Larry Fafarman makes many excellent points and was banned at Panda’s Thumb for making them too often. He and I are fellow outcasts. I invited him to become an author here but he turned me down because he’s strongly against comment moderation and I’m just as strongly in favor of not allowing trolls to ruin the commenting environment for everyone. Anyhow, you can find the things I was hoping he’d write about for us at his new blog http://im-from-missouri.blogspot.com/ and I invite you all to give it a look.

If Miller ever makes an appearance in a public event to criticize ID, during the Q&A session, IDers should call him into account for why he misrepresented Michael Behe’s ideas under oath in Kitzmiller vs. Dover.

Casey Luskin, IDEA co-founder and attorney at the Discovery Institute, exposed the misrepresentations which Miller used in the trial. These misrepresentations were used by Judge Jones to unjustly criticize Michael Behe and Scott Minnich’s testimony.

Here is the link: Do Car Engines Run on Lugnuts?

An essay that employs Newcomb’s paradox to show how natural evil can be a consequence of human sin in a world where natural evil nonetheless exists before the advent of humanity: http://www.designinference.com/documents/2006.04.christian_theodicy.pdf.

When they came for the creation scientists,I remained silent;I was not a creation scientist. When they locked up the abortion protesters,I remained silent;I was not an abortion protester. When they came for the intelligent design theorists,I did not speak out;I was not an intelligent design theorist. When they came for the strongly religious,I did not speak out;I was not strongly religious. When they came for me,there was no one left to speak out.

Exercising a Native Intelligence Metric on an Autonomous On-Road Driving System The intelligence of artificial systems is well quantified by the amount of specified complexity inherent in the system representation, provided we have tools to measure it. Some may generally agree with this claim, but argue that it is simply intractable to successfully and accurately measure the specified complexity of any system, no matter how it was represented. We respond to this important and substantive criticism by performing a computation required by our intelligence metric on an example problem. We have chosen autonomous on-road driving, a problem that has already been solved by “systems” that are known to be both complex and specified, namely, humans. We will begin with a Read More ›

You must not miss this: http://cartagodelenda.blogspot.com/2006/04/great-debate.html

No matter whether we find randomly composed, unoptimized structures or whether we find super-optimized digital genetic codes, NeoDarwinian Evolution did it! There’s nothing it can’t do! Oh hold it… why does the phrase “because it explains everything, it explains nothing” come to mind right now? Read more about the theory of everything here.

The authorities in Pensacola, Florida are trying to bulldoze Kent Hovind’s Dinosaur Adventure Land over a building permit dispute. The buildings are all up to code, inspected and found sound, and have stood since 2002 through some of the worst hurricanes Florida has seen in decades. What is WRONG with everyone? I don’t believe people and dinosaurs lived together like the Flintstones but I sure as heck don’t think a theme park that purports that they did should be shut down because of how fashionalbe it is to bust chops on Christian young earth creationists. This really sucks. I can hardly believe this is the same country I defended in the Marine Corps 30 years ago. I’ve been to Disneyland Read More ›

This is an oldie but a goodie. It’s John Rennie, editor-in-chief of Scientific American, describing a dinner he attended with captains of industry such as Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel, and more than a dozen university presidents. He took the opportunity to harangue them about the sad state of affairs regarding the Kansas science standards and declining respect for the “fact” of NeoDarwinian theory. Their reaction was to politely tell him to go away as they had more important concerns about science education in America and those concerns had nothing to do with evolution. Rennie’s petulant reaction is just precious. SciAm Perspectives April 05, 2005 Cowardice, Creationism and Science Education: An Open Letter to the Universities Click here to read Read More ›

At Telic Thoughts, Mike Gene points out that PZ Myers would vote against tenure to an IDer: PZ Myers on Tenure and ID.

The question about tenure denial has been a question I’ve been trying to get reporters to inquire about since last Fall. As far as I can tell, the question has been mostly evaded or been obscured until recently.

If tenure is to be denied, how about hiring? If ID is grounds for denying tenure, then logically why should it stop there? How about the granting of PhDs, or master’s degrees, or bachelor’s degrees, or even entry into college? Read More ›

[From a colleague:] Sober is wrong in several ways. First, ID’s denial of it being religious does not rest on the fact that it does not specify the identity of the designer, but rather, the identity of the designer is irrelevant to the detection of design. Second, suppose someone in fact makes the argument that because nature cannot account for its own design, then only that which is outside of nature can do so. It seems to me that Sober’s rejection or acceptance of the argument should depend on its soundness or strength and not on its “religiosity.” Bringing in an argument’s religiosity as a reason to dismiss it seems to be a reversal of the genetic fallacy. We can Read More ›

It has come to my attention that Sober claims to be using Behe’s definition of irreducible complexity. Behe defines irreducible complexity as: A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning”. We can test this with structures like the flagellum through knockout experiments that remove bits of the structure so we can observe whether it continues to function. Thus the IC hypothesis makes predictions that can be tested. Sober predicts an intelligent agency that created the irreducibly complex structures in nature must itself be irreducibly complex. Can someone tell me how to go about removing bits Read More ›

Not much of a challenge. Sober’s argument is

1. If a system found in nature is irreducibly complex, then it was caused to exist by an intelligent designer.

2. Some of the minds found in nature are irreducibly complex.

3. Therefore some of the minds found in nature were caused to exist by an intelligent designer.

4. Any mind in nature that designs and builds an irreducibly complex system is itself irreducibly complex.

5. If the universe is finitely old and if cause precedes effect, then at least one of the minds found in nature was not created by any mind found in nature.

6. The universe is finitely old.

7. Causes precede their effects.

8. Therefore, there exists a supernatural intelligent designer.

Sober makes assumptions that ID does not.

Read More ›

Deciding whether the mini-ID theory has supernatural and religious implications is not as straightforward as seeing whether the word “God” appears in the statement “each irreducibly complex system found in nature was designed and produced by an intelligent being.” When independently plausible further assumptions are taken into account, the mini-ID theory entails the existence of a supernatural intelligent designer who made at least one of the minds found in nature. . . . The point I would make here is a different one – as Pennock (1999) notes, the Darwinian theory of evolution is silent on the question of whether a supernatural intelligent designer exists. This is not true of the mini-ID theory. In terms of the contents of theories, Read More ›

Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220 Nature paper shows that cell division is reversible Article: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-04/omrf-rpn041006.php Paper: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7086/pdf/nature04652.pdf Video: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7086/extref/nature04652-s6.mov