Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Darwinian Mechanisms Explain Everything — Even Laughter!

I got a chuckle (make that a bellylaugh) out of this article: http://foxnews.webmd.com/content/article/120/113762

Get out your notepad and check off the evolutionary presuppositions, like the notion that laughter predates speech. Make special note of speculation presented as fact.

Be aware that the Provine mentioned in this article is not William, but Robert. Here are some excerpts:

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Good Democracy, Bad Democracy, and No Democracy

Henry Neufeld is entitled to an opinion. So are all these people: http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=581 Only 12% of the adults in the U.S. think Darwinian evolution should be taught in a vacuum. Biblical creationism is out on establishment clause grounds but ID is neutral on the nature of the intelligence and widely supported as contrast for unintelligent evolution. What kind of democracy are we living in when 12% of the people get to censor what 88% want to their children exposed to in public schools? A bad democracy at best. ID may never be accepted in the halls of academia but it’s already overwhelmingly accepted by the public. The only question that remains is whether a vast majority will allow a small Read More ›

Origin-of-life problem just went from bad to worse

(University of Bath) Scientists discovered the minimal genome size needed for the first life increased by a factor of 2. That may seem like a modest rise in complexity, but consider that a target of just 10 bits growing in specificity to 20 bits (a factor of 2) implies that the target is now 1024 times more improbable (2 raised to the 10th). And if the previously presumed minimal gene size was several thousand bits of information, it boggles the mind just how much more improbable the origin of life becomes with this discovery! Minimal genome should be twice the size, study shows (Hat Tip: David Coppedge, Creation Safaris)

No More Establishment Clause for PZ Myers

Myers whines about Witt’s rhetoric comparing evolution, Castro, and popularism. Meanwhile, Myers is perfectly happy to defend evolution via judicial fiat. When a scientist needs to play the constitution card to censor criticism of his pet theory you can rest assured the theory is one that’s in crisis.

Survival of the Fittest Golfer

This just in. My morning paper reports that LPGA pro Natalie Gulbis has an extra vertebra in her back that enables her to bring her club so far around she has her back to the target. The random mutation that led to Ms. Galbis’ extra vertebra apparently confers a golfing advantage on her, which in turn allows her to make millions of dollars whacking a little white ball around a park. Her golfing wealth makes her more attractive to prospective mates, which makes it more likely that she will pass on her DNA containing the “extra vertebra” trait. Maybe there’s something to NS after all.

Evolution in free-fall

Does Lynn Margulis’s endosymbiosis story resolve evolution’s deep problems? Apparently its resolution of the prokaryote-eukaryote transition is far from secure. The paper below notes that with advances in research “the evolutionary gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes is now deeper.” Eukaryotic evolution, changes and challenges T. Martin Embley and William Martin Nature 440, 623-630 (30 March 2006) | doi:10.1038/nature04546 Abstract: The idea that some eukaryotes primitively lacked mitochondria and were true intermediates in the prokaryote-to-eukaryote transition was an exciting prospect. It spawned major advances in understanding anaerobic and parasitic eukaryotes and those with previously overlooked mitochondria. But the evolutionary gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes is now deeper, and the nature of the host that acquired the mitochondrion more obscure, than ever Read More ›

Flew wins Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth — Who said ID doesn’t pay?!

Press release issued today from Biola University: Former Atheist Receives Award From Intelligent Design Community 29 March 2006 La Mirada, Calif. — British philosopher Antony Flew, once considered the most prominent defender of atheism in the English-speaking world, will accept the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth on May 11 from Biola University, a Christian university in Southern California. Flew, 83, argued in books such as God and Philosophy (1966) and The Presumption of Atheism (1984) that one should presuppose atheism until evidence for God proves otherwise. Then, in 2004, the Oxford-educated philosopher stunned the intellectual world by relinquishing his long-held atheism, claiming that the natural sciences supplied evidence for the existence of a designing intelligence. Flew said Read More ›

www.4truth.net

About a year ago I was asked to commission and collect 30 or so articles on science for an apologetics website run by my denomination, the SBC. The URL for this apologetics website as a whole is www.4truth.net and for the science section is www.4truth.net/site/c.hiKXLbPNLrF/b.786349/k.CAAC/Science.htm. I want to call your attention to two particularly insightful articles, written by two world class engineers (one on faculty at UCDavis, the other at Baylor University): “Intelligent, Optimal, and Divine Design” (go here) “Evolutionary Computation: A Perpetual Motion Machine for Design Information?” (go here)

Junk DNA — is it really?

