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Intelligent Design

Design and engineering of an O2 transport protein

Here is another way to use ID: Nature 458, 305-309 (19 March 2009) Ronald L. Koder1,2,3, J. L. Ross Anderson1,2, Lee A. Solomon1, Konda S. Reddy1, Christopher C. Moser1 & P. Leslie Dutton1 The principles of natural protein engineering are obscured by overlapping functions and complexity accumulated through natural selection and evolution. Completely artificial proteins offer a clean slate on which to define and test these protein engineering principles, while recreating and extending natural functions. Here we introduce this method with the design of an oxygen transport protein, akin to human neuroglobin. Beginning with a simple and unnatural helix-forming sequence with just three different amino acids, we assembled a four-helix bundle, positioned histidines to bis-histidine ligate haems, and exploited helical Read More ›

Academic freedom for creation explanation

Reuben Kendall, freshman at UT-Martin, has written a thoughtful view point regarding Evolution vs Intelligent Design. He raises important points on metaphysical presumptions vs data. He raises the question of Academic Freedom which incorporates the foundational unalienable freedoms of speech and religion. May I encourage readers to write editorials and viewpoints raising such issues and standing up for our inalienable rights.
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Academic freedom for creation explanation
Reuben Kendall, Issue date: 3/17/09 Section: Viewpoints

As a freshman, I haven’t been at UT-Martin for very long. But some problems are so obvious that they don’t take very long to notice.

In my studies I quickly realized that when it comes to the theory of evolution, Darwin is the only one who gets to answer questions-or ask them.

I want to question this theory-to test it; check its credentials. And I want honest, thoughtful answers to my questions, not pre-formulated quips and deflections.
But I have learned that if I’m not an evolutionist, my questions don’t get credited, or even heard.
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My post at MercatorNet: Wild animals are not people

Looking at the story from a traditional Christian perspective, I would pass on the question of whether Herold is a horrible person. I agree that Travis is not a horrible chimp. The very idea is an irrelevance; he is a chimp, period, and therefore not responsible for his actions. Read More ›

A Search Algorithm, And A Prize

There has been some discussion at UD about computational search algorithms, which is one of my specialties. Just for fun, I’ve included some C source code here (as a .txt file), which is part of a research project. I’ll send a free set of my classical piano albums to the first person who runs the code and publishes the program output in the comments below, along with a correct guess as to what the ultimate purpose of the search algorithm is. Please provide the following information: CPU clock speed and compiler used. EIL members are not eligible.

Does “A Well-Lived Life” Have Meaning?

Charles Murray recently recounted an experience in Europe:    Last April I had occasion to speak in Zurich, where I made some of these same points. After the speech, a few of the twenty-something members of the audience approached and said plainly that the phrase “a life well-lived” did not have meaning for them. They were having a great time with their current sex partner and new BMW and the vacation home in Majorca, and saw no voids in their lives that needed filling.   It was fascinating to hear it said to my face, but not surprising. It conformed to both journalistic and scholarly accounts of a spreading European mentality. Let me emphasize “spreading.” I’m not talking about all Read More ›

New Scientist pulls post for legal reasons?

It was just one of their usual screeds attacking intelligent design sympathizers, non-materialists, and anyone who doubts, generally. Apparently, someone complained, but – although the post mentions me, – I wasn’t the one. Go here for more.

Evidence Against Chance and Necessity (Also Known As Darwinism) is Evidence for Design

In another thread, poster madsen presented the following challenge:

I’m holding out hope that the next post will concern positive evidence for ID rather than more critiques of Darwin.

In mathematics there is a method of proof called “proof by contradiction.” The logic behind this proof is the following: Establish two possible alternatives. Assume that one of the alternatives is true, and prove it to be logically contradictory. A superb example of proof by contradiction is Euclid’s (circa 300 BC) proof that the number of primes is infinite.

Let’s apply the method of proof by contradiction to the chance-and-necessity versus design debate.
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Darwinists Tie Themselves Into Knots Denying the Obvious

Some Darwinists will say anything to try to draw attention away from the obvious.  The point of my “Scientific Certitude” post was to show that evolutionary theory has been used to support racist views.  Darwin was a firmly committed racist, and he was not shy about expressing his racist views:

 

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world.  At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated.  The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”  Charles R. Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd ed. (1871; reprint, London: John Murray, 1922), 241-42.

 

While Darwin was still alive his contemporaries took his racism/evolution link and ran with it.  For example, Ernst Haeckl, the great popularizer of Darwin’s theories on the continent wrote: Read More ›

Note to UD Contributors

The moderation policy does not apply to you; you are held to a higher standard. I expect your posts to have at least some tangential relationship to Darwinism, ID, or the metaphysical or moral implications of each. The purpose of this site is not to provide a place for you to jump up and rant on one of your pet peeves.  DaveScot will no longer be posting at UD.

Scientific Certitude 100 years ago

From the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1911): “[T]he negro would appear to stand on a lower evolutionary plane than the white man, and to be more closely related to the highest anthropoids.” “Mentally the negro is inferior to the white.” “[A]fter puberty sexual matters take the first place in the negro’s life and thought.”

AI, Materialist Dodgeball and a Place at the Table

Ari N. Schulman, “Why Minds Are Not Like Computers,” The New Atlantis, Number 23, Winter 2009, pp. 46-68.
Article Review

“The problem, therefore, is not merely that science is being used illegitimately to promote a materialistic worldview, but that this worldview is actively undermining scientific inquiry.”—UncommonDescent

Read the entire article here.

Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from the article, “Why Minds Are Not Like Computers,” are italicized.

Mr. Schulman walks the tightrope of analysis and criticism, describing how a materialistic worldview actively undermines scientific inquiry in the area of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Analysis and (self-criticism) should be part of all scientific endeavor; the strict materialist does no such thing; instead, he plays dodgeball.

Much of the article, especially the discussions of the brain, computers, Turing Machines, the Turing Test, and the Chinese Room Problem were all helpful in understanding the state of affairs in AI for the layman. My comments are those of a such a layman, included that you might see what a layman might take from such an article. Never-the-less, questions remain . . .

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A Word About Our Moderation Policy

Some commenters have raised questions regarding the propriety of recent posts and UD’s moderation policy. UD’s moderation policy is fairly simple: As a general rule, so long as your comment is not defamatory profane, or a vicious personal attack, you can say pretty much what you want. We have no interest in censoring viewpoints, because we believe ID is true and consequently in any full and fair debate we will win — and if we don’t win we either need to learn to debate better or change our position. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not opening this site up to nasty juvenile name-calling fests like one see so often at Panda’s Thumb.  But if you keep your comments restricted to Read More ›

Richard Dawkins and Our “Purpose Driven” Brains

Richard Dawkins has been back in the U.S.touring college campuses and giving lectures on the Purpose of Purpose. I use this link because it appears that Darwinian Wes Elsberry has done a pretty fair job of taking notes and reporting on Dawkins’s lecture at Michigan State in East Lansing. I did not attend the lecture, but will assume Elsberry’s accuracy in capturing the gist of Dawkins’s lecture. The main theme of the talk is summarized here:

Then Dawkins got to the essential framework of the rest of his talk, making a distinction within purpose between the purpose that comes about as adaptation via natural selection, which he called “archi-purpose”, and the purpose that comes about through the intent of a planning brain, which he called “neo-purpose”. Archi-purpose, then, resembles an intentional purpose, but is not such: the resemblance is an illusion. Neo-purpose, as Dawkins views it, is itself an evolved adaptation.

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