Monthly Archives: August 2009
The Water Strider: Evolution’s Gratuitous Explanations
| August 18, 2009 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
New research is telling us more about how water striders, those bugs that walk on water, get such long legs. Read more more
Another reason to forget Darwinism – especially if you are a Catholic
| August 18, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Origin Of Life |
Friend Casey Luskin writes, “There He Goes Again: Ken Miller misrepresents Behe’s Arguments on the Immune System.” Well, of course he would, wouldn’t he? I’ve read Behe’s Edge of Evolution and Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God, and – to be charitable to Miller – can find no way of even ranking them in the same category.… more
Does Dawkins’ forum evidence “Intelligent Design”?
| August 18, 2009 | Posted by DLH under Atheism, Evolution, Informatics, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity |
Consultant Rick Ferguson quipped that the hacking of Dawkins’ website “is proof there’s no “Intelligent Design” on Dawkins’ forum”: Dawkins’ website forum hacked to send spam: God! What a nuisance By John Leyden A website forum run by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins was compromised on Monday. Cybercrooks hacked into the forum to send members an… more
Understanding the Origin of Life: What Has History Taught Us?
| August 18, 2009 | Posted by Flannery under Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
Reading through some of Huxley’s writings caused me to pause and ask a question: After more than a century of study, trial-and-error, and free-wheeling speculation, what has history taught us about the origin of life? For an exhaustive review of this question, see Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell. But the specific question was prompted by the following… more
Uncommon Descent Contest Question 8: Do the “new atheists” help or hurt the cause of Darwinism?
| August 17, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Religion, Science |
The prize?: A free copy of Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009). Judged: Go here for winner. You may wish to note this discussion on the new atheists and the problem of evil. Admin Note: Re contest 7: Endoplasmic Messenger needs to send me a real world address at [email protected], in order… more
Ascertaining Non-Function
| August 15, 2009 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
One of the main arguments to support evolution appeals to shared non-functional structures between organisms. Since design entails design for function, shared non-functional structures would suggest common ancestry in the absence of common design. But how can we tell whether something is truly non-functional? Here are some insights from a colleague that address this point:… more
Not Very NICE
| August 15, 2009 | Posted by Clive Hayden under Biology, Culture, Education, Intelligent Design, Off Topic, Religion, Science |
Investor’s Business Daily posted an article relating Obama’s Healthcare Bill to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the technocrats responsible for the U.K.’s health care. The article states: This administration, pledging to cut medical costs and for which “cost-effectiveness” is a new mantra, knows that a quarter of Medicare spending is made… more
Wallace and Intelligent Design: A Response to John M. Lynch
| August 15, 2009 | Posted by Flannery under Evolution, Intelligent Design, theistic evolution |
“Puttering with barnacles” Over a month ago John M. Lynch posted (on his aptly titled blog “a simple prop”–need I say more) a rant against my book, Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Intelligent Evolution, making a number of charges that warrant reply. Since his promised part 2 has never materialized, I’ll remain silent no longer lest… more
New Research: Teleology is Built Into the Brain
| August 15, 2009 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
New research reveals teleology in the design of the human brain. It has long since been known that the brain processes and categorizes different types of objects in different parts of the brain. A steak sandwich and a predator, for example, activate different areas of the brain. But the new research indicates that such differentiation… more
John Mark Reynolds debates Robert Wright with Hugh Hewitt
| August 15, 2009 | Posted by William Dembski under Evolution, Religion, Science |
……..… For the podcast, go to: FIRST HOUR: http://salem/townhall/audio/hour_1…mp3 SECOND HOUR: http://salem/townhall/audio/hour_2…mp3 THIRD HOUR: http://salem/townhall/audio/hour_3…mp3 John Mark Reynolds is a long-time supporter of ID. He invented the title of a Biola conference that I helped organize (and for which I edited the proceedings): MERE CREATION. more
