Bench science, like book editing, is independent of content under normal circumstances.

But as Thomas Kuhn points out in Structure of Scientific Revolutions, paradigms determine what counts as evidence.

Mark what follows:

If materialism is assumed to be true and Darwinism is the creation story of materialism, then Darwinism is the best available explanation for the history of life.

So Darwinism is treated as true.

I am NOT saying that that follows logically.

Materialism could be true but its orthodox creation story could be untrue at the same time. Some other materialist story could better account for the evidence, for example. Read More ›

We at Uncommon Descent have in the past talked about NAS scientist Philip Skell’s observation that evolutionary biology contributes little if anything to experimental biology. Just recently Professor Skell placed a phone call to Professor John A. Davison and they had a long conversation the details of which were not disclosed to me. John invited Philip to participate here at Uncommon Descent and I’d like to take this opportunity to say that all of us here would like to echo John’s invitation. Professor Skell, if you’re reading this, we’d love to hear from you.

To read Professor Skell’s article and response in The Scientist read on… Read More ›

This story has been of ongoing interest. Here is the latest.

SSHRC doubts the science of evolution
In rejecting a proposed study, the eminent science council shows it has become infected with postmodern drivel
By Dan Adleman

In the summer issue of Humanist Perspectives, Gary Bauslaugh reports that the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) has rejected Dr Brian Alters’ application for a grant to study the “detrimental effects of popularizing anti-evolution’s ‘Intelligent Design Theory’ on Canadian students, teachers, parents, administrators and policymakers.” Read More ›

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Quantum computers are a reality and they indirectly speak to the issue of intelligent design and the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of Quantum Mechanics.

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ID is quietly advancing in the mother state of one-fourth of the American Presidents. I do not know if the advance of ID in Virginia means anything to Richard Dawkins, but 4 of his 17 scheduled stops in his God Delusion world-wide book tour will be in the Virginia/DC area! Coincidence?
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I’ve been meaning to post this to give the Uncommon Descent community a chance to respond to an essay by Jack Krebs. Jack Krebs is president of a militant pro-Darwin organization in Kansas, and he writes in ID Moving On in Fighting the Culture War:
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Here is a portion from John Wilson’s review of Randy Balmer’s THY KINGDOM COME: HOW THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT DISTORTS THE FAITH AND THREATENS AMERICA–AN EVANGELICAL’S LAMENT (go here). Balmer follows the familiar pattern of someone who started out going to conservative Christian schools, did well, went on to high-profile secular schools, retained the vestiges of his faith but takes as his greatest pleasure in life knowing that he is so sophisticated that none of his secular colleagues will ever call him to account for the offense of the Gospel. By the way, if you are curious about my sartorial habits, you can look at the debate here. The Dembski-Silver debate was discussed on this blog here.

What really disappointed me about Balmer’s book was the absence of the depth, the nuance, the texture, the alertness to human complexity that made his portrait of the aging Jimmy Swaggart so powerful. Consider, for example, the chapter in Thy Kingdom Come entitled “Creationism by Design,” which includes Balmer’s account of a debate between William Dembski, one of the leading figures in the Intelligent Design movement, and the distinguished molecular biologist Lee Silver. Here is how Balmer introduces Dembski:

• Wearing a dark suit slightly too large for his lanky frame, Dembski had the mien of an assistant vice president at a local bank or of someone who has just been dispatched to notify the next of kin. The moderator introduced him as having an unspecified affiliation with Baylor University, but that was somewhat misleading, and Dembski made no effort to correct the impression that he was a member of the faculty at Baylor.

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Is there another Guillermo Gonzalez in the making? Not quite, but there are some distressing signals coming out of UVa. This time the controversy surrounds the IDEA chapter and its faculty adviser, Bryce Paschal.

[For those who may not be aware, UVa is Paul Gross’s school. Gross was co-author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse with Barbara Forrest. ]
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This is the next installment in the series on John Davison’s An Evolutionary Manifesto: A New Hypothesis for Organic Change. In addition to being a professor of biology since 1954, John is one of the few elites with a published pro-ID peer-reviewed paper (see: Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis).

Dr. Davison’s work is relevant to the ideas of pro-ID evolutionists who explore the concept of front-loaded evolution as well as modern scientific creationists. I never thought that I (a creationist) would be so enthusiastic about a work promoting an evolutionary hypothesis. Dr. Davison’s work is gaining appreciation across the spectrum of views within ID’s big tent.

