The common belief is that adding disorder to a designed object will destroy the design (like a tornado passing through a city, to paraphrase Hoyle). Now if increasing entropy implies increasing disorder, creationists will often reason that “increasing entropy of an object will tend to destroy its design”. This essay will argue mathematically that this popular notion among creationists is wrong. The correct conception of these matters is far more nuanced and almost the opposite of (but not quite) what many creationists and IDists believe. Here is the more correct view of entropy’s relation to design (be it man-made or otherwise): 1. increasing entropy can increase the capacity for disorder, but it doesn’t necessitate disorder 2. increasing an object’s capacity Read More ›

Over at his Website, Why Evolution is True, Professor Jerry Coyne is a vigorous defender of science against what he sees as the encroachments of religion. Professor Coyne has made many forceful criticisms of religion over the past few years, so I thought I would respond by writing him an open letter, in which I ask him questions under ten broad categories, regarding what I regard as key weaknesses in his own philosophical position. I look forward to Coyne’s response. Question 1 – Is science the only road to knowledge? Professor Coyne, you have repeatedly affirmed that science is the only road to knowledge, and you’ve argued (cogently, in my view) that faith cannot be equated with knowledge. So here’s Read More ›

My friend Peter Byrom kindly transcribed this communication he had with Richard Dawkins on twitter following Dawkins’ recent encounter with John Lennox in New York on the subject of God’s existence. Can you imagine John Lennox having this kind of post-debate attitude? What arrogance. ————- (a few days ago:) Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins “The Lord hath delivered him into my hand” (TH Huxley). I needed no help: John Lennox delivered himself. Reeled out the rope to hang himself Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins Charlie Rose “In Pursuit of Truth” PBS air time tbc. You’d be amazed what a “sophisticated theologian” (John Lennox) is capable of believing Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins John Lennox, in all seriousness, thought he could get away with the old “Stalin Read More ›

The following is a one-shot guest post by regular UD commenter, Gregory. I offer this because I know that Gregory’s been talking about Intelligent Design for years, and because it was my intention to give him the chance to make his case for the social sciences’ relevance to the ID discussion. As before, my posting this shouldn’t be taken as endorsement – in fact I’m very skeptical of the direction of Gregory’s project for a number of reasons, which I may or may not mention later in comments. But he was civil and sincere enough, and I thought the regulars at UD would find his thoughts interesting, whether to consider or point out the flaws.

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My 2010 Discovery Institute Press book “In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design” includes the Epilogue below, entitled “Is God Really Good?” It is certainly not a scientific essay, so it was included as an “Epilogue” to clearly distinguish it from the scientific chapters, and avoid encouraging those who claim that Intelligent Design advocates do not know the difference between science and religion. Most of us do understand the difference, we are just interested in both; and so are our critics. In fact, the reason such an essay may belong in a book on ID is because it attempts to deal with an unscientific, but powerful, argument against design. The reason this argument against design is unscientific is, Read More ›

As a member of the United Methodist Church, the recent four-part analysis of BioLogos by Thomas Cudworth sparked my interest. I have no special training in theology and certainly no office within the UMC, but common sense and my historical sense of the church prompted me to wonder, is this a legitimate application of Wesleyan theology or is it merely an attempt to gain standing for a Darwinian brand of theistic evolution by invoking the argumentum ad verecundiam? Here’s a view from the pew.

