Dave Jarvis offers an interesting variant of the suboptimality anti-design argument at http://joot.com/dave/writings/articles/design.shtml. His variant is based on the recent finding that mammals under certain conditions can regenerate organs previously thought unregenerable. I responded to this line of objection in The Design Revolution, chapter 6 (”Optimal Design”). Here is a relevant portion of that chapter:
For anti-ID paraphernalia (including buttons, T-shirts, coffee mugs and more), go here.
Before the Dover trial concludes, I want to offer some remarks about what I take will be its long-term significance. I want to do this now so that critics won’t be in a position to accuse me of spinning or rationalizing the outcome of the trial once it is reached (of course, they’ll still find […]
Last spring The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) hired me as an expert witness in the Dover area school district case regarding ID (Kitzmiller v. Dover). That case went to trial this week (26Sep05). Because the focus of that case and trial is a book titled Of Pandas and People and because I am the […]
Authors of Proposed Changes to Kansas Science Standards
Dated March 29, 2005
September 27, 2005
To: Members of the Kansas State Board of Education
Re: Letter from THE ELIE WIESEL FOUNDATION FOR HUMANITY dated September 9, 2005, signed by Elie Wiesel and 37 other Nobel Laureates
Exhibit 1: Letter by 6 Nobel laureates et al. to all 50 governors of the United States — go here.
Exhibit 2: DEFCON’S top 10 Places Where Science Education is Under Threat — go here.
As these exhibits indicate, the other side is pulling out all the stops. It makes you wonder whether they’ve got […]
MISSENSE MEANDERINGS IN
SEQUENCE SPACE: A BIOPHYSICAL
VIEW OF PROTEIN EVOLUTION
Mark A. DePristo, Daniel M. Weinreich and Daniel L. Hartl
“Taken as a whole, recent findings from biochemistry and evolutionary biology indicate that our understanding of protein evolution is incomplete, if not fundamentally flawed.”
The Evolutionary Computation Technical Committee of the Computational Intelligence Society recently recently drafted the following statement at its Montreal meeting (go here for the full report; note that the minutes of this meeting will eventually appear here):
Guillermo Gonzalez, ID theorist extraordinaire, spoke last night (9/28) at University of Northern Iowa (UNI). He was invited to speak there by the local chapter of Sigma Xi back in August. When the biology professors there caught wind of it in mid-September, they organized a petition statement very similar to the one organized by […]
Rob Pennock, as the witness of the hour in the Dover case, is citing me shamelessly. According to the local paper (go here), the quote of the day is:
“So long as methodological naturalism sets the ground rules for how the game of science is to be played, (intelligent design) has no chance (in) Hades.”  […]
CHURCH/STATE AT DARTMOUTH By William F. Buckley Jr.
Tue Sep 27, 8:06 PM ET
The whole business of whether public schools can permit “intelligent design” to be acknowledged as an alternative to Darwinian evolution in explanation of human life will begin democratic exercises in a courtroom in Pennsylvania this week. There are regular flashpoints on this matter […]
Societies worse off “when they have God on their side”
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
September 27, 2005
The Times
RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today…. [For rest of article, go here.]
By the way, Gregory Paul, the researcher in question, is a […]
From today’s Chronicle of Higher Education. And just remember, those are our tax dollars with which he is going to indoctrinate our kids and oppose intelligent design. Here’s a novel thought: Let chancellor Hemenway and his colleagues come up with their own support that does not require the government establishing a secular religion based on […]
From: Kenneth Miller [mailto:Kenneth_Miller@Brown.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 2:17 PM
Subject: Re: Some other questions…
Dear Friend,
You are one of scores of people who have written messages to me as a result of my scientific testimony at trial in Harrisburg, PA. I hope you will forgive the fact that I cannot possibly reply to each of […]
Colorado Springs Gazette on the Dover case, Tuesday’s edition (9/27/05).
I’ve just posted two pieces on my designinference.com website about the role of probabilistic reasoning in design inferences. The first is titled “A Primer on Probability for Design Inferences.” This piece is new. The second is chapter 33 from my book The Design Revolution, titled “Design by Elimination vs. Design by Comparison.”
