Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Remembering Phil Skell

Casey Luskin reports the passing of our colleague and member of the National Academy of Sciences, Phil Skell. Philip S. Skell, sometimes called “the father of carbene chemistry,” is widely known for the “Skell Rule,” which was first applied to carbenes, the “fleeting species” of carbon. The rule, which predicts the most probable pathway through which certain chemical compounds will be formed, found use throughout the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. …. Later in his career, Phil became a skeptic of neo-Darwinian evolution. His main position was that Darwinism does not serve as the cornerstone of biological thought that many claim it does. Giving Thanks for Dr. Philip Skell

Intelligent Design – Pseudoscience or A Credible Challenge To Evolution?

As I previously noted, Michael Behe has been touring the UK this week, speaking in such cities as Belfast, Bournemouth, Cambridge, Glasgow, Leamington/Warwick, London, and Oxford. On Monday, Michael Behe debated the former director of the Royal Society, Michael Reiss, before an audience of invited guests – including scientists, religious leaders and secularists. The event was hosted at the Charles Darwin house in London. Today, the audio recording of this exchange was made available via Premier Christian Radio’s Unbelievable website, who hosted the event. The audio of the debate may be downloaded and listened to, at your leisure, here. A report on the event by the New Humanist blog may be read here. The web site’s descriptor reports as follows: Read More ›

Is PZ Myers the Future of Secular Humanism?

UD moderator Clive Hayden referred UD readers to an article at SuperScholar.org titled “The Future of Secular Humanism.” The article itself focused on a rift between the secular humanism old guard, represented by Paul Kurtz, and the new guard, represented by Ron Lindsay, who apparently ousted Kurtz from the various humanist organizations he had founded. The rift was over the place of religion in society and whether secular humanism should take a harsh line against it. Hayden sees this rift as representing a deep-seated internecine conflict, with the implication that such conflict will undercut the effectiveness of secular humanism as a cultural force (though he doesn’t draw that implication explicitly). My own view is that secular humanism is being co-opted by Read More ›

Eugene Koonin: The Pot Calls the Kettle Black

A paper written by an evolutionist from earlier this year, erroneously claiming to confirm common descent, has now been rebuked by other evolutionists. Unfortunately this is not a healthy sign of evolutionists turning to science, for the new paper is just as unscientific as the first.  Read more A paper written by an evolutionist from earlier this year, erroneously claiming to confirm common descent, has now been rebuked by other evolutionists. Unfortunately this is not a healthy sign of evolutionists turning to science, for the new paper is just as unscientific as the first.A paper written by an evolutionist from earlier this year, erroneously claiming to confirm common descent, has now been rebuked by other evolutionists. Unfortunately this is not Read More ›

UK Christians Embrace ID;

I had the privilege of attending Michael Behe’s talk at Westmister Chapel in London on Monday evening.   The talk was organised by Premier Christian Radio, so it is safe to assume that most of those in attendance were Christian listeners of that radio station. The hall was almost full as Professor Behe began his talk by illustrating how we intuitively recognise design. He contrasted a ‘natural’ mountain range in Idaho with the famous sculptures of four US Presidents at Mount Rushmore, before explaining how his ground-breaking concept of irreducible complexity provides a more rigorous method of establishing whether a particular structure is the product of purposeful design by an intelligent agent. This was illustrated by his famous mousetrap and bacterial flagellum.    The workings of the latter are Read More ›

Secular Humanists Despise Each Other and Humanity

A friend of mine referred me to this article at superscholar.org about the recent 30th anniversary conference that The Center For Inquiry held in Los Angeles this past October. There seems to be a lot of disagreement among the influential in the movement advocating secular humanism.

Despite calls for unity at the conference, a significant amount of disagreement about where secular humanism needs to go was evident. During the last session, a sharp exchange occurred between the founder of The Center for Inquiry and The Counsel for Secular Humanism, Paul Kurtz, and Ron Lindsay, the current CEO and President of these organizations.

Kurtz, using the microphone set up for the audience, cited at length a recent LA Times article exposing a “rift within the Center for Inquiry.” “That rift” Kurtz said, quoting the article, “cracked open recently when Paul Kurtz, a founder of the secular humanist movement in America, was ousted as chairman of the Center for Inquiry, an organization of the Counsel for Secular Humanism.  One factor leading to this ouster, was the perception that Kurtz was on the — and this is quoting Thomas Flynn — was on the mellowing side of the movement.” Unlike some secular humanists who envision the destruction of religion, Kurtz advocates for accommodation with religion.

Kurtz stated that he had been censored for the first time in his life, and that this was through the CFI, an organization he founded, in that they refused to publish his letter of resignation as well as his neo-humanist statement of secular principles and values. He said that his ouster resulted in the “worst two years of my life.” Toni Van Pelt, who had opened the Office of Public Policy for the CFI, defended Kurtz and lamented his censorship and forced resignation by Lindsay. This was followed with simultaneous booing and applause from the audience. Several panelists, including Jennifer Michael Hecht and Sean Faircloth, left the stage during this exchange.

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Glasgow Humanists Unable To Mount Successful Argument Against Behe

Michael Behe is currently on a speaking tour around the UK (tour website here), organised by the newly founded Centre for ID UK. Last night, I attended Behe’s Glasgow lecture. The evening was entitled “Darwin or Design – What Does the Science Really Say?” As is to be expected, Behe spoke both articulately and persuasively, developing a powerful cumulative positive case for design based on the nanotechnology which pervades life at the level of the cellular world. Behe is a very gifted speaker, especially when it comes to conveying his scientific ideas and concepts to an audience without a scientific background.

