Monthly Archives: February 2008
Simpler DNA coding designed
| February 22, 2008 | Posted by DLH under Intelligent Design |
A simpler cheaper system has been developed to code in DNA. This implicitly recognizes the more complex coding in native DNA. (The news article also assumes the evolutionary doctrine of “junk DNA”.) The contrast with hard drives, this low density coding method and natural DNA shows the very high coding density in DNA. ———————— Human… more
David Berlinski and The Devil’s Delusion
| February 22, 2008 | Posted by GilDodgen under Culture, Humor, Religion, Science |
David Berlinski is my favorite secular Jew and quintessential iconoclast. How could one not adore a guy who is a mathematician, no advocate of any religion, a Darwin skeptic, and phenomenally eloquent in both English and French, with a great penchant for ironic humor? His latest opus is The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific… more
Miller’s “Evolutionary Design” – an oxymoron or Trojan horse?
| February 21, 2008 | Posted by DLH under Intelligent Design |
“Evolution” is defined so broadly as to prevent refutation. That requires that the whale of “macroevolution” (simple organism to human beings) must be swallowed along with the gnat of “microevolution” – any mutation or change = “evolution”. Now Kenneth Miller is attempting to transform the Design vs Evolution argument, by claiming nature reveals “evolutionary design”… more
Today at the Post-Darwinist: Another ex-dhimmi for Darwin
| February 21, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Jonathan Wells reflects on how almost everything Darwin believed is being disconfirmed: There was a time when I would half-heartedly join in the chorus that praises Darwin as a great scientist, even though some of his ideas were mistaken. Now, when I look for Darwin’s positive contributions to biology, I see only that he made… more
Where does the pursuit of science lead?
| February 21, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design |
Recently I wrote an article about where disbelief in Darwin leads. It generated a lot of good discussion. Now I’d like to pose the question where does the pursuit of science, in particular the quest for material explanations of life, lead? more
Merely a Theory
| February 21, 2008 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Evolution, Science |
Evolutionists continue to be much exercised about evolution being treated as “merely a theory,” arguing that to identify it as such is as disreputable as treating gravity or the second law as “merely a theory.” But consider, as a close colleague recently reminded me: The late Ernst Mayr, a Harvard professor called “the Dean of… more
Animal and Human Mind: Darwinists Want it Both Ways
| February 20, 2008 | Posted by dacook under Intelligent Design |
The cover story of the current (March 2008)issue of National Geographic is “Inside Animal Minds.” It is an interesting, persuasive, and I’m sure quite unintentional argument against the Darwinist position that mind is an illusory epiphenomenon of the material brain. The article presents truly interesting examples of studies involving dogs, elephants, fish, primates, sheep, octopus,… more
Dhimmi for Darwin no more!
| February 20, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Okay, I have probably got myself into a peck of trouble by deciding to just say what I think about Darwinism and Evolution Sunday and all that. I used to be tremendously polite to senior clergy, teachers, and opinion leaders who know that you must obey the system and say nice things about Darwin, whether… more
Reverse-engineer the brain – NAE’s grand challenge
| February 20, 2008 | Posted by DLH under Intelligent Design |
One of the grand engineering challenges issued by The National Academy of Engineering is to Reverse-engineer the brain. If the NAE considers it possible to Reverse-engineer the brain, does not that imply that the brain may have been engineered in the first place? i.e., as in designed by an intelligent agent? As you read through… more
Design of life blog: The puzzling exploding palm tree
| February 20, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under The Design of Life |
Jane Harris has a new article at Design of Life blog about a newly discovered genus of palm in Madagascar (yes, that’s right, a GENUS): “New findings in science: self-destructive palm puzzles botanists” The tree waits about 100 years to flower and then explodes in tonnes of flowers and then just dies. I’m glad local… more
Today at Access Research Network: My review of Darwin Day in America
| February 20, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Darwin’s theory of evolution – essentially, that life, including human life, occurs without purpose and perishes without consequence – popularized points of view that would have been considered unacceptable to most Westerners in earlier times. Indeed, that has always been its greatest appeal, to judge from the thousands of editorials on how Darwin’s great feat… more
Tom Bethell reviews “Expelled” in the American Spectator
| February 20, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design |
No Intelligence Allowed! By Tom Bethell Published 2/19/2008 12:07:57 AM It’s not often that I attend private screenings, so when I was invited to see the director’s cut of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, starring our own Ben Stein, I jumped at the chance. It was shown in downtown Washington, D.C. at the Goethe Institute. I… more
Florida’s Darwinian Standards evolve to “a scientific theory”
| February 20, 2008 | Posted by DLH under Darwinism, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
Could Florida’s Darwinian regulations be “evolving” from “fact” to free inquiry? In More on the vote on evolution and Florida’s new science standards Leslie Postal reports that teaching Evolution in schools is now mandated, but officially as the “scientific theory of” Evolution. Will students now be able to seriously study evolution as “a scientific theory”… more
Today at the Design of Life blog: The Smithsonian vs. the Cambrian explosion
| February 19, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under The Design of Life |
Charles Walcott, secretary of the Smithsonian, had found the equivalent of Noah’s Ark. He found every animal phylum, or – as physicist Gerald Schroeder puts it – the “basic anatomies” of all animal life forms today. Cause for rejoicing? No, because there was a problem. The problem was that the find obviously did not support… more
Ruse on Dawkins’ Delusion
| February 19, 2008 | Posted by idnet.com.au under Intelligent Design |
Michael Ruse on Richard Dawkins “The God Delusion” (heavily edited) “God is getting a bit of a bashing these days. Above all, there is the smash-hit best seller The God Delusion, by the brilliant science writer Richard Dawkins. Why this sudden enthusiasm for atheism? The new skeptics are writing brilliant works, bringing reason and evidence… more
Ben Stein Wins Johnson Award for EXPELLED — press release
| February 15, 2008 | Posted by William Dembski under Culture, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Religion, Science |
La Mirada, Calif. — Ben Stein, known for his lead role in the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and his Comedy Central show Win Ben Stein’s Money, believes in liberty and truth. In recognition of this, Biola University’s masters in science and religion program will present him with the 2008 Phillip E. Johnson Award for… more
A Darwinist Successfully Employs Design Detection!
| February 15, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design |
In the thread I deleted “A Sterling Example of Anti-Religionists” one of the commenters noted that the URL linking to the offensive article had undergone a point mutation. One letter in it changed that made the link go somewhere else. He implied that this didn’t happen at random and that someone purposely changed it. Guilty… more
Sifting
| February 15, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design |
UD member Timothy in another thread writes But in principle it is possible to arrive at this particular unique combination of symbols using a simple brute force algorithm (like, for example, an elementary counting algorithm) that works through all the possible combinations of symbols. Thus, given such a systematic algorithm, all the books of the… more
“My Failed Simulation” in Human Events
| February 15, 2008 | Posted by Granville Sewell under Intelligent Design |
The best argument for Intelligent Design is to clearly state the opposing view, which is that physics explains all of chemistry (probably true), chemistry explains all of biology, biology explains intelligence, and intelligence explains computers, science textbooks and the Internet; ergo, physics explains computers, ergo, my little parable “My Failed Simulation”, which has now appeared… more
Can Computation and Computational Algorithms Produce Novel Information?
| February 14, 2008 | Posted by GilDodgen under Comp. Sci. / Eng., Informatics |
As some UD readers are aware, one of my interests is artificial-intelligence computer programming, especially games-playing AI (here, here, and here). In producing retrograde endgame databases for the game of checkers, with massive computational resources (two CPUs performing approximately a billion integer operations each per second over a period of two months, for a total… more