Agreeing Only to Disagree on God’s Place in Science
By GEORGE JOHNSON
September 27, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/27/science/27essa.html?ei=5070&en=a8b05baabb3ce5f6&ex=1128484800&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print
… On matters scientific, Dr. Dawkins, who came from Oxford, and Dr. Conway Morris, a Cambridge man, agreed: The richness of the biosphere, humanity included, could be explained through natural selection. [I’ve corresponded with Conway Morris; he regards natural selection as an engine […]
On the Trail of Intelligent Design
By Michael Scott Moore
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,376919,00.html
… UCSD in [2001] had the only student club in America devoted to intelligent design. It was called the IDEA Club — “Intelligent Design Evolution Awareness” — and its website invited atheists and believers, evolutionist professors and young-Earth creationists, Phys.-Ed. majors and Hindus — absolutely anyone — […]
Letters to the Editor
By REGISTER READERS
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050927/OPINION04/509270355/1035/OPINION
September 27, 2005
Intelligent designer behind such a planet?
By Hector Avalos
Steven Jay Gould tells us why in Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes. After conceding that critics of evolution had a strong case at the Scopes trial, Gould still thinks their intellectual descendants need to be neutralized: “They are a motley collection to be sure, but their core of practical support lies in the evangelical right, […]
In today’s Washington Post, one reads:
If Darwin was right, for example, then scientists should be able to perform a neat trick. Using a mathematical formula that emerges from evolutionary theory, they should be able to predict the number of harmful mutations in chimpanzee DNA by knowing the number of mutations in a different species’ DNA […]
Frank Beckwith’s initial salvo in an online debate with Douglas Laycock: http://legalaffairs.org/webexclusive/debateclub_id0905.msp.
The Dover Area School District trial about the teaching of ID starts today, and you can expect a lot of press coverage concerning it. Yesterday evening, the BBC interviewed me and Robert Boston of Americans United for Separation the Secularization of Church and State regarding Dover (it was a telephone debate). Boston was following the […]
Although it is widely known that Charles Darwin was a man of independent means (approximately US$10,000,000 in current money), recent historiographical studies have unearthed a new source of that money. Previously, it was thought that his wealth all derived from a shrewd marriage and wise investments. It has now come to light that a significant […]
Sad to say, the imperialist reactionaries against ID (e.g., ACLU and NCSE) have gotten their message out in China better than we have. See the recent report in the People’s Daily Online: http://english.people.com.cn/200509/24/eng20050924_210621.html.
MSNBC has an article titled “Why Scientists Dismiss ‘Intelligent Design’” (go here). In it, Ken Miller argues against ID, and specifically against my claim that undirected natural causes cannot generate specified complexity in biological systems. His argument focuses on the evolution of nylonase:
SYNOPSIS: The ocean is a perilous environment for a soft-bodied creature like a sea snail, so nature gives it an advanced nanostructured armor system that is stiff and strong yet lightweight. It’s called a shell. Now MIT scientists show that nature is indeed an expert nanoengineer.
For the paper go here: http://www.physorg.com/news6647.html.
Imagine a world in which […]
Check out this article on ID from Sydney, Australia: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-trouble-with-darwin/2005/09/23/1126982233685.html. Here’s an excerpt:
Last month, the federal Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Brendan Nelson, gave intelligent design ministerial imprimatur, telling the National Press Club he thought parents and schools ought to have the opportunity - if they wished - for students to be exposed […]
My book Intelligent Design: The Bridge between Science and Theology is now out in Spanish: Diseño Inteligente: Un Puente entre la Ciencia y la TeologÃÂa. My good friend and colleague from Colombia, Daniel Andrés DÃÂaz Pachón, is the translator (occasionally he posts on this blog).
From http://www.stephenjgould.org:
The purpose of this website is to urgently organize opposition to the forces of creationism and intelligent design by providing sound scientific refutation to the argument that God is the only alternative to random evolution.
Thanks to our indefatigable programmers at Darwinalia Inc., the new and improved version of Panda-Monium is now out: go here.