Category: ID Foundations
EA’s 101 on some of the challenges of OOL Chemistry
| January 29, 2013 | Posted by kairosfocus under ID Foundations, Origin Of Life, science education |
One of the great things about UD is the commenters. In this case Eric Anderson has put up a summary — some days back — on an aspect of the blind- chance- and/or- necessity- in- a- chemical- stew- in- a- pond (or the like) OOL challenges that is well worth headlining: ___________ >> biological structures are… more
VIDEO: A look at the ATP Synthase in action, courtesy Discovery Institute (and Wikipedia)
| January 26, 2013 | Posted by kairosfocus under ID Foundations, Molecular Animations, Video |
DI has just released a video on the ATP Synthase in action (HT: ENV): embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt The blurb at Youtube reads: ATP Synthase is a molecular machine found in all living organisms. It serves as a miniature power-generator, producing an energy-carrying molecule, adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. The ATP synthase machine has many… more
Wiki’s F – - on ID, 7: The polarising false narrative about “Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design”
| January 14, 2013 | Posted by kairosfocus under academic freedom, Atheism, Functionally Specified Complex Information & Organization, ID Foundations, Science, science education, Science, worldview issues and society |
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(To comment, kindly go here) The title of this post is taken from a 2004 book by Forrest and Gross, which further intensifies the earlier accusation that Intelligent Design is “Creationism in a cheap tuxedo.” Given the agenda-driven hatchet job on Intelligent Design presented as a neutral point of view objective survey of Intelligent Design… more
Wiki’s F – - on ID, 6: Is all of this focus on the Wiki ID article mere tilting at a windmill that is pointless and so should be ignored?
| January 11, 2013 | Posted by kairosfocus under Atheism, Culture, Darwinism, ID Foundations, Intelligent Design, Popular culture, science education, Science, worldview issues and society, Society |
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( To comment, kindly go here) One of the objections to the markup of the Wiki ID article is that this is tilting at a windmill. I disagree. It should already be plain that the Wiki article is representative of a standard set of talking points used to polarise the unwary against design theory, and… more
Wiki’s F – - on ID, 5: Subtly distorting the truth on Discovery Institute’s policy on Education in public schools, multiplied by a failure of due disclosure on judge Jones’ Kitzmiller/ Dover ruling
| January 10, 2013 | Posted by kairosfocus under Atheism, Constitution, Courts, Creationism, Darwinism, ID Foundations, Popular culture, Religion, Science, science education, Science, worldview issues and society |
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( To comment, kindly go here) Last time, we showed how Wikipedia’s article on Intelligent Design flagrantly distorts the history of the origins of ID as a modern movement. Today, our focus is on a subtler distortion: From the mid-1990s, intelligent design proponents were supported by the Discovery Institute, which, together with its Center for… more
Wiki’s F – - on ID, 4: Correcting a widely circulated propagandistic false history of the origins of intelligent design as a scientific school of thought
| January 5, 2013 | Posted by kairosfocus under Courts, Creationism, Darwinism, Functionally Specified Complex Information & Organization, ID Foundations, Science, science education, Science, worldview issues and society |
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(To comment cf. here) Just now, I see where an objector to ID was saying that I a am tilting at windmills to take time to take apart the introduction to Wikipedia’s anti-ID hit piece presented as a NPOV review of ID from significant and credible sources. It bears remembering, then, that by Wiki’s admission… more
Wiki’s F – - on ID, 3: The pseudoscience false accusation vs the demarcation challenge for origins sciences
| January 4, 2013 | Posted by kairosfocus under Creationism, Culture, Darwinism, Design inference, Education, Functionally Specified Complex Information & Organization, ID Foundations, science education, Science, worldview issues and society |
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(To comment, go here) As we continue to mark up the Wikipedia introductory remarks on ID in its dismissive article, the next focal issue on failure to achieve the vaunted NPOV or carry out responsibilities of truthfulness, warrant and fairness, is: Intelligent design is viewed as a pseudoscience by the scientific community, because it lacks… more
Wiki’s F – - on ID, 2: Wiki’s ideologically driven corruption of the definitions of science and its methods
| January 2, 2013 | Posted by kairosfocus under Cosmology, Creationism, Culture, Darwinism, Design inference, Education, Evolution, Functionally Specified Complex Information & Organization, ID Foundations, Media, science education, Science, worldview issues and society |
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As we continue to mark up the Wiki article on ID, the next thing to notice is how the anonymous contributors have projected unto ID, an accusation of trying to redefine science and its methods in service to supernaturalistic creationism: Intelligent design (ID) is a form of creationism promulgated by the Discovery Institute . .… more
Another F double minus: Continuing to correct Wikipedia’s article on ID
| December 30, 2012 | Posted by kairosfocus under ID Foundations, Intelligent Design, Popular culture, science education, Science, worldview issues and society, Society |
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Yesterday, we saw how Wikipedia is one of the most influential sites on the Internet, how it vaunts itself on its commitment to NPOV, a neutral point of view: Editing from a neutral point of view (NPOV) means representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published… more
They said it: contrasted introductions to (and definitions of) Intelligent Design at Wikipedia and New World Encyclopedia
| December 29, 2012 | Posted by kairosfocus under Darwinism, Education, ID Foundations, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, science education, Science, worldview issues and society |
News has just put up a post with the Meyer lecture on intelligent design (with a close focus on the pivotal case, origin of life, the root of Darwin’s tree of life analogy). I responded here, in light of the history of ideas issues raised by the lecture as well as the question of why… more
The island that (maps notwithstanding) simply wasn’t there . . .
