Does Lynn Margulis’s endosymbiosis story resolve evolution’s deep problems? Apparently its resolution of the prokaryote-eukaryote transition is far from secure. The paper below notes that with advances in research “the evolutionary gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes is now deeper.” Eukaryotic evolution, changes and challenges T. Martin Embley and William Martin Nature 440, 623-630 (30 March 2006) | doi:10.1038/nature04546 Abstract: The idea that some eukaryotes primitively lacked mitochondria and were true intermediates in the prokaryote-to-eukaryote transition was an exciting prospect. It spawned major advances in understanding anaerobic and parasitic eukaryotes and those with previously overlooked mitochondria. But the evolutionary gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes is now deeper, and the nature of the host that acquired the mitochondrion more obscure, than ever Read More ›

I’d like to be the first to congratulate Nick Matzke on finding an adversary that makes Nick look well versed in science by comparison. It’s about time. Maybe if Nick starting fisking nursery rhymes for bad science he could appear even smarter than he does now.

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Press release issued today from Biola University: Former Atheist Receives Award From Intelligent Design Community 29 March 2006 La Mirada, Calif. — British philosopher Antony Flew, once considered the most prominent defender of atheism in the English-speaking world, will accept the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth on May 11 from Biola University, a Christian university in Southern California. Flew, 83, argued in books such as God and Philosophy (1966) and The Presumption of Atheism (1984) that one should presuppose atheism until evidence for God proves otherwise. Then, in 2004, the Oxford-educated philosopher stunned the intellectual world by relinquishing his long-held atheism, claiming that the natural sciences supplied evidence for the existence of a designing intelligence. Flew said Read More ›

About a year ago I was asked to commission and collect 30 or so articles on science for an apologetics website run by my denomination, the SBC. The URL for this apologetics website as a whole is www.4truth.net and for the science section is www.4truth.net/site/c.hiKXLbPNLrF/b.786349/k.CAAC/Science.htm. I want to call your attention to two particularly insightful articles, written by two world class engineers (one on faculty at UCDavis, the other at Baylor University): “Intelligent, Optimal, and Divine Design” (go here) “Evolutionary Computation: A Perpetual Motion Machine for Design Information?” (go here)

Junk DNA May Not Be So Junky After All 3/23/2006 Researchers at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins have invented a cost-effective and highly efficient way of analyzing what many have termed “junk” DNA and identified regions critical for controlling gene function. And they have found that these control regions from different species don’t have to look alike to work alike. MORE

Mutations Change the Boolean Logic of Gene Regulation Richard Robinson DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040064 Published: March 28, 2006 It is easy to think of a gene acting like a light bulb, switching either on or off, remaining silent, or being transcribed by the RNA-making machinery. The region of DNA that controls the gene’s output is called its regulatory region, and in this simple (and too simplistic) scenario, that region would act like a simple on–off switch. But the regulatory regions of real genes are more complex, and act more like molecular computers, combining the effects of multiple inputs and calibrating the gene’s output accordingly. The inputs are the various molecules that affect gene activity by binding to sites in the regulatory region. Read More ›

This is a letter I sent to First Things today.

Dear Editors of First Things:

Robert T. Miller argues that Judge Jones’ decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District was correct even though Miller admits that Intelligent Design (ID) is not religion (Darwin in Dover, PA, April 2006). Miller’s conclusion is plainly a non sequitur. The Establishment Clause has one and only one purpose – to prevent the establishment of religion. If Miller is correct and ID is not a religion, a policy promoting the teaching of ID does not, by definition, operate to establish religion. Therefore, such a policy cannot violate the Establishment Clause. The inescapable conclusion given Miller’s own premises? Judge Jones erred when he ruled that teaching ID violates the Establishment Clause.
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Arden Chatfield explains that the Darwinian narrative apologists don’t hate all Christians. That would be wrong says he. They only hate fundamentalist Christians and that’s okay because the fundamentalists, he explains, desire to enslave and dominate others. Read More ›

March 27, 2006
First Things
Joseph Bottum

Down in Waco, Texas, there is a Baptist school called Baylor University. It was never a major player in American academics, and with the strained situation in which American colleges found themselves at the end of the baby boom, Baylor had problems figuring out what it should do.

