have concluded that the hideously complex, functionally integrated information-processing machinery of the cell — with its error-detection-and-repair algorithms and much more — is best explained by an intelligent cause. But this idea is only held by superstitious religious fanatics who want to destroy science and establish a theocracy. That’s the consensus of “scientists” in the academy. The other consensus of “scientists” in the academy is that random errors screwing up computer code can account for everything in biology. Who is thinking logically here? I have no interest in arguing with people who can’t think and don’t want to follow the evidence where it leads, because it’s a lost cause from the outset.

Look, I tried. I practically had a nervous breakdown trying to think up anything as ridiculous as this that was not obscene. I am not into that. You need to pay or sign up for something (which probably means contuaally being  pestered for some promotion) to see the rest of this story from the National Enquirer of science mags, New Scientist, on why the large human brain can be explained by cooking food. Strikes me that useful information would work the other way around. You start with a large brain, and … voila! Escoffier!! I doubt it works the other way round.

In River out of Eden : A Darwinian View of Life Richard Dawkins wrote:

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. As that unhappy poet A.E. Housman put it: ‘For Nature, heartless, witless Nature Will neither care nor know.’ DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.

In a 2007 New Scientist/Greenpeace Science debate, Dawkins said:

Far from being the most selfish, exploitative species, Homo sapiens is the only species that has at least the possibility of rebelling against the otherwise universally selfish Darwinian impulse . . . If any species in the history of life has the possibility of breaking away from short term selfishness and of long term planning for the distant future, it’s our species. We are earth’s last best hope even if we are simultaneously, the species most capable of destroying life on the planet. But when it comes to taking the long view, we are literally unique. Because the long view is not a view that has ever been taken before in whole history of life. If we don’t plan for the future, no other species will . . .

Dawkins’ does not seem to understand that he cannot have his cake and eat it too, and that leads the world’s most prominent atheist/evolutionary biologist to make mutually exclusive truth claims that I would expect the average high school freshman to avoid. Let us examine a couple:

1. DNA is all there is, and we dance to its music. Yet it is possible for Homo sapiens to rebel against DNA. But how can DNA rebel against itself? I cannot rise above myself. I cannot reach down, grab my bootstraps, and pull myself off the floor.

2. There is no good and no evil. Yet Homo sapiens has the capability of planning for the future (presumably to avoid an undesired outcome or achieve a desired outcome). But if there is no good and no evil, on what grounds should we desire any particular outcome and plan for it?

UPDATE BELOW THE FOLD Read More ›

There is an interesting news story in the Guardian about the tadpole shrimp Triops cancriformis that has managed to exist unchanged since the Triassic. Its life cycle involves a short breeding season with eggs laid in the mud. These eggs can survive for long periods as the mud dries out periodically. Guardian – World’s most ancient creatures found in Scottish field – 29 July 2010

Over the years, samples of amber recovered from numerous sites around the world have been found to contain petrified insects, plants and a variety of other exotic inclusions. Invariably, we get an insight into a past world where the flora and fauna look very modern. A recent discovery has identified mammalian hair in amber, whose original owner was a contemporary of dinosaurs. The dimensions and topography of the two fossilised hairs were analysed carefully, because the find provides the first opportunity to look at Mesozoic mammal hairs preserved in 3D. The result: “With such features, the cuticular surface of the Archingeay-Les Nouillers hairs shows a modern aspect, implying that the morphology of hair cuticula has remained unchanged throughout most of Read More ›

I was discussing the second law argument with a scientist friend the other day, and mentioned that the second law is sometimes called the “common sense law of physics”. This morning he wrote: Yesterday I spoke with my wife about these questions. She immediately grasped that chaos results on the long term when she would stop caring for her home. I replied: Tell your wife she has made a perfectly valid application of the second law of thermodynamics. In fact, let’s take her application a bit further. Suppose you and your wife go for vacation, leaving a dog, cat and a parakeet loose in the house (I put the animals there to cause the entropy to increase more rapidly, otherwise Read More ›

In a recent PNAS paper John Avise argued that evolution emancipates “religion from the shackles of theodicy” by getting any god off the hook as the source of seemingly cruel design defects in the human genome. Giving a god credit for the good designs, so the story goes, makes that god responsible for the bad designs too. Defending his opinion in this week’s PNAS letters Avise restates that a “God directly responsible for the many malfunctions that characterize the human genome, would seem to be quite malevolent as well as bumbling”. Believing as he does that “IDers promulgate the notion of an omnipotent and benevolent deity who directly crafts life ex nihilo” and “vehemently oppose any suggestion that God has Read More ›

Click here to listen. On this episode of ID the Future, Anika Smith interviews mathematician and philosopher William Dembski on a break from teaching at Discovery Institute’s Summer Seminars on Intelligent Design. Listen in as Dr. Dembski shares his advice for young scientists interested in ID and the hope he has for the future of intelligent design.

And would be the worst, whether one is an ID proponent or not. Many UD readers know the Australian molecular biologist John Mattick as a leader in thinking about functional roles for so-called ‘junk DNA.’ Mattick has earned the implacable ire of ID critics such as Larry Moran and T. Ryan Gregory, although not because Mattick is an ID proponent. He’s not — see the opening sections of this interview, which is also available as a video. (Scroll to the Supplementary Material at the end; SIZE WARNING: 46M.] It’s a fascinating exchange, although I think Mattick greatly underestimates the significance of clade- or taxon-specific novel proteins in eukaryotes. If nothing else, however, empirical discovery itself stands entirely on Mattick’s side. Read More ›

Imagine if you called a car salesman, explained the type of car you wanted to buy, and he exclaimed he has exactly what you are looking for. Furthermore, the car is almost new, has only a few miles, and yet is priced at a mere ten thousand dollars! You and a friend hurry over to the car lot and with a big smile the salesman shows you a junker. You recognize the make as being at least thirty years old, and the car looks like it has at least 200,000 miles. The tires are worn bare, the body is rusted away, the seats are so worn down there are holes in the fabric, the paint is so faded that you Read More ›

Biology textbook authors George Johnson and Jonathan Losos are leaders in the life sciences. They are accomplished researchers and professors from leading universities—they are also blind guides. In their otherwise well written and highly produced textbook The Living World ((Fifth Edition, McGraw Hill, 2008), Johnson and Losos badly misrepresent science and make fallacious arguments when they present evolution to the student. It is yet another example of smart people spreading lies and foolishness.  Read more