Category: The Design of Life
Getting me an Education
| April 23, 2013 | Posted by andyjones under 'Junk DNA', Darwinism, Evolutionary biology, Intelligent Design, science education, The Design of Life |
Larry Moran has decided to educate me about junk DNA. I appreciate the level of detail he has provided. I am not an expert in this field. I do however have a brain and, as a physicist, a vastly superior brain (I joke, sort of). I am not an IDiot, nor am I a larey… more
Are pseudogenes evidence of code libraries? (a speculative suggestion)
| July 28, 2012 | Posted by andyjones under Comp. Sci. / Eng., Genomics, Intelligent Design, The Design of Life |
Intelligent Design is relatively new in its present form. Proponents often argue that there are features of biology that look like engineering, and in particular, that the programming of life, the DNA software that goes along with the cellular hardware, is analogous to the programming of computers. However, we haven’t yet been able to fully… more
Is Craig Venter’s Synthetic Cell Really Life?
| July 23, 2010 | Posted by DonaldM under Biology, Chemistry, Darwinism, Design inference, Evolution, Evolutionary biology, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life, Religion, Science, The Design of Life |
Bioethicist Gregory Kaebnick, Ph.D., has an interesting take on the recently announced synthetic cell created by a team of researchers led by J. Craig Venter at the J. Craig Venter Instititute (JVCI). In a recent article in The Scientist entitled Is the “Synthetic Cell” about Life?, Kaebnick writes: …the technical accomplishment is not quite what… more
How were RNA gene repeats, “essential” to DNA repair, formed?
| February 5, 2010 | Posted by DLH under Biology, Darwinism, Design inference, Evolution, Evolutionary biology, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, Origin Of Life, The Design of Life |
RNA replications have now been discovered to be “essential” to DNA error correction systems. If they are “essential”, how could they arrive by random mutation and “selection”? On what basis does neoDarwinism predict error correction in the first place? From Intelligent Design, methodology one expects to see evidence of design in complex biochemical systems. From… more
Editing the Tape of Evolutionary History Yet Again
| January 8, 2010 | Posted by DonaldM under Biology, Cambrian explosion, Darwinism, Evolution, Evolutionary biology, Natural selection, Science, The Design of Life |
The late Stephen J. Gould once wrote “Replay the tape [of evolution] a million times from a Burgess [the Burgess Shale fossils]beginning, and I doubt that anything like Homo sapiens would ever evolve again. It is, indeed, a wonderful life.” (Gould, Stephen J. [Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University], “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale… more
Oddities Living in the Deep Blue Sea
| November 23, 2009 | Posted by DonaldM under Biology, Intelligent Design, Media, Science, The Design of Life |
We all know that our planet is awash with wonderful and beautiful life forms, none more so than we find in our oceans. This photo essay from the Fox News Website provides a glimpse into the strange world of creatures that inhabit the deepest parts of the seas. Truly remarkable. Here is but one example… more
Cambridge ‘Dissent over Descent’ Lecture
| July 24, 2009 | Posted by Steve Fuller under Culture, Education, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Religion, Science, The Design of Life |
My apologies for not posting more here recently. I now have a blog on my university’s website dedicated to the future of the university, where I have done a bit of posting. But mostly I have been trying to finish a new book on science as an ‘art of living’ for new series by the… more
Message Theory – A Testable ID Alternative to Darwinism – Part 4
| April 27, 2009 | Posted by Walter ReMine under Biology, Chemistry, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life, The Design of Life |
Dobzhansky got it backwards: The unity of life at the biochemical level is evidence for Message Theory, and against evolution. more
Message Theory – A testable ID alternative to Darwinism – Part 1
| February 16, 2009 | Posted by Walter ReMine under Culture, Education, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Science, The Design of Life |
Message Theory is a testable scientific explanation of life’s major patterns. more
Theos Survey: A Case of Unintelligent Design?
| February 8, 2009 | Posted by Steve Fuller under Atheism, Biology, Creationism, Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Media, Philosophy, Religion, Science, The Design of Life, theistic evolution |
Andrew Sibley has drawn attention to the recent Theos survey of the UK public’s beliefs in evolution, creationism and intelligent design. Wearing my sociologist’s hat, one overriding conclusion comes through in this survey: It was very poorly designed. Theos should get its money back from the social researchers they hired. Theos wants to give the… more
Saving Darwin’s Soul: Does His 21st Century Fate Rest on Fighting 19th Century Battles?