| November 23, 2012 | Posted by kairosfocus under academic freedom, Culture, Education, Evolution, ID Foundations, Origin Of Life, Science, science education, Science, worldview issues and society, Society |
This morning, I ran across a news item on the “undiscovery” of Sandy Island off Australia: Most explorers dream of discovering uncharted territory, but a team of Australian scientists have done the exact opposite. They have found an island that doesn’t exist. (vid at the linked) This led me to think about the institution of… more
The TSZ and Jerad Thread, III — 900+ and almost 800 comments in, needing a new thread . . .
| October 23, 2012 | Posted by kairosfocus under Culture, Design inference, Education, Evolution, Functionally Specified Complex Information & Organization, ID Foundations, science education, Science, worldview issues and society |
Okay, the thread of discussion needs to pick up from here on. To motivate discussion, let me clip here comment no 795 in the continuation thread, which I have marked up: _________ >> 795Jerad October 23, 2012 at 1:18 am KF (783): At this point, with all due respect, you look like someone making stuff… more
UD PRO-DARWINISM ESSAY CHALLENGE
On Sept 23rd, I put up an essay challenge as captioned, primarily to objecting commenter Jerad. As at October 2nd, he has definitively said: no. Joe informs us that Zachriel has tried to brush it aside: Try Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859). It’s a bit dated and longer than 6,000 words, (the 6th edition is… more
Design Inference vs. Design Hypothesis
| October 1, 2012 | Posted by William Dembski under 'Junk DNA', Design inference, ID Foundations, Intelligent Design |
Evolutionnews.org just published an article by me titled “Design Inference vs. Design Hypothesis.” Here is an excerpt: The logic of the design inference moves from a marker of intelligence (specified complexity) to an intelligence as causal agent responsible for that marker. The direction of this logic can, however, be reversed. Thus, instead, one can postulate… more
The TSZ and Jerad Thread, continued
| September 30, 2012 | Posted by kairosfocus under Functionally Specified Complex Information & Organization, ID Foundations, Science, worldview issues and society |
Part of me feels like letting the TSZ thread go to a full 1,000 comments, but then my sense of responsibility to UD’s bandwidth budget kicks in. So, let us continue the discussion of the topics from the thread on TSZ issues and Jerad’s concerns continue here. To prime the pump, let me clip two… more
It seems that TSZ objector to design, AF, insists on the long since corrected canard that design is a “default” inference
| September 17, 2012 | Posted by kairosfocus under Design inference, Functionally Specified Complex Information & Organization, ID Foundations |
UD commenter Joe notes: Alan [Fox] amuses by not understanding the definition of “default”. He thinks the design inference is the default even though it is reached via research, observations, knowledge and experiences. To put this ill-founded but longstanding objection to the design inference — it is tantamount to an accusation of question-begging – to… more
On “seeing” — credibly knowing about — the invisible in science
| September 14, 2012 | Posted by kairosfocus under Design inference, Functionally Specified Complex Information & Organization, ID Foundations, Science, science education |
Yesterday, following up from recent comment exchanges, I posted about the electron as an example of how we routinely deal with the invisible in science, and on how inductive — believe it or not that is now a fighting word — inference on sign is vital to science. This morning, I followed up on a… more
Sometimes, a picture — here, a 465B Cathode Ray Oscilloscope, showing a trace on its screen — is worth a thousand words (on the significance of inference to best current explanation in science)
| September 13, 2012 | Posted by kairosfocus under Functionally Specified Complex Information & Organization, ID Foundations, Intelligent Design, science education, Science, worldview issues and society |
The Tektronix 465 Cathode Ray Oscilloscope is a classic of analogue oscilloscope design, one based on deflecting electron beams electrostatically to observe and measure electrical oscillations: But, wait a minute, are we ACTUALLY seeing electron beams? Nope, we are seeing a TRACE on the screen, where light is emitted by the phosphor as it is… more
For Record: A clarifying note on [Gibbs and Shannon] entropy, information, FSCO/I and the 747 built by a tornado in a junkyard vs the 747 torn apart by one
| September 8, 2012 | Posted by kairosfocus under Functionally Specified Complex Information & Organization, ID Foundations, Informatics, Intelligent Design |
Over the past several days, there has been considerable debate at UD on thermodynamics, information, order vs disorder etc. In a clarifying note to Mung (who was in turn responding to Sal C) I have commented as follows. (My note also follows up from an earlier note that was put up early in the life… more
A Designed Object’s Entropy Must Increase for Its Design Complexity to Increase – Part 2
| September 5, 2012 | Posted by scordova under Biophysics, Comp. Sci. / Eng., Complex Specified Information, ID Foundations, Informatics, Physics, Self-Org. Theory |
In order for a biological system to have more biological complexity, it often requires a substantial increase in thermodynamic entropy, not a reduction of it, contrary to many intuitions among creationists and IDists. This essay is part II of a series that began with Part 1 The physicist Fred Hoyle famously said: The chance that… more