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Being able to reject chance as an explanation is critical to identifying design. The way to do this is to compare the structure of an artifact against some pattern that can help us rule out chance as an explanation. Sometimes designers can anticipate the knowledge of observers in order to craft designs which can be recognized as designs. They can structure it according to a pre-existing pattern that the supposed observer has in their inventory or some pattern that read more

Luke Barnes has been mentioned favorably twice at Uncommon Descent. I mentioned him in Nuclear Physicist asks, “Why is PZ Myers so dumb?” and slams Victor Stenger to boot. VJ Torley mentioned him favorably in Is fine tuning a fallacy. I “learned” intro cosmology from Barbara Ryden’s book, but I put “learned” in quotes because compared to Luke I know nothing, both about cosmology and about physics. I admit I had to crawl in order to understand one fraction of Dr. Barne’s paper The Fine Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life which was highly critical of Victor Stenger’s claims. Because of that paper, Luke became an instant celebrity in ID circles like Uncommon Descent. However, Luke recently offered some Read More ›

The fallacious results of the Avida computer simulation were used in the infamous Kitmiller vs. Dover trial to argue in favor of Darwinian evolution. Using the evidence from the Avida simulation and other testimony, Judge Jones ruled that it is illegal to contest Darwinism for all time. Prosecution witness Robert Pennock claimed in sworn testimony that Avida solved the problem of Irreducible Complexity (IC). Unfortunately the incompetent defense team wasn’t privy to later discoveries by me and Richard Hoppe, namely, that Avida offers solutions to the OOL problem and predicts the possibility of a Zombie Apocalypse through cosmic radiation. It would have been read more

Larry Moran wrote: If Salvador Cordova can put together an audience of biology students at a reputable university (George Mason?) and get an Intelligent Design Creationist to ask these questions, I’ll be happy to come and answer them. … Some of them are easy to answer. The best answer is “I don’t know.” That is very kind of you Larry. I will even do one better, I will suggest biology students take your classes. Really I don’t think I have to even make that plug, because I’m sure they probably have to take your classes anyway. Many of my professors were openly anti ID and have campaigned against ID, such as James Trefil and Robert Ehrlich. Their anti-ID views did Read More ›

The ID-friendly version of Natural Selection was pioneered by the creationist Blyth. I have also argued that there is credible evidence that Darwin plagiarized and distorted Blyth’s work. I view Natural Selection as itself a design feature of optimization and search. Whereas Darwinist view natural selection as a mechanism of design, I view natural selection as feature of design. This essay was also partly written to correct and clarify some of my earlier choice of words in Same pattern, different implementations. When we find designs that cannot be implemented via selection, I consider that strong evidence of design. However, finding possible evidence that selection is a feature of a biological system doesn’t automatically imply there is no Designer. In fact, Read More ›