This installment will be part of Dr. Davison’s cogent refutation of the concluding remarks in Darwin’s Origin of Species.
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I was going to post this as a comment in Salvador’s thread (https://uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1481) but it became too long, so I’m posting it as a new topic.

On the subject of computer checkers I have some observations. I hate to brag (okay, I lied!) but I am one of the world’s leading authorities on this subject.

I know David Fogel. He is a very bright researcher and a really cool, nice guy. (Plus, he is a very talented pianist and musician. We have shared our piano CDs. Is there some correlation between music, mathematics and computer science?)

There are three essential elements in an artificial-intelligence (AI) games-playing computer program:

1) A move generator. The board and pieces must be represented in the computer’s memory, either as arrays or bit-maps. An algorithm must be devised to generate moves based on the rules of the game.

2) A tree-search algorithm. This is even more complex and requires sophisticated software engineering. The game tree explodes exponentially, so an alpha-beta minimax algorithm is employed. Other sophisticated algorithms must be used to curtail the exponential explosion: quickly accessible hash tables that contain previously-seen positions, iterative deepening with best-move prediction accessed from the hash tables, use of killer moves and move sorting based on a history heuristic, and much more.

3) A terminal-node evaluation function which attempts to ascertain the value of a position statically, since the tree search must terminate at some point. These values are backed up through the search tree with the alpha-beta minimax algorithm.

Most of the playing strength of these programs comes from the tree search (which is not possible without the move generator), since humans have a hard time keeping track of this much detail.

Fogel and his team of software engineers programmed elements 1 and 2, without which element 3 (the product of the genetic algorithm) would have been completely useless. The fitness function was the definition of a win at the end of the tree search: no moves left for the opponent. This was a goal defined by the programmers. The leaf-node evaluation function is not essentially strategic; “strategy” is mostly a byproduct of the tree search.

This is not to say that Fogel’s research is meaningless. It is intriguing and worthwhile. What all this means is that a cleverly designed trial-and-error process, combined with a lot of even more clever software engineering and human-devised algorithms, can produce interesting and productive results.

It should be noted that human-crafted (i.e., intelligently-designed terminal-node evaluation functions) totally trounce Blondie’s eval function with ease.
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Dr. Davison has been a professor of biology for over 45 years. He is among the few elite who have managed to get a pro-ID paper published in a peer-reviewed journal. I very much enjoyed reading An Evolutionary Manifesto.
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Vatican Astronomer Replaced by Bruce Chapman

Chapman writes:

Pope Benedict XVI has replaced an evangelizing Darwinist, Dr. George Coyne, as director the Vatican Observatory, according to Zenit News. A Jesuit with a doctorate in astronomy, Dr. Coyne in recent years made himself the public scourge of Darwin critics and scientific proponents of intelligent design. Increasingly his theology resembled that of “process theologians” who believe that God is still learning and could not have known what his world was becoming.
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Scientist: Dolphins are stupid
Thursday 17 August 2006 12:29 PM GMT

Dolphins are not as clever as previously thought. Dolphins may have big brains, but a South African-based scientist says laboratory rats and even goldfish can outwit them.

Paul Manger of Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand says the super-sized brains of dolphins are a function of being warm-blooded in a cold water environment and not a sign of intelligence.

“We equate our big brain with intelligence. Over the years we have looked at these kinds of things and said the dolphins must be intelligent,” he said.

“The real flaw in this logic is that it suggests all brains are built the same… When you look at the structure of the dolphin brain, you see it is not built for complex information processing,” he said. Read More ›

As I write this there have been 80 comments to my posts about the evidence issues implicated by the plaintiffs’ literature bluff at the Dover trial.  Our friends at Panda’s Thumb have also opened a thread to discuss my posts see (here) and also (here).  For those interested in my response to PT, read on.

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(Due to earlier technical difficulties with the comment section, I deleted the earlier thread on this same topic. This is a repost of that thread but under a different title.)

I wish to salute Allen MacNeill for his BioEE467 course “Evolution and Design Seminar”. It is one of the few college courses in the USA that has seriously studied ID literature in a science classroom setting. Here are some of his thoughts immediately after the course came to a close:
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