Intelligent Design

Dr. Dembski and Dr. Meyer have made the top of the list of ID science breakthroughs for 2009: On this episode of ID the Future Casey Luskin interviews Dennis Wagner, executive director of the Access Research Network discussing ARN’s top 5 Darwin and Design science stories for 2009. Listen in to learn how the work of Stephen Meyer and William Dembski topped the list of ID science accomplishments for 2009. Meyer and Dembski Breakthroughs Top ID Science Stories fo… Intelligent Design The Future

In this week’s New Scientist, there is an article about gravity that deals with a string theorist’s reformulation of gravity as an entropic force. This reformulation describes gravity as an emergent property of space, time and matter, and NOT as a physical force itself. Here’s a quote from the actual article: Of course, Einstein’s geometric description of gravity is beatiful, and in a certain way compelling. Geometry appeals to the visual part of our minds, and is amazingly powerful in summarizing many aspects of a physical problem. Presumably this explains why we, as a community, have been so reluctant to give up the geometric formulation of gravity as being fundamental. But it is inevitable we do so. If gravity is Read More ›

Remember that Intergovernmental Panal on Climate Change report that all the glaciers in the Himalayas were going to melt by the mid 2030’s?  Turns out it was complete bunk.  Is it time to start adding scare quotes around the “science” part of “climate science”? Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035. In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science Read More ›

Although Nature titled this piece “Tackling Unintelligent Design” they betray their own bias and fail to appreciate the irony in their claims.

According to R. John Ellis from the University of Warwick “Rubisco, the key enzyme in photosynthesis, is a relic of a bygone age.”

Researchers now plan to genetically manipulate the enzyme to make a designer enzyme fit for the modern world.

Although Rubisco is the most important enyzme on the planet, it is also one of the most inefficient. It evolved when the atmosphere was different and failed to adapt to the modern atmosphere. Attempts to improve the properties of this key enzyme of plants and cyanobacteria have failed because it proved impossible to reconstitute Rubisco in vitro. Liu et al. (Nature 463, 197–202 (2010) Vol 463 14 January 2010 doi:10.1038/nature08651) have overcome this problem with a cyanobacterial Rubisco by using two different chaperone proteins, which guide the folding and assembly of the enzyme. Read More ›

I did two phone debates at Justin Brierley’s UK radio-program UNBELIEVABLE. Below is an email describing both debates as well as some programs of related interest. The debate with Lewis Wolpert was previously noted here at UD. The other debate with former Christian Norm Hansen focused on God’s goodness and my book THE END OF CHRISTIANITY. ====================== Hello, you may be interested in three recent shows of my radio show “Unbelievable?” that touch on the issue of Intelligent Design.   All the shows are available at the show archive at www.premier.org.uk/unbelievable though I include permanent direct links below   Also please note that in light of its UK release on DVD, I shall be hosting a Premier Radio screening of Read More ›

In my 2001 Mathematical Intelligencer article, in which I was allowed to reply to critics of my 2000 article, I wrote: Mathematicians are trained to value simplicity. When we have a simple, clear proof of a theorem, and a long, complicated counterargument…we accept the simple proof, even before we find the errors in the complicated argument. That is why I prefer not to extend here the long-standing debate over the first point [about irreducible complexity, basically] but to dwell further on the much simpler and clearer second point of my article, which is that the increase in order observed on Earth violates the laws of probability and the second law of thermodynamics in a spectatular fashion. Then I went on Read More ›

By mandating methodological naturalism evolutionists place themselves into a no-win scenario. Like Star Trek’s Captain Kirk who reprogrammed the computer in order to defeat the Kobayashi Maru scenario training exercise, evolutionists can only cheat their way out of their methodological naturalism mandate. If they give a straight answer they undermine their own claims about evolution. The problem here is not methodological naturalism itself, which is a perfectly reasonable way to do science. The problem is that, in the hands of evolutionists, it becomes dogma rather than guidance. And the problem is not merely a philosophical fine point–in mandating methodological naturalism evolutionists reveal the absurdity of their ideas and simultaneously do substantial harm to science.  Read more

