Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Topic

Irreducible Complexity

Ten (or so) Pro-Intelligent Design Books You Should Read

On the Design Disquisitions YouTube channel, I’ve posted a new video where I recommend several books of interest, specifically pro-ID literature. Most of the suggestions may be familiar to you, but hopefully there are a few that you’ve not read before. I also give a brief summary of the content of each book. I don’t claim that the books mentioned are necessarily the best, but I think anyone who wants to join the discussion needs to be familiar with some of these. Let me know what you would add to the list! Ten (or so) Pro-Intelligent Design Books You Should Read

Acacia Ants and Acacia Trees: An Irreducibly Complex Symbiotic Relationship?

Symbiosis has been called “the most relevant and enduring biological theme in the history of our planet.” It can safely be said that symbiotic relationships quite often resist Darwinian explanation. According to Maureen A. O’Malley, “There is a long history of researchers who have theorized about symbiosis and evolution, and many of them have aligned themselves against Darwinian evolutionary theory.” One article puts it this way: “Mutualism among species is ubiquitous in nature but its evolution is not well understood.” Or, in the words of Doebeli and Knowlton: “Interspecific mutualisms are widespread, but how they evolved is not clear.” Thus, symbiotic relationships are problematic for evolutionary theory. In a previous article, I proposed the use of power-sets for determining irreducible complexity. Read More ›

Design Disquisitions: Updated YouTube Playlists

For the last year or so I have been accumulating quite a number of YouTube playlists. Recently I’ve been trying to get it a little more organised and cleaned up, so I thought I would point readers to it as a resource. At the moment I have just under 40 individual playlists. I have created playlists for the key individuals in the ID debate (pro and anti-ID) and also have playlists for different issues that come up (e.g. Irreducible complexity, methodological naturalism etc). There’s also one covering the Dover trial, and any lectures and debates on the subject. For any other videos that don’t readily fit into other categories, I have a playlist of miscellaneous videos: ID YouTube Playlists I’ll Read More ›

Design Disquisitions: Critic’s Corner-Kenneth Miller

This week’s post at Design Disquisitions is the first in a series of articles entitled ‘Critic’s Corner’ where I focus on a critic of ID. The main purpose of these posts is to document their work relevant to ID and also to document the direct responses to the particular critic in question, by those sympathetic to ID. These posts will be a useful resource for anyone wanting to find responses to a particular ID critic. This first one is on the work of Kenneth Miller (no stranger to anyone involved in this debate of course). If there are any articles I have missed, do let me know and I shall add it to the page.

Tale of the Transmission

It finally happened. I’ve been nursing along my car’s transmission for several months (careful driving, changing the fluids, etc.), but last week it finally failed completely, with an accompanying whump! and a jerk, and the car had to be towed to the auto repair shop. The initial hope was that a regular tear-down and cleanout, along with replacement of the wearable parts, would take care of it.  That was going to set me back about $1,500, which I wasn’t happy about but could live with.  Unfortunately, it turned out that some of what the transmission guys call “hard parts” – in this case the planetary gear assembly – were broken, so they were going to have to order a whole Read More ›

Response to Claim That ID Theory Is An Argument from Incredulity

On a sun-scorched plateau known as Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, California, rocks of all sizes glide across the desert floor.  Some of the rocks accompany each other in pairs, which creates parallel trails even when turning corners so that the tracks left behind resemble those of an automobile.  Other rocks travel solo the distance of hundreds of meters back and forth along the same track.  Sometimes these paths lead to its stone vehicle, while other trails lead to nowhere, as the marking instrument has vanished.  Some of these rocks weigh several hundred pounds. That makes the question: “How do they move?” a very challenging one.  The truth is no one knows just exactly how these rocks move.   No Read More ›

Debating in an Echo Chamber

Monash University issued a press release yesterday about its contributors to a recent PNAS paper that claimed to refute irreducible complexity (IC). The release declared victory for Darwin, stating that “Our work … shows that Darwin’s theory of evolution beautifully explains how molecular machines came to be.”  PhysOrg dutifully echoed this announcement without contest. Casual readers may not know about the comeback arguments posted by Michael Behe on Evolution News and Uncommon Descent, by Casey Luskin on Evolution News and by Cornelius Hunter on Darwin’s God, because the evolutionists refused to hear them or allow them inside their sphere of influence.  For example, PNAS refused to publish Behe’s response.   The Darwin Party basically barred the doors and windows and announced Read More ›