As you read this many of the cells in your body are in a gradual process of division which results in the production of two daughter cells. In this process, known as mitosis, the cell duplicates its contents, including its DNA, before dividing. But the hardware is only part of a cell. Like a computer the cell contains programming information. For instance, tiny chemical signals—methyl groups—may be added to certain proteins or DNA sequences. You can read here about one way that this programming information is passed on to later generations. New research is now elucidating a different mechanism for preserving the cell’s programming information.  Read more

Professor Edward Feser is an intrepid philosopher, who is not afraid to confront error head-on and expose it for what it is. That is an admirable trait. He is also a former atheist, who now defends religion from a traditional Roman Catholic perspective. In his book The Last Superstition (St. Augustine’s Press, 2008; available here ), Professor Feser takes on all four of the “New Atheists” – Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. David Oderberg, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading, England, and a former atheist himself, was highly impressed by Professor Feser’s robust defense of the rationality of belief in God:

Anyone who comes away from The Last Superstition thinking that potboiler atheism has anything to recommend it, or that belief in God is irrational, will not be convinced by anything. For the rest of us, the book is, to use an apposite term, a godsend. And the caustic humour peppering the book adds just the sort of spice this fraught subject needs. If the Faithless Foursome were at all interested in a serious rebuttal, they now have it.

Professor Feser is a very insightful metaphysician, and I have been struck by his perspicacity more than a few times, while reading his blogs. His ability to articulate and defend Aquinas’ Five Ways to a 21st century audience is matchless. It is therefore a great pity, in my opinion, that he perceives ID as antithetical to Aquinas’ philosophy, and as an obstacle to his intellectual endeavor of convincing skeptics that the existence of God can be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt.

What is Professor Feser’s beef with ID, you may ask? Actually, he has a few objections to ID, but his principal complaint is that it is tied to a mechanistic conception of life. Here is his argument, Read More ›

What are the central theological failings of intelligent design? First, it is blasphemous.

Peter Hess, Faith Project Director, NCSE

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Charles Darwin spent many years working on his ideas about evolution before publishing them in 1859. Darwin continued with revisions for another 17 years, finally stopping with his final edition, six years before he died. In his heartfelt introduction to his tome Darwin provided the reader with a context. Many readers would not make it through the lengthy work, but they would read the Introduction. So not surprisingly Darwin finished his introduction with his take-home message. If you go no further, this is what you needed to know. Here is how Darwin finished that first chapter:  Read more

This is the title of an opinion piece that appears in the latest issue of the liberal-left weekly UK magazine, New Statesman. It is written by Michael Reiss, who 18 months ago was forced out of his position as director of communications at the Royal Society because he said that creationist and ID views should be treated critically but respectfully, when raised by students in science classes. (As you can see from the end of the piece, he is eminently qualified to speak on these matters.)  Reiss’ sacking has been perhaps the most public demonstration of an Expelled-like phenomenon in Britain to date. To this day, I am surprised at how little outrage it generated. I protested immediately at the Read More ›

The objective of science is to be objective. Measurements, observations, explanations, hypotheses, theories, and laws should be free of personal opinion. Science should not depend on one’s perspective, but rather it should escape parochial viewpoints. It should take on, as Thomas Nagel put it, the view from nowhere. Some may argue that such objectivity is impossible. Others may contend it is not even desirable. Perhaps so, but nonetheless many scientists do strive for such objectivity.  Read more

When asked if I believe in miracles I reply yes, and that I know of one for sure — on the grandest scale imaginable. What is a miracle? It is an event with no naturalistic explanation or cause. The event of the origin of the universe is, by definition, a miracle, since matter, energy, space and time (nature) did not exist to cause it. By definition, the universe had a super(beyond or outside of nature)natural cause. Concerning the origin of the universe, I get frustrated that almost no one ever makes an obvious point when debating atheists who challenge, “Who designed the designer?” Matter, energy, space, and time came into existence at the birth of the universe. (Matter and energy Read More ›

Specifically, Bacon’s essay on atheism: God never wrought miracle to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it. This is an obsolete, but still relevant, sense of “convince.” It means “to overcome or vanquish.” “‘Convince me!’ said the atheist.” In the original sense, this would mean, “Come on — defeat me.” Anyway, their video is here. WARNING: NSFW language.

One of the most fundamental premises of evolutionary theory is that the evolutionary process is indeterminate. The species arose via a process which did not have them in mind. This is because, from mutations to comet strikes, evolution depends on sporadic, unguided events that know nothing of making species. Evolution is contingent on random events and does not know where it is going—there is no teleology.  Read more

Eight years ago, biochemist Michael Behe wrote this open letter to the prestigious scientific journal, Nature:

Sir-

As a public skeptic of the ability of Darwinian processes to account for complex cellular systems and a proponent of the hypothesis of intelligent design, (1) I often encounter a rebuttal that can be paraphrased as “no designer would have done it that way.” …
If at least some pseudogenes have unsuspected functions, however, might not other biological features that strike us as odd also have functions we have not yet discovered? Might even the backwards wiring of the vertebrate eye serve some useful purpose?
….
Hirotsune et al’s (3) work has forcefully shown that our intuitions about what is functionless in biology are not to be trusted.

Sincerely, Michael J. Behe
An Open Letter to Nature

Contrast that with Ken Miller’s now falsified claim in 1994:

the designer made serious errors, wasting millions of bases of DNA on a blueprint full of junk and scribbles.

Ken Miller, 1994

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Bruce Waltke, a Professor of Old Testament, has parted ways with Reformed Theological Seminary, perhaps due to controversies over his sympathies with evolution. Rod Dreher at BeliefNet worries that this is a dangerous disregard for science:  Read more

Isn’t evolution swell …

I hesitate to bring attention to a blog, called Thoughts from Kansas, written by Josh Rosenau (a grad student completing a doctorate in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas), because I don’t think it makes accurate arguments and doesn’t deserve to be promoted, even in a rebuttal. The blog amounts to inaccurate, prideful digs at ID and reminisces over a paper he wrote pertaining to what he perceives are the legal and social histories of Intelligent Design:

The paper’s title, “Leap of Faith: Intelligent Design after Dover” is a reference both to the chalky cliffs of the English Channel, to the town in which ID itself took a fall, and to the politically and economically suicidal effects of pushing creationism into public schools. Along the way, I was able to work in some other subtle digs at ID, including this summary of the recent history of the ID movement…

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Is there a religious influence and authoritarian tradition in science? Evolutionists such as PZ Myers reject any such notion. Though Myers relies on the usual theological truth claims that are fundamental to evolution, he is sure that science is free of all such nonsense. When he is not busy shutting down scientific inquiry with religious dictates, he reassures his readers that science is a process that empowers questioning and change.  Read more