Intelligent Design

Contest question 3:

Question: In 400 words, to be judged in two weeks, and printed as a post: What do we really know about human evolution that could not simply be overturned by a new find? The winner will receive a free copy of Expelled. (Sorry for delay judging this one. I was at a science writers’ convention up north.)

Winning entry:

We can know that random changes in human DNA produce undesirable results such as cystic fibrosis. This observation holds true even if the traditional “change agents” such as copying errors are replaced by others, as the link between the altered DNA and corresponding defects is well established. These observed changes have also produced a generation in which it is undesirable for closely related men and women to reproduce. These observable traits of mutations can certainly be extrapolated back to any previous generation possessed DNA subject to change.

This is a proposed a quality, or fact, about observable evolution. It is not the same as a rote fact about humanity (brain capacity etc.). It is not shown that damaged DNA has produced any quantifiable or observable trait except those involving defects, however there is a direct and provable correspondence between altered DNA and the consequences listed above.

Notice any claims of beneficial mutations (I know, but pretend with me) do not undo this claim since undesirable effects are certainly observed. The reverse is not true, as the idea of beneficial mutations stands to be disproved as a statistical impossibility as the complexity of the information found in DNA becomes more evident. The other way to reverse this observation would be to claim that human DNA in the past was not changeable, but that ends the debate anyway.

JoeNC, the author of the post, needs to be in touch with me at oleary@sympatico.ca, with a valid postal address, so I can mail him his prize. His name will not be added to a mailing list.

Why I liked this one: Read More ›

Stephen Barr, one of the most prominent Theistic Evolutionists today, and philosopher Stephen Webb have an often heated debate about the metaphysical implications of Darwinism over at FT’s blog.  Here, here, here and here.

Listed below are some events with Dr. Stephen Meyer. I expect more to be forthcoming!

Those of us who are part of promoting ID know how hard it is to get churches to appreciate the importance of ID. Most of the biology teachers who opposed ID at Dover were professing Christians and Sunday School teachers. The unfortunate situation in Dover is not unique. Darwinism has remained in the culture because churches have allowed it to spread. Churches have allowed it to spread because they are unwilling to engage the facts but rather resort to theology.

I often get harsh reactions from fellow creationists when I tell them they have to stop arguing theology and start engaging the facts. Recall the words of the father of modern ID, Phil Johnson, “Get the Bible and the Book of Genesis out of the debate.”

Theistic evolution can be successfully opposed in the churches by arguing the facts. Maybe your experience is different than mine, but I’ve not known a single individual who was truly converted away from Darwinism by purely theological means or trying to pound them over the head with theology and the Bible…

With that in mind, I am happy to report the following ID events, two of which will be at churches, and one where I hope to be present (in McLean, Virginia, near Washington, DC):

Read More ›

Conservation of information as developed in several articles (see the publications page at www.evoinfo.org) by Robert Marks and me has come in for criticism not only conceptually but also terminologically. None of the conceptual criticisms has in our view succeeded. To be sure, more such criticisms are likely to be forthcoming. But as this work increasingly gets into the peer-reviewed literature, it will be harder and harder to dismiss. That leaves the terminological criticism. Some have objected that a conservation law requires that the quantity in question remain unchanged. Take conservation of energy, which states that in an isolated system energy may change forms but total energy remains constant. Some have argued that what we are calling conservation of information Read More ›

In “Can a machine change your mind?” at Open Democracy, Jane O’Grady argues that “The mind is not the brain. Confusing the two, as much neuro-social-science does, leads to a dehumanised world and a controlling politics” (25 – 05 – 2009)

The most irritating (to us lay people) aspect of philosophical and scientific attempts to reduce the mental to the neural, and to squash down human beings into being on all fours with other physical things, is that their proponents nearly always say that actually they are just putting the truth about consciousness more clearly and taking nothing away from our experience. Like politicians deviously withdrawing privileges, they expect us to be quite happy about this. Some developments of identity theory, however, are more upfront. They force consciousness into equivalence with lightning and water by impugning the ignorance of us ordinary people. The way we talk about sensations, memories and beliefs is, say eliminative materialists, hopelessly antiquated, a form of ‘folk psychology’ as hidebound and superstition-laden as talk about witches, or about epileptics being possessed by devils. ‘Folk psychology’ is a theory about how humans function, they say, that is pathetically inadequate in both describing and predicting. In time, a more scientifically sophisticated vocabulary will replace it.

Well, she is certainly right about the controlling politics!

Almost all totalitarian political systems in the last two hundred years have begun with an account of the human mind that assumes that it is completely understandable in terms of the latest theory (whether of race, blood, genes, neurons, molecules … oh, who knows?).

Free societies, by contrast, simply state what you are not allowed to do if you live here. How you came to be what you are and what – if anything – you plan to do about it is, within reason, your own business, really.

That is part of what makes a free society.

Also just up at The Mindful Hack: Read More ›

My book The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World is due out November 1, 2009, but likely will be available early September. It is my response to the neo-atheism of Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett, etc. For the introductory material to this book, including the first chapter, go here. For the endorsements, go here. To pre-purchase on Amazon, go here.

Holy kazoo!

Even Nature isn’t buying the hype about the “missing link”? How soon can we get “evolutionary psychology” be relegated to the tabs and the funny papers?