I have of course put in my own overall rebuttal to ES’s reply to SB’s challenge, but I feel a commentary on points will also be helpful. U/D, Feb 20: I have taken up the general LNC issue, here.) Such is best done using a full post, so, I clip from EL’s own post. My comments will be on numbered arrow points, and will be OLIVE GREEN: +++++++++++++ [EL:] On Uncommon Descent, Barry Arrington asks: [BA:] Let’s clear up this law of noncontradiction issue between StephenB and eigenstate once and for all. StephenB asks eigenstate: “Can the planet Jupiter exist and not exist at the same time in the same sense? That’s a “yes or no” question eigenstate. How do Read More ›

Professor Chris Hogue is a Canadian biochemist/bioinformatician who works on protein folding (among other things) at the National University of Singapore. Professor Hogue has recently started a new series on complexity and evolution on his Website. It turns out that Hogue is highly critical of the Intelligent Design movement. But what makes his criticisms especially interesting for ID theorists is that they focus on the process of human design itself, which Hogue argues is indistinguishable from an incremental process of evolution. In his first post on complexity and evolution, Professor Hogue begins with a short summary of his professional background: As a mid-career scientist I spend my time teaching, building software, and researching topics on molecular assembly and evolution. My Read More ›

DrREC writes that the concept of “specification” is a tautology, because in determining if something is designed, ID proponents start from the assumption that it is designed.  He gives a poker example to illustrate his point:  “A straight flush is an interesting example – out of 2.6 million poker hands, there are 40 straight flushes.  Which is the specification – getting one of them, or any of them?  Or any hand better than your opponent’s?  Choosing the specification inserts a design assumption – that 1 of the flushes, or all of them are what was ‘specified.’”  Let’s take DrREC up on his challenge and consider what a design inference might mean in a poker game.  First, we need to consider Read More ›

Like Michael Behe, I read a book by another Michael. Behe and I had the same reaction: Why haven’t we heard any of this stuff before? The answer is that questioning Darwinian orthodoxy essentially represents committing suicide in academia — an institution that promotes tolerance, diversity, free thought, and skepticism as the highest virtues — but which punishes any deviation from Darwinian dogma with draconian suppression, no matter how logical or evidential the challenges might be. Michael Denton, in his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, challenged that dogma, with no theological or philosophical precommitment as far as I can tell. I would encourage everyone with intellectual curiosity to read that book. The following I find to be one of Read More ›

Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth hopes to convey and document some of the evidence which compels him to embrace a Darwinian perspective on origins. Dawkins is also author of The God Delusion and probably today’s best known Darwinian apologist. Dawkins, in his 2009 book, The Greatest Show on Earth, lives up to his legendary reputation of creative tale-telling. Just how strong are Richard Dawkins’ arguments? Does he present anything new? Do his claims stand up when subjected to careful scrutiny? Richard Dawkins clearly thinks so. In chapter 1 of his book, entitled Only a theory? Dawkins remarks: Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact. Read More ›

Uh, they did care; response was pretty good. Post here (June 7, 2011).

But, one “Larry Tanner” who self-describes as follows,

“Larry Tanner” is my nom de blog. I am married, a father of three beautiful children, and enjoying life in New England. I work with robotic technologies, teach classes in English literature, and ghostwrite non-fiction books for a rabbi – and I self-identify as an atheist. I’m currently working on a Ph.D. on matters of literature, textuality, and probabilistic reasoning.

was complaining (June 8, 2011):

However, I am surprised that that Carroll’s post has not generated more discussion at UD than it has: only about 23 responses in 24 hours.

Hi, Larry, I’m Denyse O’Leary, and that’s a nom de reality, okay? It’s an easily demonstrated fact that there is no particular relationship between readership and comments. We track both.

Stats? Yeah. Got stats. Read More ›

The American Journal of Physics article by Daniel Styer which was offered as a “concise refutation” to my Applied Mathematics Letters article by the blogger whose letter apparently triggered the withdrawal of my AML article is possibly the dumbest work ever published by a major physics journal. To demonstrate how absurd the logic in this article is, I wrote a little satire ( here ) which extends Styer’s attempts to quantitatively demonstrate that the decrease in entropy of the universe due to biological evolution is easily “compensated” by the increase in the “cosmic microwave background”, to the game of poker.

I submitted this satire to the American Journal of Physics this morning, just to see what reason they would give for not wanting to correct the errors in the Styer piece. As cynical as I have become, I still was not prepared for this answer, which I received a few hours later:

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