Monthly Archives: December 2008
The intelligent design community and the media revolution – an old hack’s thoughts
| December 14, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
When assessing media coverage of the intelligent design controversy, the first thing you should do is forget what defenders of legacy mainstream media say about their media. You’ve already heard it all anyway: “We’re objective.” “We’re not biased.” “We only report the facts.” Et cetera. Not only isn’t that true, but it couldn’t possibly be… more
Molecular biology: The Bloom’s complex mousetrap
| December 14, 2008 | Posted by Mario A. Lopez under Intelligent Design |
Nature 456, 453-454 (27 November 2008) | doi:10.1038/456453a; Published online 26 November 2008 Robert M. Brosh, Jr Genomic instability often underlies cancer. Analyses of proteins implicated in a cancer-predisposing condition called Bloom’s syndrome illustrate the intricacies of protein interactions that ensure genomic stability. Bloom’s syndrome, which is characterized by severe growth retardation, immunodeficiency, anaemia, reduced… more
Origin of life: A meatier theory?” Or just another theory?
| December 13, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design, Self-Org. Theory |
Over at Access Research Network, British physicist David Tyler asks, “Did meteorite impacts help to spawn life?”, as per the theory of the week: The Scientific American report emphasized the tentative nature of the research: meteorites “may have helped spawn life” and “Did heat, pressure and carbon from meteorite impacts create biological precursors?” An astrobiologist… more
Information: Why the Darwinian Mechanism is Dead Except as an Explanation of the Trivial
| December 12, 2008 | Posted by GilDodgen under Intelligent Design |
When Darwin proposed his hypothesis in the 19th century it was assumed that the basis of living systems was fundamentally simple. The exact opposite has been shown to be the case in the 20th century. It was thought that chemistry, physics, mechanism, and chance were the foundational principles underlying living systems, but we now know… more
99% is not enough. Now it’s the 99.5% myth.
| December 12, 2008 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
On last night’s CSI-Las Vegas Lawrence Fishburne guest starred as a psychology lecturer at a local university named Raymond Langston. In a scene in which Langston was lecturing his students he described an incident reported by Jane Goodall where two chimps killed ten other chimps. Langston compared the chimp killings to human serial killers and… more
Computers vs. Darwinism? A computer teacher comments
| December 12, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Irreducible Complexity |
the clearest explanation I have read so far of why the Darwinist argument that intricate machines inside the cell can be built up without any intelligence underlying the universe are unbelievable more
Poetry Prize Goes to Poster Whom Some Call “Tim”
| December 11, 2008 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Humor |
Picking up on my Beaver post below, Tim writes: Barry’s query forms an eco-humdinger As beavers, by nature, give some greens the finger. I opine that the test (to make a formal arrest?) Means the cop’d have to be Peter Singer. more
Science fiction: Interesting idea on the nature of time and mind
| December 11, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Philosophy |
Over at Jason Rennie’s Sci Phi: Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy, Michael Spence offers “Requiem for a Harlequin: Two Perspectives on Time, and a Celebration of Kairos, in Three Stories by Harlan Ellison” – a look at Ellison’s sf fantasy stories that involve the nature of time: In Harlan Ellison’s long career of resisting… more
Reinstating the Explanatory Filter
| December 10, 2008 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
In an off-hand comment in a thread on this blog I remarked that I was dispensing with the Explanatory Filter in favor of just going with straight-up specified complexity. On further reflection, I think the Explanatory Filter ranks among the most brilliant inventions of all time (right up there with sliced bread). I’m herewith reinstating… more
Beavers Gone Bad
| December 10, 2008 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
Whacha gonna do when they come for you, bad beav, bad beav. From the December 9, 2008 Austrian Times: Green campaigners called in police after discovering an illegal logging site in a nature reserve – and rounded up a gang of beavers. Environmentalists found 20 neatly stacked tree trunks and others marked for felling… more
NHM – 99% Ape – press release
| December 10, 2008 | Posted by Steno under Intelligent Design |
The Natural History Museum (NHM) has issued a press release on the 5th December 2008, extolling the virtues of its new book ‘99% Ape: How evolution adds up’ and why Intelligent Design is flawed. This book has been written by academics at the Open University (OU) in the UK, and it is aimed at pre-university… more
Altruism, evolutionary psychology, and the heroes of Mumbai
| December 9, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
(Service note: If you had trouble finding Uncommon Descent last night, we had to change servers due to traffic problems. Sorry for inconvenience. – d.) Yesterday, in “From the Small Warm Pond to Cooties,” Barry challenged an attempted “evolutionary” explanation of teasing. Evolutionary psychology’s explanations of just about anything are routinely uninformative, but they tend… more
Anybody can create the universe, as long as it isn’t, like, God?
| December 8, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
In “Why it isn’t as simple as God vs. the multiverse”, Amanda Gefter (December 4, 2008) who seems determined to turn Britain’s New Scientist into the “National Enquirer” of pop science mags, advises that Pitting the multiverse against religion presents a false dichotomy. Science never boils down to a choice between two alternative explanations. It… more
From the Small Warm Pond to Kooties
| December 8, 2008 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
Evolutionary psychology, the idiot cousin of evolutionary theory, has dropped another bombshell of scintillating cutting edge science on us – when a kid calls the kid across the street a “poopyhead” he’s not being mean. He is just following the dictates of his genes, because teasing is an evolutionary adaptation, don’t you know. Dacher… more
Some Thanks for Professor Olofsson II
| December 8, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design |
The original Professor Olofsson post now has 340 comments on it, and is loading very slowly. Further comments to that post should be made here. more
Good Problems at UD
| December 8, 2008 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
Dear UD Visitors Today you may have noticed that UD went out of commission a couple of times. We are experiencing technical difficulties resulting from a significant upswing in site usage. Obviously, the more visitors we have the more we fulfill our mission of serving the ID community and promoting a vigorous debate, so… more
The Psychology of Blinding Obedience to a Paradigm
| December 7, 2008 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
In church on Sunday the sermon was about Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead. What does this have to do with the ID/Darwinism debate? Nothing, of course. But the story does contain a remarkable illustration of what I will call the “psychology of blinding obedience to a paradigm.” The central claim of ID can… more
UD Commenters Win One for the Gipper
| December 7, 2008 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
Below the fold I have reproduced an interesting comment thread in which ribczynski attacks ID proponents’ criticisms of macroevolution through NDE, and two ID proponents convincingly refute the Darwinist line. more
What hell is this?
| December 6, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
I’ve just discovered that my friend Richard Buggs is in some kind of trouble for having said what everyone obviously knows, that chimpanzees are NOT 98% human (and therefore humans are not 98% chimpanzee). Guys, have you ever even considered dating a female chimp? Yuh, thought so. Common ancestry? Well, it’s way easier to defend… more
Oxford Conference – Religious Responses to Darwinism
| December 6, 2008 | Posted by Steno under Intelligent Design |
The Ian Ramsey Centre’s annual international conference is planned to take place in July 2009 (July 15th – 18th) – RELIGIOUS RESPONSES TO DARWINISM 1859-2009: Commemorating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’. At St Anne’s College, Oxford, England. http://users.ox.ac.uk/~theo0038/Conferenceinfo/General.html There is a call for short papers of 20-minutes duration plus… more