Intelligent Design

On another forum I was alerted to the following, concerning scientific consensus and the debate about continental drift that raged in the first half of the twentieth century: ³The verdict of paleontologists is practically unanimous: almost all agree in opposing [Alfred Wegener’s hypothesis that the continents used to be one land mass and have since drifted apart]… The fact that almost all paleontologists say that the paleontological data oppose the various theories of continental drift should, perhaps, obviate further discussion of this point … It must be almost unique in scientific history for a group of students admittedly without special competence in a given field thus to reject the all but unanimous verdict of those who do have such competence.² Read More ›

Synopsis Of The Third Chapter Of Nature’s IQ By Balazs Hornyanszky and Istvan Tasi
ISBN 978-0-9817273-0-1

What properties of the four forces of nature predict linguistic sequences? Or can an intelligent cause be inferred from the discovery and decryption of hieroglyphics?

That is the foundational challenge to Darwinism in explaining the discovery and deciphering of the Indus hieroglyphs.

Four-thousand years ago, an urban civilization lived and traded on what is now the border between Pakistan and India. During the past century, thousands of artifacts bearing hieroglyphics left by this prehistoric people have been discovered. Today, a team of Indian and American researchers are using mathematics and computer science to try to piece together information about the still-unknown script.
The team led by a University of Washington researcher has used computers to extract patterns in ancient Indus symbols. The study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows distinct patterns in the symbols’ placement in sequences and creates a statistical model for the unknown language. Read More ›

Genes may be freely shared around, but where did they come from is the first place? Collectivist revolution in evolution Mark Buchanan Nature Physics 5, 531 (2009) doi:10.1038/nphys1352 excerpts “A coming revolution in biology, may go so far as to unseat Darwinian evolution as the key explanatory process in biology. The evidence for this radical turnabout has been accruing at an accelerating pace. A fair fraction of most bacterial genomes have been acquired not solely through inheritance from earlier generations, but also through horizontal gene transfer. DNA flows readily between bacterial chromosomes and the external world. Such gene flow exerts an enormous influence on evolutionary dynamics. This was first suspected when a number of bacteria around the world rapidly gained Read More ›

Over at Amazon in the Physics/Cosmology section, Dr. Meyer’s book got the surprise ranking ahead of Stephen Hawking’s book, A Brief History in Time. There is a section on cosmology and the origin of life in Signature in the Cell. Here are the Amazon Stats: Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design Hardcover: 624 pages Publisher: HarperOne (June 23, 2009) Amazon.com Sales Rank: #799 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books) Popular in these categories: #1 in Books > Science > Astronomy > Cosmology #1 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Theology > Creationism #1 in Books > Science > Physics > Cosmology Congratulations Dr. Meyer!

UD bloggers tend not to automatically follow the experts or the party line. Check out this MSNBC debate between two US Congressmen on whether Global Warming was caused by CO2. When the “denier” started to look as if he was winning on the science, the debate moderator inferred he was a creationist and anti-science. He then forced both men to profess their belief in EVOLUTION. Watch in fear! SORRY THE VIDEO HAS BEEN TAKEN DOWN. TOO UNCOMFORTABLE FOR THEM? A transcript is available here. Anyone who finds the video again please let us know. Here is another one like the other one. http://www.youtube.com/watch? Another is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?

In “A God who bleeds” (July 31, 2009), Jonah Goldberg notes,

Oprah promised Obama would help us “evolve to a higher plane.” Deepak Chopra said Obama’s presidency represented “a quantum leap in American consciousness.” Last month, Newsweek editor Evan Thomas proclaimed that Obama stood “above the country, above — above the world, he’s sort of God.”

Well, however you would vote, you gotta feel at least a bit sorry for a guy who was supposed to be a “quantum leap” and help us all “evolve to a higher plane.”

Popular Darwinism doesn’t need a laugh track, that’s for sure.

Aw, while we’re here anyway, new at The Post-Darwinist Read More ›

I have just posted my review of Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God on my university website. Although the book does not spend many pages on ID in name, she clearly objects to the broadly natural theological mentality that provides support for ID. Hers is a very consistently anti-rationalist case for religion.  I’m sure there are people attracted to the position but not me. You can respond to my review here or there.  No doubt I’m not alone in finding it more instructive to review books by those with whom I disagree.

A while back, I wrote to a correspondent about the infant grasping reflex.

He had written to say that some Darwinist somewhere was fronting the ability of human infants to hang on a couple of minutes as evidence of common descent with chimpanzees, and wondered how I could possibly deal with this evidence. (Well, I guess it would buy the human infant a couple of minutes of life, right? Not an attractive prospect, in my view. Better look elsewhere for human survival.)