Junk DNA May Not Be So Junky After All 3/23/2006 Researchers at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins have invented a cost-effective and highly efficient way of analyzing what many have termed “junk” DNA and identified regions critical for controlling gene function. And they have found that these control regions from different species don’t have to look alike to work alike. MORE

Yet another feather in natural selection’s cap — now Boolean logic! What hasn’t NS accomplished?

Mutations Change the Boolean Logic of Gene Regulation Richard Robinson DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040064 Published: March 28, 2006 It is easy to think of a gene acting like a light bulb, switching either on or off, remaining silent, or being transcribed by the RNA-making machinery. The region of DNA that controls the gene’s output is called its regulatory region, and in this simple (and too simplistic) scenario, that region would act like a simple on–off switch. But the regulatory regions of real genes are more complex, and act more like molecular computers, combining the effects of multiple inputs and calibrating the gene’s output accordingly. The inputs are the various molecules that affect gene activity by binding to sites in the regulatory region. Read More ›

A Reply to Robert T. Miller

This is a letter I sent to First Things today.

Dear Editors of First Things:

Robert T. Miller argues that Judge Jones’ decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District was correct even though Miller admits that Intelligent Design (ID) is not religion (Darwin in Dover, PA, April 2006). Miller’s conclusion is plainly a non sequitur. The Establishment Clause has one and only one purpose – to prevent the establishment of religion. If Miller is correct and ID is not a religion, a policy promoting the teaching of ID does not, by definition, operate to establish religion. Therefore, such a policy cannot violate the Establishment Clause. The inescapable conclusion given Miller’s own premises? Judge Jones erred when he ruled that teaching ID violates the Establishment Clause.
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Baylor shafts Beckwith

March 27, 2006
First Things
Joseph Bottum

Down in Waco, Texas, there is a Baptist school called Baylor University. It was never a major player in American academics, and with the strained situation in which American colleges found themselves at the end of the baby boom, Baylor had problems figuring out what it should do.

Certainly, the school played a regional role there in central Texas, but it lacked much national appeal. Its relations with the Baptist Christianity of its founding were strained, and the intellectual resources of its faculty and programs appeared thin. In the tight market of America academia, what reason had parents to send their children to a place like Baylor? The school seemed in flight from its niche market as a full-fledged Baptist institution, and for a purely secular education—well, surely one can do better than Waco.

In the mid-1990s, however, the school decided to do something about its problems. It began by hiring a dynamo of a new president named Robert Sloan. (First Things later published the talks given at his installation by Gertrude Himmelfarb and Richard John Neuhaus). It adopted a plan to achieve a new identity by 2012, and it went out actively seeking high-profile faculty—high-profile religious faculty, that is, for the plan involved positioning Baylor as a national center for religiously informed education.

The idea was that the school would simultaneously redefine its niche market and build a nationwide reputation. Philosophers, literary critics, legal scholars, sociologists: On and on the list went, a parade of new faculty members and new programs that suggested Baylor University was serious about trying to become the premier Christian research university in America.

Today, the plan is in tatters, and Baylor has apparently decided to sink back into its diminished role as a not terribly distinguished regional school. President Sloan is gone, the new high-profile faculty are demoralized and sniffing around for positions at better-known schools, energetic programs like the Intelligent Design Institute have been chased away [i.e., the Michael Polanyi Center — go here], and the bright young professors are having their academic careers ruined by a school that lured them to campus with the promises of the 2012 plan and now is simply embarrassed by them.

A case in point is Francis J. Beckwith, who was denied tenure by Baylor last week. Author of several books, including a new volume forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, he was associate director of the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies, associate professor of Church-State Studies, and associate editor of the Journal of Church & State. You can find his accomplishments listed in more detail here and here. None of this, of course, proves that he deserves tenure, but it looks awfully impressive when compared with the publication records of other faculty members. Read More ›