Dawkins’ barbed blanket dismissiveness comes up far too often in discussions of the design inference and related themes. Rarely, explicitly, most often by implication of a far too commonly seen no concessions, selectively hyperskeptical policy that objectors to design too often manifest. It is time to set this straight. First, we need to highlight fallacious, crooked yardstick thinking (as exposed by naturally straight and upright plumb-lines). And yes, that classical era work, the Bible, is telling: Notice, a pivotal point here, is self-evident truths. Things, similar to 2 + 3 = 5: Notoriously, Winston Smith in 1984 is put on the rack to break his mind to conform to The Party’s double-think. He is expected to think 2 + 2 Read More ›

How to recognize the signature of (past) intelligent action https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2805-how-to-recognize-the-signature-of-past-intelligent-action Claim: Herbert Spencer:  “Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all.” Reply: Contrasting and comparing “intended” versus “accidental” arrangements leads us to the notion of design. We have extensive experience-based knowledge of the kinds of strategies and systems that designing minds devise to solve various kinds of functional problems. We also know a lot about the kinds of phenomena that various natural causes produce. For this reason, we can observe the natural world, and living systems, and make informed inferences based on the unraveled and discovered evidence.  A physical system is Read More ›

Review: J. W. Thornton (2022): Simple mechanisms for the evolution of protein complexity https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2706-main-topics-on-proteins-and-protein-synthesis#9622 Proteins are tiny models of biological complexity: specific interactions among their many amino acids cause proteins to fold into elaborate structures, assemble with other proteins into higher-order complexes, and change their functions and structures upon binding other molecules.  Comment: Merriam-Webster describes the word “elaborate” as: “planned or carried out with great care, to produce by labor,Synonyms: Adjective: complex, complicated, detailed, fancy, intricate, involved, sophisticated Its hard to overlook the teleological aspect of the word. We can all agree that proteins are well-described as elaborate: Nucleopores for example have been described recently as “a massive complex of roughly 1,000 proteins that helps channel DNA instructions to the rest of the cell” 12 These complex Read More ›

Extreme genome repair, and remarkable morphogenesis by self-assembly point to design https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2061p275-my-articles#9626 Extreme Genome Repair (2009): If its naming had followed, rather than preceded, molecular analyses of its DNA, the extremophile bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans might have been called Lazarus. After shattering of its 3.2 Mb genome into 20–30 kb pieces by desiccation or a high dose of ionizing radiation, D. radioduransmiraculously reassembles its genome such that only 3 hr later fully reconstituted nonrearranged chromosomes are present, and the cells carry on, alive as normal 1 T. Devitt (2014): John R. Battista, a professor of biological sciences at Louisiana State University, showed that E. coli could evolve to resist ionizing radiation by exposing cultures of the bacterium to the highly radioactive isotope cobalt-60. “We blasted the Read More ›