Intelligent Design

Premier Radio’s program “Unbelievable?” with Justin Brierley has hosted a discussion with Oxford mathematician John Lennox and astrophysicist Paul Davies concerning topics from Intelligent Design to extra-terrestrial life, and what the broader philosophical and theological implications are for each. A popular science author, Davies is also the Chair of the SETI post detection task force. His latest book “The Eerie Silence” which marks SETI’s 50th anniversary examines the likelihood of the universe producing life elsewhere. John Lennox is a Christian Mathematician and philosopher. He is the author of “God’s Undertaker: has science buried God?” and has debated Richard Dawkins on several occasions. Davies’ work on the fine tuning of the universe for life has been sympathetic to theism. In this Read More ›

In our on-going investigation of the David Coppedge case we have uncovered some rather sordid details that suggest Coppedge has far more to hide than his misdeeds that are now so well known.  Read more

The Darwinian speculative thesis of random errors filtered by natural selection explaining anything substantial in biology is simply, completely, and astronomically out of the ballpark of plausibility. In our engineering department (software, hardware, electrical, mechanical, aeronautical) we have a phrase: Does the proposed solution pass the beverage-out-the-nose test? (Meaning, of course: Would the proposed approach have any possibility of success?) The problem with most Darwinists is that they have no real-world experience in any hard-science discipline with real-world accountability (such as engineering), in which a proposed solution or mechanism must first pass the beverage-out-the-nose test, and then be empirically verified to be capable of what is claimed for it. Storytelling doesn’t cut it in real science, but that’s basically all Read More ›

It is well known that the genetic code translates DNA genes into proteins. But the process is immensely complex and new research is revealing some fascinating and challenging details. This process of protein synthesis begins with the unwinding of the DNA double helix. The two strands are separated and an incredible protein machine makes a copy of one of the strands. The copy contains the appropriate gene and, after some editing, the copy is sent to the ribosome where it provides the needed instructions.  Read more

It’s now five years since I used to get invited to speak at these Veritas forums. My debate with Niall Shanks, sponsored by Veritas and moderated by Dallas Willard, took place at UCLA in 2004 and was recorded by CSPAN. I also did Veritas forums at NYU and Columbia in 2005. All that has changed. I give the theistic evolutionists credit for seeing to it that ID proponents are ostracized from such events. This is backfiring as donors are asking themselves why are these ministries now exclusively evolutionist and thus are putting their money elsewhere. [[Correction 4.30.10: Although there has been resistance to ID in some Christian circles, the Veritas Forum seems still open to it — see here for Read More ›

Species of stickleback fish can rapid adapt to new environments. Such adaptations can range from minor adjustments to body shape and size to the complete loss of major structures such as the pelvis. It is an example of rapid, intelligent adaptation, not the sort of change expected by evolution.  Read more

Proteins are constructed from a string of amino acids, and the amino acid sequence is coded in a gene. But how does the cell know which of its many genes to use in synthesizing proteins? Gene regulation is accomplished via a number of complex mechanisms. For instance, methyl groups are used to tag both the DNA as well as the histone proteins about which the DNA is wrapped. You can read more about histones here and here. In addition to such methylation, histones can also vary by tiny differences in their amino acid sequence. Such histone variants serve as yet another type of tag used for gene regulation. Now new research is revealing the profound complexity of this mechanism.  Read Read More ›

Thomas and Aristotle have loomed large on this blog recently. I would like to have weighed in on these discussions, but I have too many other things on my plate right now. I therefore offer this brief post.

One critic, going after me directly, asserts that I’m committed to a mechanical view of nature and that I develop ID in ways inimical to an Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of nature, according to which nature operates by formal and final causes. Life, according to this view, would be natural rather than artifactual. ID, by contrast, is supposed to demand an artifactual understanding of life.

I don’t think this criticism hits the mark. I have to confess that I’ve always been much more a fan of Plato than of Aristotle, and so I don’t quite see the necessity of forms being realized in nature along strict Aristotelian lines. Even so, nothing about ID need be construed as inconsistent with Aristotle and Thomas.

