The flagellum is a good example of what doesn’t work in purely naturalist explanations. None of it happened by chance unless you think masses of information can just suddenly pop into existence by chance. Wouldn’t that be magic? Miracle?
Irreducible Complexity
Irreducible complexity: Cilium edition
Of course, Darwinism is dead. It is the Darwin profs and the institutional structure that supports them who are very much alive.
Michael Behe on the “purposeful arrangement of parts”
Although Michael Behe, is associated with the concept of irreducible complexity, he now says he prefers to explain ID as “purposeful arrangement of parts.”
Ten (or so) Pro-Intelligent Design Books You Should Read
On the Design Disquisitions YouTube channel, I’ve posted a new video where I recommend several books of interest, specifically pro-ID literature. Most of the suggestions may be familiar to you, but hopefully there are a few that you’ve not read before. I also give a brief summary of the content of each book. I don’t Read More…
Karsten Pultz: Christian students in Denmark dig up the fossil of theistic evolution
Pultz: They find support in writings from the Biologos organization but also, weirdly enough, turn to atheist Stefaan Blancke and his paper “Irreducible incoherence and Intelligent Design: a look into the conceptual toolbox of a pseudoscience”. I guess the old saying that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” can be applied to this bizarre situation where young adherents to theistic evolution join ranks with atheists to prevent other young Christians from being drawn to ID.
Best depiction yet of the bacterial flagellum
As more of this type of information becomes available, expect the topic of irreducible complexity to be no longer discussable. When it can’t be debunked, it can be ruled undiscussable.
C. S. Lewis Society interviews Mike Behe
The author of Darwin Devolves, Edge of Evolution, and Darwin’s Black Box and The Edge of Evolution talks about the case for design in biology.
This amazing Rube Goldberg device happened just by accident in a mindless universe, you know
Sean Pitman: After all, anyone who has watched cartoons as a child knows what a Rube Goldberg machine is and that this machine will not work if any one part is removed. So, how can something evolve in a stepwise way where each step is functionally beneficial if there is no function until all the parts are in place?
Larry Moran’s thoughts on Michael Behe’s A Mousetrap for Darwin
Moran: he completely misses the point and fails to understand that what is being challenged is his misinterpretation of the mechanisms of evolution and his understanding of mutations.
We are the “irreducible complexity” community, they now say
Now at last, courtesy a science preprint, we have a name that makes sense to us. The “irreducible complexity community” — the ICs.
Not-yet-specialized cells seem to know where to go
Researchers: Tohoku University scientists have, for the first time, provided experimental evidence that cell stickiness helps them stay sorted within correct compartments during development. How tightly cells clump together, known as cell adhesion, appears to be enabled by a protein better known for its role in the immune system.
Film clip on the probability of a protein forming by chance passes 500k views
xcerpt: Putting the probabilities together means adding the exponents. The probability of getting a properly folded chain of one-handed amino acids, joined by peptide bonds, is one chance in 10^74+45+45, or one in 10^164 (Meyer, p. 212). This means that, on average, you would need to construct 10^164 chains of amino acids 150 units long to expect to find one that is useful.
Webinar with Michael Behe on his new Mousetrap book, November 21
The book is currently #2 in Biochemistry Science, #6 in Biochemistry (Books), and
#13 in Evolution (Kindle Store) at Amazon
Karsten Pultz on the recent Behe-Swamidass debate
Pultz: In my view, Swamidass excels as an expert in smokescreens; he can talk endlessly without nailing down tangible and memorable points. Although pressured more than once by Behe to deliver at least a single counter argument to IC, he did not come up with anything containing even a whiff of substance.
Because nature is full of intelligence, the more we learn, even about a worm, the less we “know”
Gilder on a researcher friend: “the more he learned about the brain of a nematode, the less he felt he knew… And the oceans of reality lay still far beyond his reach and beyond his ken.”