Back to Basics of ID

Peter Robinson’s Uncommon Knowledge brings three authors together, Tom Holland, Stephen Meyer and Douglas Murray: A key consideration: vs, this notorious poetic assertion: Of course, both of these reflect the rise of the skeptical mindset among the educated elites, the modern inferior good that stands in for the cardinal virtue, prudence. So, we cannot escape the epistemic challenge, what it means to know and to what confidence, especially as regards roots of reality and our place in reality. (Where, trivially, for any reasonably definable field, X, the claim that one knows on some warrant that there is no objective, knowable truth regarding X, is instantly self-referentially incoherent and self defeating. As this hyperskeptical claim is about X and claims objective Read More ›

UB writes: UB, only way thread, 164: >>My apologies to Origenes, he had asked for my comment, but I was away . . . . I am no expert of course, but thank you for asking me to comment. Frankly you didn’t need my opinion anyway. When you ask “What is the error in supposing something?” you likely already know there is no there there. And someone seriously asking you (like some odd prosecution of your logic) to enumerate what exactly is the biological error or the chemical error in the proposition of something that has never before been seen or recorded in either biology or chemistry — well whatever. Deacon begins by asking the question, what is necessary and Read More ›

Here: Let’s add a clip: And: Notice the balance of substance vs personalities. END

There is need to correct for record, given attempts to dismiss. Note, Yockey’s diagram: Where, we can observe on tRNA structure and action: The presence of a universal, CCA tool-tip means, chemically, any tRNA could bind the COOH end of any AA, where basic AA structure is: Given hyperskeptical objections, we need to emphasise that it is in fact uncontroversial consensus that the genetic code is just that, an actual code. As in: U/D Sept 6: Let us compare the ASCII code, which uses seven element strings b7 . . . b1, with two states per character bx [bases have four states per character, so Codons have 64 states], showing how a commonplace communication code is structured . . . Read More ›

We see the binomial distribution of coin-flipping possibilities, here based on 10,000 actual tosses iterated 100,000 times, also indicating just how tight the peak is, mostly being between 4,850 and 5,150 H: Thus we see the roots of discussions on fluctuations: Note, not coincidentally, sqrt (10^4) = 10^2, or 100. (Compare the bulk of the 10,000 coin toss plot on 100 k repetitions, centred on 5000h, with +/- 100 capturing the main part. Obviously possibilities run from 0 H to 10,000 H but there is a sharply peaked clustering about the “average”.) END

UD welcomes our new News anchor. As a starter for reflection, let’s clip from his current book: Naturalism holds that nature is all there is,and that the order of the universe, including the order of the living world,is merely the result of the laws of nature, or, as some put it, of “chance andnecessity.” [Jerry] Coyne went a step further. He insisted that this view cannoteven be questioned in a public university science course—or to be moreprecise, cannot be questioned even in a cross-disciplinary course on sci-entific discoveries and their larger cultural implications.But the question as to whether philosophical naturalism is true istoo important to shove into a corner. This and other closely related ques-tions are precisely those anyone striving Read More ›

It seems helpful to illustrate cosmological scale apparent aging as stars depart main sequence: An idealised, Hertzsprung-Russell chart for Hydrogen-rich balls prone to become fusion furnaces is: Here is a comparative plot (for open clusters), constructing a “clock” by projected pattern as a cluster ages, in effect seeing what is left as a candle burns down: This can be taken as illustrative of how our cosmos shows entropy-associated aging on the grand scale. Further illustrative, here is a NASA-derived cosmological timeline model, integrated with fine tuning: Speaking of fine tuning, Barnes et al summarise: All of this ties to core thermodynamics: Food for thought. END

It seems, despite UD’s resources tab, some still struggle to understand ID in the three distinct senses: inference, theory/research programme, movement. Accordingly, let us headline a clarifying note from the current thread on people who doubt, for the record: [KF, 269:] >>. . . first we must mark out a matter of inductive reasoning and epistemology. Observed tested, reliable signs such as FSCO/I [= functionally specific, complex organisation and/or associated information, “fun-skee”] beyond 500 – 1,000 bits point to design as cause for cases we have not observed. This is the design INFERENCE. Note, inference, not movement, not theory. Following the UD Weak Argument Correctives under the Resources tab, we can identify ID Theory as a [small] research programme that Read More ›