ID’s critique of naturalism and Darwinism should not be viewed as offering a metaphysics of nature but rather as a subversive strategy for unseating naturalism/Darwinism on their own terms. The Darwinian naturalists have misunderstood nature, along mechanistic lines, but then use this misunderstanding to push for an atheistic worldview.

ID is willing, arguendo, to consider nature as mechanical and then show that the mechanical principles by which nature is said to operate are incomplete and point to external sources of information (cf. the work of the Evolutionary Informatics Lab — www.evoinfo.org). This is not to presuppose mechanism in the strong sense of regarding it as true. It is simply to grant it for the sake of argument — an argument that is culturally significant and that needs to be prosecuted.

This is not to minimize the design community’s work on the design inference/explanatory filter/irreducible-specified-functional complexity. ID has uncovered scientific markers that show where design is. But pointing up where design is, is not to point up where design isn’t.

For the Thomist/Aristotelian, final causation and thus design is everywhere. Fair enough. ID has no beef with this. As I’ve said (till the cows come home, though Thomist critics never seem to get it), the explanatory filter has no way or ruling out false negatives (attributions of non-design that in fact are designed). I’ll say it again, ID provides scientific evidence for where design is, not for where it isn’t.

What exactly then is the nature of nature? That’s the topic of a conference I helped organize at Baylor a decade ago and whose proceedings (suitably updated) are coming out this year (see here). ID is happy to let a thousand flowers bloom with regard to the nature of nature provided it is not a mechanistic, self-sufficing view of nature.

This may sound self-contradictory (isn’t ID always talking about mechanisms displayed by living forms?), but it is not. As I explain in THE DESIGN REVOLUTION: Read More ›

Christopher Hitchens is nothing if not a straight-shooter. He calls it like he sees it, and not even a vicious attack could stop him from denouncing evil, racist ideologies that are still with us today. He is also a fearless and formidable debater. In recent years, he has declared himself an anti-theist, a term he defines as follows:

You could be an atheist and wish that the belief was true. You could; I know some people who do. An antitheist, a term I’m trying to get into circulation, is someone who’s very relieved that there’s no evidence for this proposition.

On Bastille Day in 2007, in response to an article entitled What Atheists Can’t Answer by op-ed columnist Michael Gerson in The Washington Post, Christopher Hitchens threw down the gauntlet to theists:

Here is my challenge. Let Gerson name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader of this column think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith? The second question is easy to answer, is it not? The first – I have been asking it for some time – awaits a convincing reply. By what right, then, do the faithful assume this irritating mantle of righteousness? They have as much to apologize for as to explain.

Hitchens has repeated this challenge on numerous occasions since then. The first time I heard him issue this challenge, I thought: “He has a point.” Read More ›

From antiquity to today, the evil in the world has always been a powerful mandate for evolutionary thinking. God would not have designed or created this evil world, so it must have originated by the blind play of natural law. For centuries this solution has fueled atheism, but from where did evil-ness come?  Read more

Review Of Probability’s Nature And Nature’s Probability – Lite, by Donald Johnson
ISBN: 978-0-9823554-4-2

Zoologist Richard Dawkins has historically used the concept of ‘junk DNA’- those apparently useless portions of genomes- to lead the charge against the creationists’ position of purpose in nature. His view on the matter is quite simple: “creationists might spend some earnest time speculating on why the Creator should bother to litter genomes with untranslated pseudogenes and junk tandem repeat DNA”. In light of what we now know about DNA, Dawkins’ should spend some earnest time reviewing whether his littered genomes are so littered after all. In fact the term ‘junk DNA’ is now seen by many an expert as somewhat of a misnomer since much of what was originally categorized as such has turned out to be pivotal for DNA stability and the regulation of gene expression. In his book Nature’s Probability And Probability’s Nature author Donald Johnson has done us all a service by bringing these points to the fore. He further notes that since junk DNA would put an unnecessary energetic burden on cells during the process of replication, it stands to reason that it would more likely be eliminated through selective pressures. That is, if the Darwinian account of life is to be believed. “It would make sense” Johnson writes “that those useless nucleotides would be removed from the genome long before they had a chance to form something with a selective advantage….there would be no advantage in directing energy to useless structures”. Read More ›