A hyped-up fossil find highlights the potential dangers of publicity machines.
Last week’s publication of paper describing a 47-million-year-old fossil primate with a remarkable degree of preservation (see http://tinyurl.com/oycvo8) prompted a trickle of news in The Daily Mail that quickly swelled to a flood of media coverage.

In normal circumstances, the interpretation of the specimen given in the paper (J. L. Franzen et al. PLoS ONE 4, e5723; 2009) would have been no more contentious than that of any other fossil primate, and a good deal less so than some.

[ … ]

But the circumstances surrounding the paper’s publication were anything but normal. Before the paper had even been submitted to the journal, Atlantic, a production company based in New York, had commissioned a television documentary and an accompanying book about the find. Just a week after the paper appeared, the book has been published and the documentary has been aired on the History Channel in the United States, as well as Britain’s BBC and Norway’s NRK.

Uh, yeah. They may not have the science, but they sure have the spotlight.

Also, just up at The Post-Darwinist: Read More ›

In “Does Dark Energy Really Exist? Or does Earth occupy a very unusual place in the universe?” physicist Timothy Clifton and astrophysicist Pedro G. Ferreira argue just that: If we give up the Copernican principle, we do not need dark energy to explain the composition of the universe.(Scientific American, March 23, 2009)

Copernican principle? Dark energy? Read More ›

Interesting brief article in the Dallas Morning News about Don McLeroy, head of the Texas State Board of Education: Texas Senate rejects confirmation of conservative education board chief Don McLeroy 12:00 AM CDT on Friday, May 29, 2009 By TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News tstutz+@dallasnews.com AUSTIN – The Senate rejected Republican Don McLeroy’s nomination as chairman of the State Board of Education on Thursday after Democrats decried his lack of leadership and “endless culture wars” over evolution and other volatile topics. Sen. Leticia Van de Putte said that the State Board of Education has become a ‘laughingstock of the nation’ under nearly two years of Don McLeroy’s leadership. Along strict party lines, the Senate voted 19-11 for McLeroy, Read More ›

This Sunday, May 30, Wilberforce Forum will feature a special online radio program featuring Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, Director and Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture. He’ll be discussing his new book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, demonstrating that the digital code embedded in DNA points to a designing intelligence and brings into focus an issue that Darwin did not address. Go to www.blogtalkradio.com/wilberforceforum at 6 pm EST, 3 pm PST this Sunday to listen, and ask Dr. Meyer a question by calling in or by posting in the conference forum online.

In Probability’s nature and nature’s probability: A call to scientific integrity, information scientist Donald E. Johnson tackles, among other things, the origin of life.

Johnson takes on the aimless speculation that characterizes so much consensus science today on such issues:

… one should not be able to get away with stating “it is possible that life arose from non-life by …” without first demonstrating that it is indeed possible (defined in the nature of probability) using known science. One could, of course, state “it may be speculated that …,” but such a statement wouldn’t have the believability that its author intends to convey by the pseudo-scientific pronouncement.”(p. 5)

I am so fed up with pseudoscientific pronouncements on the origin of life that I decided to cover all such stories at my Colliding Universes blog, along with speculations about the end of the universe – rather than at Post-Darwinist, where many claims – whether well-supported or not – have at least some basis in fact.

This is a great book for scientists with a background in probability who want to understand why there is a controversy over design in the universe.

Also today at Colliding Universes: Read More ›

I just picked up this article at PhysOrg.com. The kinds of things that scientists are up to these days are quite interesting. Here’s a sample: Researchers design and build networks of genes, splicing them into bacterial genomes to run specific tasks or manufacture desired molecules – a process akin to installing biological computer software. Though the field is rapidly advancing, the gene-based tools available to synthetic biologists remain limited. I found the allusion to “installing computer software” quite compelling. Will these ‘synthetic biologists’ be the ones to settle for us the question of whether intelligence is present in the genome? This work is in the May 29th issue of Science, for those who have online access.

Normally one would expect a story such as this one to be in the National Enquirer. However, in this case, the story presents some interesting features which may have ramifications for the scientific application of ID.
In this case, the Russian scientist is claiming that back in 1908 an ET deliberately flew their spacecraft into a large meteorite to protect our planet. The crash took place in what is called the Tunguska site, somewhere in Siberia. According to Wikipedia, the impact was probably equivalent to a 10-15 megaton nuke. Pretty powerful for 1908. You can see a photo in the Wiki link. Read More ›

[This just in:]

New Website on Faith and Evolution Explores
if the Two are Friends or Foes?

Find out at FaithandEvolution.Org

SEATTLE – In recent years, debates over faith and evolution have continued to intensify. On the one hand, “new atheists” like Richard Dawkins have insisted that Darwinian evolution makes it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. On the other hand, “new theistic evolutionists” like Francis Collins have assured people that Darwin’s theory is perfectly compatible with faith and need have no damaging cultural consequences.

Who is right? And why does it matter? A new website being launched today at www.faithandevolution.org by the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute explores the issue in-depth.

“FaithandEvolution.Org is for anyone who wants to dig deeper into the scientific, social, and spiritual issues raised by Darwin’s theory, but who is tired of the limited options they are currently being offered by the media,” says Dr. John West, Associate Director of the Center.

“Increasingly, the only voices being heard in the faith and evolution conversation come from two wings of the evolution lobby: atheist evolutionists like Richard Dawkins, and a handful of theistic evolutionists like Francis Collins. But there are a lot of thoughtful scientists and scholars who are skeptical of Darwin’s theory whose views aren’t being heard.” Read More ›