Paley’s ghost speaks out

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 ›

Today [oops –> recent], here: Starts with Wikipedia’s “pseudoscience” accusation. And, Creationism [in a cheap tuxedo]. END PS: Here is the smoking gun letter by Sir Francis Crick to his son, March 19, 1953, i.e. as he informed his son about his breakthrough:

One of the common weak arguments against the design inference on functionally specific, complex organisation and/or associated information (FSCO/I, a functional form of specified complexity) is the idea that body-plan level macro-evolution is “simply” the accumulation of lots and lots of micro-evolutionary adaptations in a grand climb of fitness. It seems to be back on the table, so let us highlight its fundamental flaw through an infographic: Notice, how easy it is to trap a process that depends on loose-sense hill-climbing. Where, too, the FSCO/I origin challenge can be similarly summarised: That fitness peaks will naturally occur as islands of function amidst vast seas of non-function should be obvious from the need for correct, matched, properly arranged and coupled parts Read More ›