Well, here are three of the top ten winner stories, and I have inserted some comments, with further stories to follow if you click on the link: 1. Authors William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II use computer simulations and information theory to challenge the ability of Darwinian processes to create new functional genetic information. This paper is in many ways a validation of Dembski’s core No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without intelligence, which argued that some intelligent input is required to produce novel complex and specified information. [About time someone said the obvious. Darwinism does not work, Never has, never will. Kept alive by a taxpayer-funded, court-supported Darwin industry that is nearly a century old. A shame Read More ›

Apparently round two of the controversy over the California’s Science Center’s cancellation of Darwin’s Dilemma is getting ready to take place. This was reported and discussed here back in October, as well as here and here in December.

Now, a California State Senator is calling the constitutionality of the censorship into question. Read More ›

“It seems we have all been guilty of defaming Neanderthal man” declared a recent Editorial in The Guardian. This comment was triggered by a report documenting evidence for the use of pigments and decorative shells by Neanderthals. This is claimed to have occurred many years before any direct contact with modern humans, thereby undermining any thought that the artefacts did not really represent Neanderthal culture. Personal adornment, using a variety of colours, implies an aesthetic sense and an appreciation of symbolism. Since Neanderthals have often been presented as lacking these “modern” traits, the new research demands a reappraisal. For an overview of the finds plus reaction, go here. Here’s the take-home message: We have had a long-sustained exposure to the Read More ›

A week ago I described here at UD my debate with atheist Lewis Wolpert. A blogger who goes by “Manic Street Preacher” sent me three unsolicited emails about his reaction to the debate, which was not positive. Denyse O’Leary briefly adverted to this blogger here. I finally had a look at what this blogger wrote. I can’t say I was impressed with the argumentation or erudition, but I do have to credit him for chutzpah. He writes (go here): //////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Dembski repeated the common straw man that scientists in Darwin’s day knew nothing about the inner workings of the cell, and thought that they were mere “blobs of protoplasm”. Well, Dembski should take a look this drawing out, which was Read More ›

Many, many people seem to misunderstand the relationship between Intelligent Design and Common Descent. Some view ID as being equivalent to Progressive Creationism (sometimes called Old-Earth Creationism), others seeing it as being equivalent to Young-Earth Creationism. I have argued before that the core of ID is not about a specific theory of origins. In fact, many ID’ers hold a variety of views including Progressive Creationism and Young-Earth Creationism.

But another category that is often overlooked are those who hold to both ID and Common Descent, where the descent was purely naturalistic. This view is often considered inconsistent. My goal is to show how this is a consistent proposition.
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In the last year and a bit I’ve done a lot of work in trying to understand and then critique the approach of Dr. Denis Alexander of the Faraday Institute in Cambridge (UK). I know that many readers of UD are familiar with Alexander’s big-selling work, “Creation or Evolution – Do We Have To Choose?”. This book is probably (alongside Francis Collins) the work with the most traction by Darwinists seeking to argue from a Biblical Christian viewpoint. I’ve previously drawn attention to IVP’s “Should Christians Embrace Evolution”. In this post I want instead to draw attention to my own response, “Creation or Evolution – Why We Must Choose”. If you don’t want to read the blurb and just want Read More ›

In a comment to a prior post Johhnnyb makes the following excellent points (see here): One thing which I think ID can contribute to any historical aspect of earth history is shaving off hypothetical creatures. While there are certainly many creatures which haven’t yet been found, and I’m sure many of these creatures include chimeras of existing features in existing creatures, there is no reason to believe that there must be creatures where none have been found or evidenced. Darwinism has a bad habit of perpetually adding dashed lines in-between creatures for where it expects to find relationships. Instead, ID says that, perhap we can just take the fossil record as we find it. Perhaps what we need to be Read More ›