| January 31, 2009 | Posted by Steve Fuller under Biography, Biology, Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Religion, Science, The Design of Life |
This week marks the publication of the Darwin book that has so far received the most advance publicity in the UK, Darwin’s Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins, by Adrian Desmond and James Moore (Allen Lane). Desmond and Moore, both together and separately, have written some of the best histories of… more
Just because Marxism has lost its sense of purpose, it doesn’t mean that ID must as well
| January 29, 2009 | Posted by Steve Fuller under Creationism, Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Religion, The Design of Life |
A Book Review of John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York, Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present (Monthly Review Press, 2008). There are many interesting features of this book, authored by academic Marxists (or at least people who used to be Marxists) and published by a historically Marxist… more
“Darwin’s Original Sin” audio lecture now up
| January 23, 2009 | Posted by Steve Fuller under Atheism, Biology, Creationism, Culture, Darwinism, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Off Topic, Philosophy, Religion, Science, The Design of Life |
I have posted on my website an audio recording of the talk I gave this past Tuesday at the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture, kicking off their Darwin Year series. My talk was entitled ‘Darwin’s Original Sin: The Rejection of Theology’s Claims to Knowledge‘. If you scroll down to the bottom of this page… more
ID and the Science of God: Part VI
| January 22, 2009 | Posted by Steve Fuller under Biology, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Religion, Science, The Design of Life |
To test the real difference that theodicy makes to ID, Timaeus posed a thought experiment (see post 33) involving a team of scientists of various religious persuasions who conclude that the malarial cell is a designed entity. However, the scientists’ ability to infer why a deity would have created such a malignant cell is impeded… more
ID and the Science of God: Part V
| January 22, 2009 | Posted by Steve Fuller under Atheism, Creationism, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Religion, Science, The Design of Life, theistic evolution |
In this instalment, I begin to address both Andrew Sibley’s and Timaeus’ (see post 33) questions concerning my interest in reviving a full-blooded (i.e. early modern) sense of theodicy, especially as part of the ID agenda. I will need another post to complete this task because more assumptions about theodicy in its original robust form… more
ID and the Science of God: Part IV
| January 17, 2009 | Posted by Steve Fuller under Creationism, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Religion, Science, The Design of Life, theistic evolution |
This post originally began as a response to Andrew Sibley but the issues here may resonate with others wanting to reconcile science and religion, coming at it mainly from the religious side. My concern here, as an interested bystander, is that apologetics tends to be much too apologetic. Christianity, in particular, has a much stronger… more
ID and the Science of God: Part III
| January 13, 2009 | Posted by Steve Fuller under Atheism, Biology, Creationism, Culture, Darwinism, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, Origin Of Life, Philosophy, Religion, Science, The Design of Life |
I have been reflecting on the critical responses to my posts, which I appreciate. They mostly centre on the very need for ID to include theodicy as part of its intellectual orientation. The intuitive basis for theodicy is pretty harmless: The presence of design implies a designing intelligence. Moreover, in order to make sense… more
ID and the Science of God: Part II
| January 10, 2009 | Posted by Steve Fuller under Biology, Creationism, Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, Philosophy, Religion, Science, The Design of Life, theistic evolution |
I will be opening the 2009 series of lectures on ‘Darwin Reconsidered’ at the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture on Tuesday, 20th January, at 5 pm. My topic is ‘Darwin’s Original Sin: The Rejection of Theology’s Claims to Knowledge’. You can find out more about the series here. The talk will deal with the… more
ID and the Science of God: Part I
| January 5, 2009 | Posted by Steve Fuller under Biology, Comp. Sci. / Eng., Creationism, Culture, Education, Global Warming, Informatics, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life, Philosophy, Religion, Science, The Design of Life, theistic evolution |
In response to an earlier post of mine, DaveScot kindly pointed out this website’s definition of ID. The breadth of the definition invites scepticism: ID is defined as the science of design detection — how to recognize patterns arranged by an intelligent cause for a purpose. But is there really some single concept of ‘intelligence’… more
Introduction to a Science of God: Fathoming the Intelligence Behind Intelligent Design
| January 1, 2009 | Posted by Steve Fuller under Culture, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, Media, Religion, Science, The Design of Life |
This is the first of a series of posts on ‘The Science of God’, aka my response to the charge that ID is indistinguishable from Pastafarianism. Let me start with a familiar Q and A: Q: What, in a nutshell, is the Darwinist argument against ID? A: First of all, nature doesn’t exhibit the… more