Intelligent Design

Here’s an article that appeared today in my local paper. It will be interesting to see what the incoming Baylor president Kenneth Starr does about the Marks case when he arrives June 1st, especially in light of this recognition by College Crunch. For Prof. Marks to have his lab and research (see evoinfo.org) recognized and reinstated by Baylor as legitimately part of his job description would, perhaps, constitute a truer vindication of his work on evolutionary informatics. Even so, the College Crunch list, designating Marks as one of the “20 most brilliant Christian professors,” is a foretaste of good things to come.

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Baylor faculty member named one of ’20 Most Brilliant Christian Professors’

[alternative title in local paper: “In the Spotlight, Again: BU Professor Marks Nets Honor for Research in Evolutionary Informatics”]

[PHOTO CAPTION: Marks was named one of “The 20 Most Brilliant Christian Professors” by CollegeCrunch.org (link here).]

By Tim Woods Tribune-Herald staff writer
Thursday April 15, 2010
 
http://www.wacotrib.com/news/Baylor-faculty-member-named-one-of-20-Most-Brilliant-Christian-Professors.html

Robert Marks, Baylor University Distinguished Professor of electrical and computer engineering, once again finds himself in the spotlight.

Less than three years ago, Marks was at the center of an intelligent design-related controversy at the school.

But Marks now is being honored for his work, notably his research in the area of evolutionary informatics.

CollegeCrunch.org, a college resource Web site, named Marks as one of “the 20 most brilliant Christian professors.” Read More ›

On April 15, 2005 Dr. Dembski posted the first post to UD.  5,449 posts and five years later we are stronger than ever.  I am pleased to report that with over 10,000 daily readers we are serving tons of lurkers, the real audience of all of the posts and the debate back and forth.   Thank you to all who have made this site such a success (including those of our opponents who show up and engage with us respectfully).  Here’s to many more years of service! BTW, just in time for our birthday, we are moving up the server ladder in an effort to improve our download times, etc.  The upgrade should be complete in a couple of days.  Let us know how it’s Read More ›

Sometimes the most ardent evolutionists are those who understand it the least. Many who are not life scientists take evolution to be the gospel truth—after all, evolutionists have told them it is a scientific fact. And unlike the life scientists who at least are familiar with the evidential quandaries, those more distant from the data are blissfully ignorant. For them evolution is all the more an unquestionable truth. Evolutionists have misrepresented science and now we are paying the price with increasing scientific illiteracy. Consider a recent peer-reviewed paper on how to succeed in convincing students that evolution is true. The authors consider the problem of consciousness:  Read more

The threats to the DNA in our cells are incredible. Radiation, carcinogens and even chemicals produced within the cell attack the DNA thousands of time every day. What is more incredible though is the cell’s DNA repair system, which you can read more about here and here. The worst kind of DNA damage is the so-called double-strand break where both strands of the double helix break. In response the cell mounts a swift and sophisticated response which new research is helping to elucidate.  Read more

There has been a complexity explosion in biology – the fuse was lit in 1953 when the structure of DNA was discovered, but during the past two decades we have witnessed a dramatic expansion of data pointing to unanticipated levels of complexity. The hype surrounding the Human Genome Project suggested it would give us the blueprint of human biology and, as a consequence, would provide answers to our most probing questions. “Mina Bissell, a cancer researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, says that during the Human Genome Project, she was driven to despair by predictions that all the mysteries would be solved. “Famous people would get up and say, ‘We will understand everything after this’,” she says. Read More ›

One of the many fascinating designs in biology is the workings of our senses. Here, for example, is a description of recent findings on the actions of hair cells in the inner ear. It is yet another example of incredible biology at work:  Read more

As you read this many of the cells in your body are in a gradual process of division which results in the production of two daughter cells. In this process, known as mitosis, the cell duplicates its contents, including its DNA, before dividing. But the hardware is only part of a cell. Like a computer the cell contains programming information. For instance, tiny chemical signals—methyl groups—may be added to certain proteins or DNA sequences. You can read here about one way that this programming information is passed on to later generations. New research is now elucidating a different mechanism for preserving the cell’s programming information.  Read more

