Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Phillip Johnson Festschrift

William Dembski
May 1, 2005
Intelligent Design, Religion, Science
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Jed Macosko and I for the last two years have been working on a Festschrift volume for Phillip Johnson (he is 65 this June). The volume, titled A Man for This Season, is now in production with InterVarsity and should be published early 2006. For the introductory material to this volume, including our preface and Sen. Rick Santorum’s foreword, go here. For initial critical response, go here.

Comments
Paul's reply on Panda's Thumb mentions lateral gene transfer. Since we know that viruses can transfer genes between quite disparate organisms, and since (to take a page from Darwinian narrative apologists) "virtually anything, no matter how improbable, becomes possible given enough time" then the commonality in DNA sequences between organisms can be explained by millions of years of lateral gene transfer between organisms that shared no common ancestor. Of course one has to give up the "Darwin of the gaps" faith to consider this possibility, no? I often wonder what lurks in the paradoxical c-values of simple organisms with extraordinarly large genomes. What the heck is an Easter Lily doing with 20 times as much DNA as a human, for instance? Is there a storehouse of preformed genes out there somewhere periodically tapped and distributed by viral mechanisms? To quote the bard: "There's more to heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreampt of in your philosophy." We've only just scratched the surface of the mystery of that is the machinery of life. One thing's clear at this point though - living things are machines and machines don't design themselves. DaveScot
May 2, 2005
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Update: On Evolutionary Monographs and Festscrifts Over at the Panda's Thumb, Paul Nelson has offered an informative reply to my post regarding On Common Descent. You may want to check it out. Over at Uncommon Descent, Bill Dembski has linked to yesterdays entry on the PEJ festscrift - unfortunatel...stranger fruit
May 1, 2005
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