I have recently posted a new video on my Intelligent Design YouTube channel. In this video I discuss several areas in the philosophy of science and modern evolutionary biology, and their relationship to ID. These thoughts were prompted initially by an interesting paper by philosopher of science Jeffrey Koperski ‘Two Bad Ways to Attack Intelligent Design, and Two Good Ones’. Koperski thinks that one good way to critique ID is to point out that it violates principles like ‘scientific conservatism’. Because there are several potential naturalistic mechanisms on the table, even if orthodox neo-Darwinism fails, ID is an unnecessary proposal. To turn to design explanations would be to adjust our theories too drastically. I argue against this claim, concluding that Read More ›

Here, we see a sped up time-lapsed snapshot succession view of the design and construction of a fibreglass vs a wooden yacht: Here is another: Now, let’s scale down to a canoe: We thus see illustrated how . . . design is intelligently directed configuration which makes advantageous, and ideally skilled and artistic, use of forces and materials in nature, economically, to achieve desired ends. Now, let us follow Paley in his second step, in Ch 2 of his argument. Suppose, that, in the course of its voyaging we were to notice that a particular yacht — having in it various stored plans, algorithms, assembler position- arm- effector devices, jigs, frames and devices etc, were to somehow construct another yacht Read More ›

I have recently posted a new video presentation on my YouTube channel. In the video I talk about some of the reasons why I think the debate over Intelligent Design and biological origins is of great significance. Aside from just being a fascinating area, it has many implications in several areas of life. This video, while far from perfect, is a big step up from my last few videos. I’ve done a fair amount of editing on this one, and took time to make it a little more professional, with music, slides, and photos. I hope you enjoy it, and it gets you thinking a little about why this topic is of importance to you also. Why the Question of Read More ›

On the Design Disquisitions YouTube channel, I’ve posted a new video where I recommend several books of interest, specifically pro-ID literature. Most of the suggestions may be familiar to you, but hopefully there are a few that you’ve not read before. I also give a brief summary of the content of each book. I don’t claim that the books mentioned are necessarily the best, but I think anyone who wants to join the discussion needs to be familiar with some of these. Let me know what you would add to the list! Ten (or so) Pro-Intelligent Design Books You Should Read

I’ve been writing intermittently about ID for quite a few years now. In the past I have posted some of my articles on this page. Although I haven’t written anything for a good while, I still follow this area very closely. Recently I set up a YouTube channel that I intend to use alongside my blog. Both the blog and the channel are called Design Disquisitions. These days especially, I think some material lends itself more readily to video format, and I wish to engage with other people interested in ID and evolution in a conversational manner. I’ll be posting videos that will feature conversations with other people, and I’ll also be putting together some presentations and short talks on Read More ›

In discussing implication logic and first duties, Wikipedia on ID came up yet again. The lead’s manifest failure to be responsibly objective, descending into slander from the outset, speaks volumes: Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as “an evidence-based scientific theory about life’s origins”.[1][2][3][4][5] Proponents claim that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.”[6] ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science.[7][8][9] The leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a Christian, politically conservative think tank Read More ›

Here, in human mitochondrial DNA — note the BLUE code start and the RED code stop; all HT to Wiki publishing against known ideological interest: Complex interwoven code is of course doubly functionally specific, so it is exponentially harder to account for, other than by exceedingly sophisticated and creative intelligently directed configuration. Indeed, when I had to write machine code, I thanked my lucky stars 2114’s and 2716’s were by then affordable RAM and EPROM chips, and proceeded from there. (BTW, a neighbour who was an engineer in an earlier era spoke of how people flew across North America just to see 1 MB of live RAM, in a video memory, a million dollar cost in itself.) We know v Read More ›