Professor Edward Feser is an intrepid philosopher, who is not afraid to confront error head-on and expose it for what it is. That is an admirable trait. He is also a former atheist, who now defends religion from a traditional Roman Catholic perspective. In his book The Last Superstition (St. Augustine’s Press, 2008; available here ), Professor Feser takes on all four of the “New Atheists” – Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. David Oderberg, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading, England, and a former atheist himself, was highly impressed by Professor Feser’s robust defense of the rationality of belief in God:

Anyone who comes away from The Last Superstition thinking that potboiler atheism has anything to recommend it, or that belief in God is irrational, will not be convinced by anything. For the rest of us, the book is, to use an apposite term, a godsend. And the caustic humour peppering the book adds just the sort of spice this fraught subject needs. If the Faithless Foursome were at all interested in a serious rebuttal, they now have it.

Professor Feser is a very insightful metaphysician, and I have been struck by his perspicacity more than a few times, while reading his blogs. His ability to articulate and defend Aquinas’ Five Ways to a 21st century audience is matchless. It is therefore a great pity, in my opinion, that he perceives ID as antithetical to Aquinas’ philosophy, and as an obstacle to his intellectual endeavor of convincing skeptics that the existence of God can be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt.

What is Professor Feser’s beef with ID, you may ask? Actually, he has a few objections to ID, but his principal complaint is that it is tied to a mechanistic conception of life. Here is his argument, Read More ›

What are the central theological failings of intelligent design? First, it is blasphemous.

Peter Hess, Faith Project Director, NCSE

Read More ›

Charles Darwin spent many years working on his ideas about evolution before publishing them in 1859. Darwin continued with revisions for another 17 years, finally stopping with his final edition, six years before he died. In his heartfelt introduction to his tome Darwin provided the reader with a context. Many readers would not make it through the lengthy work, but they would read the Introduction. So not surprisingly Darwin finished his introduction with his take-home message. If you go no further, this is what you needed to know. Here is how Darwin finished that first chapter:  Read more

This is the title of an opinion piece that appears in the latest issue of the liberal-left weekly UK magazine, New Statesman. It is written by Michael Reiss, who 18 months ago was forced out of his position as director of communications at the Royal Society because he said that creationist and ID views should be treated critically but respectfully, when raised by students in science classes. (As you can see from the end of the piece, he is eminently qualified to speak on these matters.)  Reiss’ sacking has been perhaps the most public demonstration of an Expelled-like phenomenon in Britain to date. To this day, I am surprised at how little outrage it generated. I protested immediately at the Read More ›

The objective of science is to be objective. Measurements, observations, explanations, hypotheses, theories, and laws should be free of personal opinion. Science should not depend on one’s perspective, but rather it should escape parochial viewpoints. It should take on, as Thomas Nagel put it, the view from nowhere. Some may argue that such objectivity is impossible. Others may contend it is not even desirable. Perhaps so, but nonetheless many scientists do strive for such objectivity.  Read more

When asked if I believe in miracles I reply yes, and that I know of one for sure — on the grandest scale imaginable. What is a miracle? It is an event with no naturalistic explanation or cause. The event of the origin of the universe is, by definition, a miracle, since matter, energy, space and time (nature) did not exist to cause it. By definition, the universe had a super(beyond or outside of nature)natural cause. Concerning the origin of the universe, I get frustrated that almost no one ever makes an obvious point when debating atheists who challenge, “Who designed the designer?” Matter, energy, space, and time came into existence at the birth of the universe. (Matter and energy Read More ›

Specifically, Bacon’s essay on atheism: God never wrought miracle to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it. This is an obsolete, but still relevant, sense of “convince.” It means “to overcome or vanquish.” “‘Convince me!’ said the atheist.” In the original sense, this would mean, “Come on — defeat me.” Anyway, their video is here. WARNING: NSFW language.