Intelligent Design

The recent brouhaha concerning Mike Behe at BloggingHeads got me to thinking. (I do that from time to time.) I finally figured out why the incensed Darwinists who resigned from BH did so: They are the equivalent of alchemists who have been confronted with knowledge about the nature of the nucleus of the atom. Alchemists thought that they might be able to turn lead into gold through chemistry. (After all, lead is heavy and dense, and gold is too.) Darwinists propose that inanimate matter — coupled with the laws of chance, chemistry, etc. — can produce information-processing systems of incredible sophistication. The alchemist and the Darwinist have been seduced into pursuing analogous rainbows, based on a fundamental misunderstanding about how Read More ›

The DNA code is both nearly universal and nearly optimal. With the exception of minor deviations occasionally discovered, the same DNA code is found in all species. And that code is so efficient it is sometimes labeled as “optimal.” This is yet another simple example revealing the absurdity of evolutionary theory. Let’s see why.  Read more

Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s book The Signature in the Cell is reviewed by Dan Peterson in The American Spectator (September 1st, 2009). Here is an excerpt: “Of the approaches taken by ID theorists, Signature in the Cell is most closely aligned with the pioneering work on design detection published over the last decade by mathematician William Dembski, one of Meyer’s colleagues at the Discovery Institute.  Dembski and Meyer both rely, at least in part, on information theory and probabilistic analysis to determine whether a phenomenon is best explained as the  product of unguided “chance and necessity,” or of design by an intelligence… Signature in the Cell is a defining work in the discussion of life’s origins and the question of Read More ›

From an apparently unsigned Health column in The Hindu, courtesy The Guardian news service, “Our ideas of brain and human nature are myth,” we learn

Perhaps that sounds a little overblown, but it’s not. Who, dear reader, do you think you are? Do you think your mind is capable of independent judgment and largely directs the course of your life? Do you think that most of your decisions in life have been the product of your rational, conscious self? Do you believe you are in control of your life? Do you cherish ideas such as self-expression, a sense of autonomy and a distinct, self—authored identity? The chances are that, albeit with a few qualifications, most of your answers are yes. Indeed, given a pervasive culture which reinforces all these ideas, it would be a bit odd if you didn’t.

But the point about this new explosion of interest in research into our brains is that it exposes as illusions much of these guiding principles of what it is to be a mature adult. They are a profound misunderstanding of how we think, and how our brains work. They are fairytales, about as fanciful and as implausible as goblins.

Does it indeed? Further,

It’s not an accident that many of the biggest bestsellers in this territory are about decision-making — Blink, Nudge and The Decisive Moment. The image which comes to mind is that they are all sticks of dynamite dug in to explode the great sacred mythology of our time: namely that individual freedom is about having choices, and that progress is about the constant expansion of those choices.

Read these books and you discover that people are useless at making choices. We are lazy, imitative, over-optimistic, myopic, and much of our decision-making is made by unconscious habits of the mind which are largely socially primed.

Ah, I see. Any guesses as to how this thesis will be used?

It’s intriguing how much attention the thesis has attracted from many parts of the political establishment, such as policymakers in pensions, health and the environment, because often the gains from nudging seem pretty small — it is fanciful to think it can solve the environmental crisis.

Well, where’s the feather I knock myself over with when I am totally astonished? This is a thesis perfectly attuned to authoritarian government. It’s also nonsense. Read More ›

Evolutionists have relied heavily on preadaptation to explain biology’s complexities. The latest example is a new paper that uses preadaptation to explain a machine that transports proteins across the mitochondria inner membrane.  Read more

In the 20th century, a powerful confluence of evidence emerged that essentially eviscerated the creative power of Darwinian mechanisms. This is not hard to figure out. The most “simple” cell is a marvel of functionally integrated information-processing technology. Those who propose that the Darwinian mechanisms of random errors filtered by natural selection explain all of life are living in an era gone by, a time when it was thought that the foundation of life was chemistry, physics, time, and chance. The fossil record is a grand and ever-persistent testimony that Darwin was wrong about gradualism. Simple logic, trivial combinatoric mathematical analysis, and the monstrous problems presented by the likelihood of functional, naturally-selectable intermediates, present overwhelming evidence that Darwinian mechanisms are Read More ›

