Science

Every now and again it’s good to remind ourselves of just how misguided methodological naturalism is. It is a straitjacket whose donning we wisely decline. Yet many outfitters urge the contrary. Some, like Francis Collins, thinks that it’s de rigueur for science but that it poses no obstacle to religious belief. Barbara Forrest begs to differ: The relationship between methodological naturalism and philosophical [metaphysical] naturalism, although not that of logical entailment, is not such that philosophical naturalism is a mere logical possibility.” In “Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism: Clarifying the Connection” Philo, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2000, p. 7. But if Forrest is correct, then methodological naturalism has religious implications (or anti-religious implications, which are the same thing), in which Read More ›

Nicola Scafetta has demonstrated that Diffusion Entropic Analysis can identify physical phenomena underlying complex time series, including non-Gaussian Levy and other series. This appears an important development in detecting complex physical phenomena resulting in time series measurements.

Scafetta’s work promises to be important in detecting and distinguishing Complex Specified Information from natural complex phenomena. e.g. for Jill Tarter of SETI to detect and distinguish extra terrestrial communications from complex natural phenomena. Read More ›

Even if compressed I’ve always thought that the known informational content was not enough data. This makes sense because from an engineering point of view because there doesn’t seem to be enough data storage space in a few billion base pairs of nuclear DNA to specify all the detail in a mammal or similarly complex animal. It’s enough room to store a component library of the nuts and bolts required to build individual cells of different types but not the whole animal.

Obviously no one can argue against the assertion that we do not fully comprehend the biological code. Unlike with computer code we cannot simply determine at a glance which informational content defines what biological function. The title of geneticist Sermonti’s book is “Why a Fly is not a Horse”. In it he writes the only thing we know for certain about why a horse is a horse and not a fly is because its mother was a horse.

Thus, based on our current level of knowledge, any calculations that quantify biological informational content are going to be rough estimates. Personally, when measuring the functional sequence complexity of code encoding proteins I’ve long biased any calculations I do by rounding up to several extra informational bits. And this action seems justified by this recent news: Read More ›

Check out this video at TED. Note the phrase “finding new patterns in the information.” That’s the business of ID. Can the AlloSphere be used as an engine for detecting design? Here’s the link.

 On 31 March, I gave one of the keynote addresses at the annual meeting of the British Sociological Association’s Religion Study Group in Durham. This meant that I could not watch the first airing of ‘Did Darwin Kill God?’ on BBC2.  I recommend that you watch this show over the next couple of days, while it’s still available on-line at the BBC website. It may be the most sophisticated treatment of this general topic on television, though as you’ll see from my comments below I found it profoundly unsatisfying. The person who scripted and presents the programme is Conor Cunningham, an academic theologian, about whom more below. Even those who disagree with his take on things – as I do – should welcome what he has done here. The challenge is to do better. Read More ›

It appears we have some good news in Texas: Big Win in Texas as State Now Leads Nation in Requiring Critical Analysis of Evolution in High School Science Classes Robert Crowther In a huge victory for those who favor teaching the scientific evidence for and against evolution, Texas today moved to the head of the class by requiring students to “critique” and examine “all sides of scientific evidence” and specifically requiring students to “analyze and evaluate” the evidence for major evolutionary concepts such as common ancestry, natural selection, and mutations. “Texas has sent a clear message that evolution should be taught as a scientific theory open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can’t be questioned,” said Dr. Read More ›

Here’s a quote from THE CHRISTIAN ORDER going back more than a decade: The Pontifical Academy of Evolutionists Despite being widely accepted even at the highest level in the Church, there has never been any authoritative teaching approving of evolution. Hence the reaction of the worldwide media to the Pope’s message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on October 25th 1996. The ambiguous phrase that evolution is “more than just a theory” was greeted with glee by the materialistic press as an official admission of the collapse, under the weight of scientific research, of the Church’s traditional beliefs in Adam and Eve and any literal sense of Genesis.(37) Yet by no stretch of wishful thinking can the Pope’s message, arguably Read More ›

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 ›

Back in January I posted this comment to ask what is science’s “rightful place.” Now it seems we’re getting a clearer picture of the answer as far as the President is concerned. Fox News is reporting that President Obama to issue an executive order on Monday that would lift the restrictions on embryonic stem cell research put in place under President Bush.

Regardless of one’s opinion or position on this issue, there are a couple points of concern with respect to this story. First is this comment Read More ›

Scientists have been too dogmatic about scientific truth and sociologists have fostered too much scepticism — social scientists must now elect to put science back at the core of society, says Harry Collins. Read more…

A recent bill introduced into the Iowa State Legislature has prompted the defenders of Darwinian Dogma to issue the following statement:

STATEMENT BY IOWA FACULTY ON HF 183: THE EVOLUTION ACADEMIC FREEDOM ACT

We, the undersigned members of institutions of higher learning in Iowa, urge our legislators to reject passage of “The Evolution Academic Freedom Act” (HF 183) introduced by Rod Roberts (R-Carroll). The language of this bill comes primarily from the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which has conducted lobbying efforts and political activism against the teaching of evolution since 1994.

Evolution is as established a scientific theory as any other theory in science. It is misleading to claim that there is any controversy or dissent within the vast majority of the scientific community regarding the scientific validity of evolutionary theory. Since there is no real dissent within the scientific community, then “academic freedom” for alternative theories is simply a mechanism to introduce religious or non-scientific doctrines into our science curriculum.

Similar efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution in schools repeatedly have been found to be unconstitutional, something witnessed most recently in Kitzmiller v. Dover (2005) in Pennsylvania.

We, therefore, urge our legislators to recognize HF183 as part of a long history of creationist assaults on science education, and reject passage of this bill.

Read More ›

[youtube cL9Wu2kWwSY] Welcome to the age of information.

I am pleased to say that an audio version (MP3) of my play ‘Lincoln and Darwin — Live for One Night Only!’ is now on-line at ‘The Sci-Phi Show’, courtesy of Jason Rennie, the Sydneyside philosophical broadcaster. Here it is, just in time for Lincoln and Darwin’s 200th birthday (tomorrow). The play runs to 85 minutes and is premised on Lincoln and Darwin coming on one of today’s TV chat shows to talk about has happened since they died.  Each then is given the option of staying in 2009 or returning to the 19th century. One decides to stay and the other goes.  The play was originally staged in Liverpool in September 2008 as part of the annual meeting of the British Read More ›