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Design inference

Here are some reviews of Avi Loeb’s book about space debris Oumuamua as a space alien signal

Some of us still think Loeb is way off the beam about Oumuamua but at least he is talking about how you would know that something is designed. If anyone is interested, it is called the design inference. Read More ›

At Evolution News: Codes are not products of physics

Some are still trying to jackhammer meaning out of what they claim is a meaningless universe. If they’re talking about codes but not talking about information, they’re not operating in a real space anyway. But tenured/tenure-seeking Darwinism does that to people. Read More ›

SETI is really one big fat design inference

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) folk should induct ID theorist Bill Dembski into their Hall of Fame because he literally wrote the book on The Design Inference and that's the idea that keeps them going. Read More ›

Moths evade bats using acoustic camouflage on their wings

As before, those who want to attribute these staggeringly complex arms races to natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism) are facing a huge probability gap. The processes of nature can’t be both wholly blind and highly intelligent, given time limits. Read More ›

The CORRECT way to understand the mysterious Utah monolith

Why rush to conclude intelligent design?, asks philosopher and photographer Laszlo Bencze. He writes us to recommend a proper Darwinian view of the problem, a sort of desert version of Darwin’s “warm little pond” origin of life. Read More ›

Darwin’s notebooks apparently stolen – But wait!

A proper Darwinian response would say that the books evolved away from the Library “daily and hourly” during those twenty years. Seriously, we sure hope they get them back. Read More ›

Sometimes it’s hard for researchers to avoid talking about design in nature

Marine mussels have “perfected the art,” have they? If they just happen to have evolved to be so clever, why don’t they do more? It’s becoming increasingly obvious that something in nature is clever but it isn’t the mussel. Read More ›

ENCODE hints at MORE functional DNA

ENCODE Encyclopaedia: It has become apparent that, by virtually any metric, elements that govern transcription, chromatin organization, splicing, and other key aspects of genome control and function are densely encoded in many parts of the human genome sequence. Read More ›

An example of interwoven protein code (HT, Wiki!)

Here, in human mitochondrial DNA — note the BLUE code start and the RED code stop; all HT to Wiki publishing against known ideological interest: Complex interwoven code is of course doubly functionally specific, so it is exponentially harder to account for, other than by exceedingly sophisticated and creative intelligently directed configuration. Indeed, when I had to write machine code, I thanked my lucky stars 2114’s and 2716’s were by then affordable RAM and EPROM chips, and proceeded from there. (BTW, a neighbour who was an engineer in an earlier era spoke of how people flew across North America just to see 1 MB of live RAM, in a video memory, a million dollar cost in itself.) We know v Read More ›

L&FP39: How the folded structure (and then the “loading”) of tRNA corrects attempts to reduce protein synthesis to “mere” chemistry

One of the more astonishing rhetorical gambits of objectors to the design inference is to try to suggest that the alphanumeric, code-using, algorithmic information system we see in the D/RNA of the living cell and linked protein synthesis is not really an information system, it all reduces to chemical reaction trains. A common associated gambit is to assert that terms like “code” etc are all readily dismissible analogies. As a first reminder, protein synthesis as graphically summarised: Of course, it never hurts to remind such objectors of p. 5 of Sir Francis Crick’s $6 million, March 19, 1953 letter to his son, Michael: Notice, his belief right from the outset of discovering the double-helix stricture: “. . . D.N.A. is Read More ›

A note on layer-cake communication systems and protocols

There is a live exchange on the molecular nanotech communication systems in the cell that is trying to reduce them to Chemistry; where a chemical reaction is a physical process. Accordingly, I beg to remind one and all regarding layered communication systems and protocols: This is an elaboration of the general communication system: Here is how Yockey summarised it: Where, the standard genetic code [one of about two dozen dialects] reads like: The double helix: As was noted by Crick, right from the outset: In context: Now, we can see for ourselves just how desperate objectors to the design inference must be in the face of the point that D/RNA expresses a string data structure carrying a prong-height-based alphanumeric, 4 Read More ›

Looking back at a 2017 paper that risks saying that ID is “not necessarily stupid”

One would feel vaguely sorry for Raymond Bergner if he found himself dealing with a horde of Darwin trolls. But it is so much easier to sympathize with people who are prepared to acknowledge facts more forthrightly and honestly. Read More ›