Product Description Darwin’s Dilemma examines what many consider to be the most powerful refutation of Darwinian evolution – the Cambrian fossil record. Charles Darwin realized that the fossil evidence did not support his theory of gradual, step-by-step evolutionary development. He hoped that future generations of scientists would make the discoveries necessary to validate his ideas. Today, after more than 150 years of exploration fossil evidence of slow, incremental biological change has yet to be excavated. Instead, we find a picture of the rapid appearance of fully developed, complex organisms during the outset of the Cambrian geological era. Organisms that embody the major animal body plans that exist today. This remarkable explosion of life is truly Darwin’s Dilemma and is best Read More ›

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Review Of The Fifth Chapter Of Signature In The Cell By Stephen Meyer

Both Sean Carroll and Carl Zimmer have resigned as contributors from Bloggingheadstv.com (BhTV). Seems that BhTV founder and editor-in-chief Robert Wright could not assure them that no obviously wrong (crazy) person would appear on the site in the future, like me or (somewhat less crazy) Mike Behe, at least in the science segments.

There’s not a lot to say about this. Like all other humans, scientists use social inclusion and exclusion to mark the boundaries of their community. (I have seen this taken to near-comical extremes. In June 1999, while walking with me on a hillside gravel road to a fossil outcrop in Chengjiang, China, paleontologist David Bottjer turned abruptly on his heel and began walking swiftly in the opposite direction — away from the fossils, and back towards the bus. The reason? I had asked him casually how his day was going.) The whole business reminds one of high school cliques. If she is going to sit here, then I’m moving to another table. Read More ›

Bob Wright is taking hits for bringing the McWhorter Behe bloggingheads diavlog back online. Now Sean Caroll is leaving Bloggingheads. That’s what bullies do when they don’t get their way on the playground. Note that Sean says he didn’t actually listen to the diavlog! “The scientists involved with BH.tv were a little perturbed at the appearance of an ID proponent so quickly after we thought we understood that the previous example [Paul Nelson and Ron Numbers] had been judged a failed experiment. Emails went back and forth, and this morning we had a conference call with Bob Wright, founder of BH.tv. By the time it was over I personally didn’t want to be associated with the site any more.” “If Read More ›

[Update 8.31.09: The McWhorter-Behe interview is back online at Bloggingheads; Robert Wright, who heads Bloggingheads, was incommunicado during the interview’s removal and on his return to wired reality decided to put the dialogue back up. For his explanation of what happened, go here: bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/22075] [Update 8.28.09: Michael Behe has just posted his take on the bloggingheads matter — behe.uncommondescent.com] Isn’t the Internet wonderful. Bloggingheads takes down the Behe-McWhorter discussion one day. A few hours later it’s back up: View on ExposureRoom

Another interesting paper I have come across recently was published by the American Scientific Affiliation Hyung S. Choi , Knowledge of the Unseen: A New Vision for Science and Religion Dialogue, ‘Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith’ 53.2 (June 2001): 96-101. http://www.asa3.org/asa/pscf/2001/pscf6-01choi.html A few quotes: “While contemporary physics and cosmology take seriously the knowledge of invisible realities, the discussion of the unseen in religion has been largely neglected in the recent science-and-religion discussion. Neglecting the issue in theology is ultimately self- defeating since God is considered the Unseen. In light of contemporary understanding of the unseen in science, we contend that that there are significant parallels between scientific and theological claims concerning the unseen. The epistemic distinction between the seen Read More ›

Last evening I was talking to a friend about how my dad had to learn morse code when he was in the navy, and he related a funny design detection story (not that he put it in those terms). My friend had a cousin (we’ll call him Bill), and when he was a teenager Bill developed a nervous tapping habit, or so everyone thought.  One evening Bill’s family had an older couple over for dinner, and Bill was tapping away when both guests got red in the face and exclaimed “Bill!  What are you doing?”  It turns out Bill had been learning morse code and tapping on the table for practice.  The problem:  He was practicing with four letter words, and no one knew until the family Read More ›