In an earlier column (27 March 2010), I offered constructive criticism of the position of Francis Beckwith, who had implied an incompatibility between the ID and Thomist approaches to design, and had condemned ID for advancing or at least implying a bad form of Christian theology:

https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/what-francis-beckwith-gets-wrong-about-intelligent-design/

Prof. Beckwith responded once to my article, but only touched on a couple of points, and in the course of his discussion misrepresented both my motivation and some of my arguments.  When I clarified my position (in Comment #8 below the article), Beckwith did not respond to the clarification.  Thus, he left the impression that he had demolished my argument, when in fact he had rebutted only a misrepresentation of just part of my argument.

I here undertake a constructively critical response to some arguments of Professor Edward Feser, who like Prof. Beckwith has contrasted ID unfavorably with Thomist design arguments and has accused ID of faulty theology.  I am hoping that Professor Feser will reply, here or on his own site, and will engage more fully with my comments than did Prof. Beckwith. Read More ›

NASA was once a bastion of religious toleration. They sent 2 creationists to the moon (Reverend Jim Irwin and General Charles Duke). They let Buzz Aldrin quietly celebrate communion on the Moon, Sunday, July 20, 1969. On NASA’s official website is the record of this Christmas greeting of 1968: www.NASA.gov. Here is a video of that 1968 event: Apollo 8 Christmas Greeting from Genesis 1. And we have: Buzz Aldrin Sharing Psalm 8 in Flight.

Sad to see that this same organization is now suspected of harboring Darwinists who would vent their prejudices against one of UD’s very own contributors, David Coppedge, for much lesser actions (loaning a DVD to an interested coworker). Isn’t a little toleration in order?

In contrast, this could also be seen to be proselytizing a particular religious view:

“A NASA workshop defined ‘life’ to mean a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution,”

To paraphrase Rodney King, “can’t we all just get along?”

Read More ›

It’s worth repeating that if Charles Darwin had explained that evolution proceeds in fits and starts, his theory would have been ridiculed from the start. Imagine if Darwin had explained that, according to his theory of evolution, species rapidly appear as if planted there, and then go unchanged for eons. Darwin would have been laughed off the stage. Darwin had to present a narrative of gradualism. Funny thing is, the fits-and-starts narrative is today precisely what evolutionists tell us.  Read more

Biologos supporter Karl Giberson has recently posted what seems to be an olive branch to ID.  As we rarely get these from the TE/EC/Biologos camp, I think we should respond graciously to Dr. Giberson’s overture.

His remarks, under the heading, “Through a Glass Darkly”, are found at:

http://biologos.org/blog/through-a-glass-darkly-blog/

I was grateful when Dr. Giberson backed away somewhat from the tendency of TEs to throw out “God of the gaps!” as a shibboleth against ID.  He wrote:

 “Not all ID theorists insist on this however. I had a chance to chat with Michael Behe when we were on a panel a few months ago at Brigham Young University; I pressed him to find out just how far apart we were. I knew he accepted common ancestry and rejected young earth creationism, just as we do at BioLogos. Behe insisted that “design is empirically detectable” but he did not insist that such design requires intervention by God.

 “Fair enough.

“Perhaps it would be most appropriate to say that ID “tends to slip into god-of-the-gaps,” rather than equating it with god-of-the gaps, as its critics tend to do.”

I am grateful that Dr. Giberson is capable of noticing the exaggerations of some of his anti-ID colleagues, and pleased that he shows determination to find out what ID proponents say about themselves, and does not rest content with inaccurate second-hand reports.  For this I thank him.

I would add that Behe is not alone in his position.  Read More ›