Look, I do not have a problem with common descent, until its advocates get up on their hind legs and start arguing for it. One gets some of the worst arguments in the world, fronted by vast academic paraphernalia – and, very often, implied threats if one doesn’t agree thrown in.

Now, the story in question raised the question of what counts as evidence of common descent. Read More ›

Once upon a time people thought that the sun revolved around the earth because this was intuitive. They were wrong. Once upon a time people thought that the moon revolved around the earth because it was intuitive. They were right. Therefore, intuition can’t be trusted. Good enough. Evidence eventually confirmed the truth in both cases. Then along came neo-Darwinism in the 20th century. Intuition and the simple mathematics of combinatorics suggest that random errors and throwing out stuff that doesn’t work can’t account for highly complex information-processing machinery and the information it processes in biological systems. There is no evidence, hard science, or mathematical analysis that can give any credibility to the proposed power of the Darwinian mechanism in this Read More ›

I recently posted on op-ed in which I described that the concern in the 1970s was not global warming but global cooling (go here). Critics of that piece are now claiming that I’m misrepresenting the fabulous 70s and that “science” back then was not in fact claiming that the earth was cooling. I recall seeing cited some literature on global cooling from that time, so I wrote the op-ed from memory. I since went to that trusted source — Wikipedia — and looked up the article on “global cooling.” It begins (go here): Global cooling was a conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere along with a posited commencement of glaciation. This hypothesis never Read More ›

I wanted to highlight a friend’s blog dedicated to “Mocking Scientism, Evolutionism, & the Arrogance of the Academy. Warning of the Dangers of Technological “Enhancement” of Human Beings. Exploring the Logic of Intelligent Design.” It covers a nice variety of topics from a new perspective.

DNA & Intelligent Design Date: 07-28-09 Host: George Noory Guest: Stephen Meyer Stephen C. Meyer will discuss recent discoveries in cell biology which support intelligent design and reveal that digital computers and living cells are operating on the same principles. SOURCE: www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2009/07/28

Uncommon Descent: Contest Question 7: “Foul anonymous Darwinist blogger exposed. Why so foul?” featured the opposite outcome from Contest Question 6. Only one person entered Question 6 (winner announced here), possibly because most of us are sick of hearing the term “crisis” used to mean any situation (in this case, genomics) that someone finds upsetting. That’s good news, really. Maybe we’ll go back to saving “crisis” for the next eruption of Krakatoa or Pinatubo. Basically, there are no “crises” in cosmology or genome mapping.

Anyway, by contrast, 198 people responded to Contest Question 7. Now, to recap, the topic had come up unexpectedly. An avatar blogger, “Canadian Cynic,” had been posting obscenities for years against Canadian women (wives, mothers, grandmothers, sisters, daughters) who espoused traditional values. I somehow got in his sights because of my interest in the intelligent design controversy.

The problem wasn’t so much with the vile stuff he said but with the fact that no one knew who he was. But the enterprising Wendy Sullivan, the “Girl on the Right”, found out, and allowed the world (his clients, colleagues, suppliers, acquaintances, neighbours, anyone who might be interested, really) to know that that is how he spends his time when he is not developing or writing about software.

That’s all we wanted, really. Just to end the secrecy. The rest, we were pretty sure, would take care of itself. Okay, so that’s history, but it raised an interesting question for Contest 7: Why do so many Darwinists spout so much filth, hostility, and aimless detraction?

In other words, why would stuff that earns applause at Panda’s Thumb and After the Bar Closes get you kicked out of Uncommon Descent? And, incidentally, Darwin and his associates would doubtless be much more comfortable at Uncommon Descent than at Panda’s Thumb or After the Bar Closes? What cultural change does this signify?

The part I find most interesting is that in polls, people like Canadian Cynic would doubtless proclaim themselves great defenders of the rights of women, more volubly maybe than men who would never behave that way in print.

Most of our 198 entries responded to one aspect or another of this charged issue., but a number were genuine entries. After reading them over and thinking about them, I found I could not choose between two entries, EndoplasmicMessenger at 105 and Cannuckian Yankee at 163, so I am declaring them joint winners. Both need to provide me with a postal address at oleary@sympatico.ca if they wish to receive their free copy of the Expelled DVD.

Here are their entries, reproduced: Read More ›

My friend Paul Nelson has the patience of Job. He writes that evolutionists, such as PZ Myers and Jerry Coyne, “need to think about [their theological arguments] more deeply.” In one moment evolutionists make religious arguments and in the next they claim their theory is “just science.” Their religious arguments, they explain, really aren’t religious arguments after all. Gee, that was easy. In light of such absurdity, I don’t have much confidence that evolutionists are going to think more deeply about this. But it would be nice if they would stop misrepresenting science. And it would be nice if they would stop using their credentials to mislead the public. In short, it would be nice if they would stop lying. Read More ›