The Red Ape
| August 14, 2009 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
This month a new study reports that orangutans are particularly resourceful tool makers as they have been found to use a tool for communicating. Orangutans not only are sophisticated but, interestingly, share many similarities with humans. These “people of the forest,” as they have been called, have more in common with humans than do the… more
The New Atheists and the Age Old Problem of Evil
| August 13, 2009 | Posted by DonaldM under Atheism, Culture, Darwinism, Ethics, Evolution, Human evolution, Philosophy, Religion |
By now, most readers here are familiar with Richard Dawkins’s view of God as expressed in The God Delusion where Dawkins writes that God is “the most unpleasant character in all fiction … a misogynist, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” The last time a literary character was described in… more
Sewing The Seeds Of Biology’s Post-’Shannon Information’ Era
| August 13, 2009 | Posted by Robert Deyes under Intelligent Design |
Synopsis Of The Fourth Chapter Of Signature In The Cell by Stephen Meyer ISBN: 9780061894206; ISBN10: 0061894206; Imprint: HarperOne When talking about ‘information’ and its relevance to biological design, Intelligent Design theorists have a particular definition in mind. Indeed they see information as “the attribute inherent in and communicated by alternative sequences or arrangements of… more
UPDATE: The End of Christianity
| August 13, 2009 | Posted by William Dembski under Atheism, Culture, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Religion, Science, theistic evolution |
Yesterday I met with the literary publicist hired by Broadman & Holman to promote The End of Christianity when it is released November 1st (for the Amazon.com listing, go here). This book will do much to create further conceptual room for ID. It is also being positioned to go face-to-face with the neo-atheist literature. The… more
How Evolution Created Evolution
| August 13, 2009 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
Did your high school biology teacher tell you that evolution is a fact because, after all, species are observed to adapt and evolve in nature? At the time it may not have occurred to you that moths changing color and the beaks of birds changing shape hardly demonstrate that entirely new forms and designs can… more
Dr. Dembski’s Students Coming to a Hostile Website Near You
| August 13, 2009 | Posted by Clive Hayden under Education |
Journalist Ed Brayton, at his website ScienceBlogs, becomes an expert at education, aside from already being an expert on Panda’s Thumbs. His complaint is with the efficacy of Dr. Dembski’s educational approach of assigning his students, as part of the course requirement, the task of writing at least 10 posts defending ID on “hostile” websites.… more
Dawkins shows us transitionals, really.
| August 12, 2009 | Posted by Mario A. Lopez under Darwinism, Education, Evolution, Eyes Rolling, Science |
embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt nolink more
Design of functional metalloproteins
| August 12, 2009 | Posted by Mario A. Lopez under Intelligent Design, Science |
NATURE|Vol 460|13 August 2009|doi:10.1038/nature08304 REVIEW Yi Lu1, Natasha Yeung1, Nathan Sieracki1 & Nicholas M. Marshall1 Metalloproteins account for nearly half of all proteins in nature. Protein metal-binding sites are responsible for catalysing important biological processes, such as photosynthesis, respiration, water oxidation, molecular oxygen reduction and nitrogen fixation. Much effort has been devoted to understanding the… more
Evolutionary psychology: Tracing the road to extinction
| August 12, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Human evolution |
Here is my latest MercatorNet article, dissecting the caveman theory of psychology, explaining why evolutionary psychology is so rapidly losing credibility: “Is human behaviour really based on the survival strategies of our Pleistocene ancestors?” Well, the stone hatchet is certainly poised over our iconic cavemen. A recent Scientific American podcast admits as much, and without… more
Dr. Michael Behe’s New Blog on Uncommon Descent
| August 11, 2009 | Posted by Jack Cole under Adminstrative, Intelligent Design |
With the new technical enhancements behind the scenes on Uncommon Descent, we are now able to add individual blogs. That said, we are happy to announce that the first individual blog we have added is that of Dr. Michael Behe. All of his previous posts from his Amazon blog have been imported to his UD… more