Certainly, the school played a regional role there in central Texas, but it lacked much national appeal. Its relations with the Baptist Christianity of its founding were strained, and the intellectual resources of its faculty and programs appeared thin. In the tight market of America academia, what reason had parents to send their children to a place like Baylor? The school seemed in flight from its niche market as a full-fledged Baptist institution, and for a purely secular education — well, surely one can do better than Waco.

In the mid-1990s, however, the school decided to do something about its problems. It began by hiring a dynamo of a new president named Robert Sloan. (First Things later published the talks given at his installation by Gertrude Himmelfarb and Richard John Neuhaus). It adopted a plan to achieve a new identity by 2012, and it went out actively seeking high-profile faculty — high-profile religious faculty, that is, for the plan involved positioning Baylor as a national center for religiously informed education.

The idea was that the school would simultaneously redefine its niche market and build a nationwide reputation. Philosophers, literary critics, legal scholars, sociologists: On and on the list went, a parade of new faculty members and new programs that suggested Baylor University was serious about trying to become the premier Christian research university in America.

Today, the plan is in tatters, and Baylor has apparently decided to sink back into its diminished role as a not terribly distinguished regional school. President Sloan is gone, the new high-profile faculty are demoralized and sniffing around for positions at better-known schools, energetic programs like the Intelligent Design Institute have been chased away [i.e., the Michael Polanyi Center — go here], and the bright young professors are having their academic careers ruined by a school that lured them to campus with the promises of the 2012 plan and now is simply embarrassed by them.

A case in point is Francis J. Beckwith, who was denied tenure by Baylor last week. Author of several books, including a new volume forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, he was associate director of the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies, associate professor of Church-State Studies, and associate editor of the Journal of Church & State. You can find his accomplishments listed in more detail here and here. None of this, of course, proves that he deserves tenure, but it looks awfully impressive when compared with the publication records of other faculty members. Read More ›

Jack Krebs is crowing about a class on Darwinian dogma put on in conjunction with the Unitarian Universalist “Church”. He plans on preaching to the choir.

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Why the intelligent design lobby thanks God for Richard Dawkins Anti-religious Darwinists are promulgating a false dichotomy between faith and science that gives succour to creationists Madeleine Bunting Monday March 27, 2006 The Guardian On Wednesday evening, at a debate in Oxford, Richard Dawkins will be gathering the plaudits for his long and productive intellectual career. It is the 30th anniversary of his hugely influential book The Selfish Gene. A festschrift, How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think, has been published this month, with contributions from stars such as Philip Pullman. A week ago it was the turn of the US philosopher Daniel Dennett, second only to Dawkins in the global ranking of contemporary Darwinians, to be similarly feted Read More ›

Last month the big joke was three college kids torching 9 churches in Alabama. This month it’s making a mockery of the religion of 8 of 10 Americans. The bungling political ineptitude of the Darwin worshippers is just incredible. They’re their own worst enemy.

Tom Magnuson at ARN “In the News” and Robert Crowther at Evolution News & Views have both reported on a new brochure published by Kansas Science Standards 2005. It’s clear and concise and should really help to dispell any misinformation that has been circulating about.

Lecture at TCNJ on intelligent design Saturday, March 25, 2006 EWING — Dr. William Dembski, a mathematician and philosopher, will lecture on “Understanding Intelligent Design” 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in Kendall Hall at The College of New Jersey. A question-and-answer session will follow. Dembski is the Carl F.H. Henry Professor of Science and Theology at Southern Seminary in Louisville, Ky., where he heads its Center for Theology and Science. He is a senior Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture in Seattle, and the executive director of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design. Dembski has published articles in mathematics, philosophy, and theology journals and is the author/editor of more than 10 books. Admission is free.

In my prior post I said (actually, as one commenter pointed out, I meant to say), ID gives us reason to hope for freedom from Darwinism and its implications with respect to objective morality. One commenter asked what ID has to do with establishing an objective basis for morality. The answer, of course, is nothing. ID is a scientific theory. It is not a system of ethics or even the basis for a system of ethics. As has been pointed out many times, ID says nothing about the nature of the designer or his/her/its ultimate purposes. The designer may be supernatural, but the theory does not posit a supernatural designer; nor is the existence of a supernatural designer necessary for its validity.

That said, ID does have implications for ethics and morality.
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