Representatives from the Scottish Humanist Society were also in attendance, and took the liberty to hand out anti-ID literature outside the venue. Nothing wrong with that, of course. ID has nothing to fear from people listening to both sides and critically evaluating the strength of the respective cases. Unfortunately, however, the literature was disappointing – it recycled, in large measure, material from the NCSE and from Wikipedia: hardly your most reliable sources of information when it comes to ID. Many of the objections presented therein were, in fact, addressed during the course of the presentation. Tellingly, when it came to the Q&A, the humanists were seemingly unable to articulate a reason why we ought to reject Behe’s arguments, and it was somewhat of an anticlimax.

Nonetheless, I thought that it might be worth posting a brief response to this literature here. One of the two pieces of literature which I picked up was a pamphlet headed “It isn’t Intelligent and it isn’t Design. ID is Bad Science – ID is BS”. When one turns the page, one is confronted with four headings, and I will discuss each in turn.

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“Evolution Readiness” and Other Tools for Teaching Evolution in Our Schools

Education Week has this article expounding on the fruitfulness of campaigns designed to educate our youth in the theory of evolution.

When a federal court in 2005 rejected an attempt by the Dover, Pa., school board to introduce intelligent design as an alternative to evolution to explain the development of life on Earth, it sparked a renaissance in involvement among scientists in K-12 science instruction.

Now, some of those teaching programs, studies, and research centers are starting to bear fruit.

The National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, and other groups have increased research investment on identifying essential concepts for teaching evolution, including creating the Evolution Education Research Centre, a partnership of Harvard, McGill, and Chapman universities, and launching the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the subject, Journal of Evolution: Education and Outreach.

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The Fly’s Adaptive Aerodynamics

Recent experiments have revealed that when perturbed in flight, a fruit fly can recover its heading to within 2 degrees in less than a tenth of a second. Here’s how the researchers describe the results:  Read more

Social Darwinist sterilization hits bookshelf in Canada

Fight Card: Jane Harris Zsovan vs. It Couldn’t Happen Here (My comments on how Christians got involved in that mess … ) The Alberta Christian support for forced sterilization is a case in point: Why on earth did anyone think that social Darwinism was a reasonable fit with Christianity? It can’t be, and the original social Darwinists were hostile to Christianity for precisely that reason. But, of course, some social Darwinists ingratiated themselves with Christians to gain influence for their policies. Generally, Christians depended on social Darwinists to do the primary research about the lives of the poor, and then reacted to their carefully staged* horror stories out of sentiment and zeal rather than information and reflection. Rest here.

Chickens Have Cellular Sunglasses

When light enters your eye it triggers a sequence of actions, ultimately causing a signal to be sent to your brain. Even a mere single photon can be detected in your vision system. It all starts with a photon interacting with a light-sensitive chromophore molecule. The interaction causes the chromophore to change configuration and this, in turn, influences the large, trans-membrane rhodopsin protein to which the chromophore is attached. This is just the beginning of the cellular signal transduction cascade. But before any of this begins, in some species the incoming light has already been filtered and focused.  Read more

Sir Roger’s Revelation

In a previous blog, I had analyzed Sir Roger Penrose‘s new cosmology (CCC) as a reworking of Sir Fred Hoyle’s “Steady State Theory“. And of course, Sir Fred’s is a reworking of the Greek model of Democritus, and one of the three pillars of materialism. Also in the news is Hawking’s attempt to make the Creator unnecessary with a different kludge, invoking an infinite Monte Carlo casino of universes. Since Sir Roger is not a theist, it may be that like Sir Fred, he finds a certain attraction to recovering an infinite universe that makes a Creator unnecessary. Unfortunately, it looks as if he’s proven the opposite. But first let’s look at his theory. Read more…

The video that proves Intelligent Design

Seeing is believing, and they say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Over at Creation.com, Brian Thomas has posted a fascinating article entitled, ATP synthase: majestic molecular machine made by a mastermind. ATP synthase is an enzyme that synthesizes an energy-rich compound, ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which is used by almost every biochemical process in the body. ATP synthase is also the world’s tiniest rotary motor, and it operates at near 100% efficiency, which is far greater than that of any man-made motor. In his article, Brian Thomas does an excellent job of describing the workings of this enzyme and of exposing the inadequacies of proposed evolutionary explanations for its origin.

But don’t take my word for it. Have a look at this video by Creation.com, and you’ll see at once that ATP synthase is the product of design. It’ll only take 86 seconds of your valuable time.
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Ethics and the Evolution of the Synapse

Scientific mistakes are no sin, but it would be a mistake to think there is no ethical dimension to the theory of evolution. The ethical aspects of evolution are most obvious in its misrepresentation of science. Even evolutionists agree scientists are responsible for the accurate transmission of scientific knowledge to the public. And yet evolutionists consistently misrepresent science, claiming evolution is an undeniable fact. It would be irrational, they say, to think otherwise. What is striking is the degree of this misrepresentation. We’re not talking about a minor mistake or two that led to an error in the third decimal point. We’re not talking about a subtle blunder that could easily go undetected. Consider, for example, the evolution of the Read More ›