Intelligent Design

The connection with biological design here is what exactly?

Just as deism’s sway long outlasted its apparent expiration date, so too logical positivism continues to influence. Witness the childrens song Science is Real by the band They Might Be Giants which begins with a quote from the Vienna Circle’s Rudolf Carnap:  Read more

Today’s Fox News website had this little story, entitled Climate Scientists Plan to Hit Back at Skeptics. In the article, Stanford University climate researcher Paul R. Ehrlich had this to say about global warming skeptics:

“Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules,” Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails.

Its worth noting Ehrlich’s use of the phrase “merciless enemies”. In other words, challenge the preferred dogma, and you’re not just ignorant – you’re an enemy, and thus, by extension, deserving of any and all ad hominem attacks hurled your way. One can almost hear “let me assure you, we haf vays to make you accept the dogma!” Read More ›

The Spanish Paseos Por La Naturaleza (A Walk Through Nature) series continues with an exploration of catalytic RNA within the larger context of the RNA world.  Pulling together key lines of evidence from molecular biology, this installment builds a linchpin case against the fragile trusses of naturalistic causation. The Paseos Por La Naturaleza series aims to further strengthen the global influence that the Intelligent Design movement already enjoys and raise awareness of important academic resources that are today challenging orthodox Darwinism and revitalizing the call for a fresh perspective on scientific discourse.   The third installment can be found at: Paseos Por La Naturaleza: El ARN catalítico — un catalizador indigno de una discusión seria acerca del origen de la vida (See also OIACDI)

Chris McKay, an astrobiologist with NASA and therefore keenly interested in the search for extraterrestrial life (ET), reviewed Paul Davies recent livre de l’annee, The Eerie Silence. Why is it in this 50th anniversary of the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), we haven’t heard a thing? Chris thinks that Davies’ answer might be that ET has come and gone, leaving us a farewell note in the genome of some otherwise undistinguished critter. My problem with SETI, and apparently Davies as well, is its completely parochial view of communication. As an example, I suggest that we should imagine SETI beginning in 1900. What would it look like? Well, the state-of-the-art in communication technology at the time was telegraph. So it Read More ›

Graduate Student Challenges Avida in Scientific Paper   Click here to listen. On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin interviews Winston Ewert, a graduate student in computer science at Baylor University who recently co-authored a paper titled, “Evolutionary Synthesis of Nand Logic: Dissecting a Digital Organism,” in Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. Ewert shares how reading Richard Dawkins led him to his current research in evolutionary computation and his criticisms of the Avida Simulation. Listen in as Ewert explains the scientific research behind his paper, and find out why intelligent design is attracting the interest of graduate students. For more on intelligent design research, visit The Evolutionary Informatics Lab and Biologic Institute.  

“People will write to me and say “You’ve changed my life” and that’s a wonderfully warm feeling and it’s really quite common.” This gem comes near the end of this ABC PM extended interview during Richard Dawkins’ latest visit to Australia. Also the following;    “What’s not interesting is the battle between science on the one hand and supernaturalism on the other” “something obviously ridiculous like flat-earthers and slightly less obviously ridiculous like anti-evolutionists. It’s only less slightly obviously ridiculous by the way.”“The sort of powerful illusion of design that all living creatures have but some seem to express more vividly. The almost irresistible urge to think gosh, somebody must have designed that and the beauty of discovering actually no, they Read More ›

Charles Darwin called it an “abominable mystery,” but a new study has solved the question of how flowering plants evolved. The answer: While busy implementing a new hydraulic system in plants, evolution accidently stumbled on improved photosynthesis as well. You see it just so happens that the two are linked. Improve one, and serendipitously the other improves as well. That’s fortunate. As ScienceDaily explains:  Read more

In his book The Making of the Fittest, Sean Carroll writes “the degree of similarity in DNA is an index of the [evolutionary] relatedness of species.” [98] This can only make sense if we first assume evolution is true. But Carroll’s book is a defense of evolution, intended to demonstrate that the theory is true without first assuming it is true. He seeks to prove evolution is true, but he begins with evolutionary reasoning and interpretations. That is circular reasoning. Unfortunately such circular reasoning is a common motif in the evolution genre.  Read more

Two research psychologists have contributed an Opinion paper based on the empirical finding “that individuals presented with unfamiliar moral dilemmas show no difference in their responses if they have a religious background or not”. The data used was obtained from an online web questionnaire which is open to any volunteer participants (including myself). Findings are reported elsewhere and in their Opinion paper the authors provide only a summary: “These studies, carried out using the web-based Moral Sense Test (http://moral.wjh.harvard.edu/), recruit thousands of male and female subjects, with educational levels that range from elementary school to graduate degrees, with political affiliations that range from liberal to conservative, and religious backgrounds that range from devout to atheist. In each of these studies, Read More ›

A century ago physics faced a problem. Its two-hundred year foundation of Newtonian thought was showing signs of weakness. In the seventeenth century Newton had overthrown the physics of another great thinker, Aristotle, but now Newton’s time had come. The quantum revolution was coming, but as with most revolutionists there would be tumult.  Read more

This is the first of probably three posts on applied Intelligent Design. This is not an extensive list of applications of ID concepts, but I thought that giving people examples of how ID can be not only interesting and informative but actually useful in solving both biological and engineering problems.
Read More ›

As Francis Bacon pointed out so long ago, a key strategy in scientific research is to narrow the problem. Remove unknowns, freeze variables and pare back extraneous components. Often the best way to learn how nature works is to focus in and isolate one aspect of the problem. Once that aspect is understood, then freeze it and move on to the next. So when it comes to figuring out how the living cell works, one strategy is to begin with the simplest of cells to be found in nature. Enter Mycoplasma pneumoniae—a bacteria that causes a type of pneumonia.  Read more

According to Jerry Coyne, atheistic evolutionists and ID proponents have at least this in common — they can expect no bribes from the Templeton Foundation. Read Coyne’s post on the topic here.