Applied Sciences

Discovery Institute senior fellow William Dembski is apparently living inside the heads of intelligent design critics. A recent opinion article by Massimo Pigliucci in EMBO Reports, published by the European Molecular Biology Organization, states, “In some quarters, ‘information’ seems to be a magical word: Intelligent Design proponent Bill Dembski, for example, keeps repeating that evolutionary theory cannot explain the production of new information…” Aside from the “magical” slur, Pigliucci’s description of Dembski’s view is reasonably accurate. Pigliucci, who apparently knows Dembski well-enough to call him “Bill” in one of the world’s most prestigious science journals, attempts an explanation of the talk about the origin of information: As for the claims that Dembski and others make about information and evolutionary theory, Read More ›

In a prior post I noted that a recent paper in International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics, co-authored by Dissent from Darwinism list signer Dominic Halsmer, cited to the work of Guillermo Gonzalez as evidence for cosmic design. However, the paper also looks at design in the biological realm, citing the work of a variety of noteworthy proponents of intelligent design, including Walter Bradley, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, and William Dembski. The paper examines to the engineering of life, noting that “[b]iological systems are constantly undergoing processes that exhibit modularity, specificity, adaptability, durability, and many other aspects of engineered systems.” It quotes from William Dembski and Jonathan Wells’ book The Design of Life, stating: “Many of the systems Read More ›

A new peer-reviewed paper continues the work published by William Dembski, Robert Marks, and others affiliated with the Evolutionary Informatics Lab. (Check out their new revamped website at EvoInfo.org.) The authors argue that Richard Dawkins’ “METHINKSITISLIKEAWEASEL” evolutionary algorithm starts off with large amounts of active information–information intelligently inserted by the programmer to aid the search. This paper covers all of the known claims of operation of the WEASEL algorithm and shows that in all cases, active information is used. Dawkins’ algorithm can best be understood as using a “Hamming Oracle” as follows: “When a sequence of letters is presented to a Hamming oracle, the oracle responds with the Hamming distance equal to the number of letter mismatches in the sequence.” Read More ›

A new website has just launched in support of Dr. Granville Sewell’s new book, In The Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design. Along with information about the book, there is a nice brief interview with Sewell that you will want to read. Q. You express some doubt that even under “the right conditions, the influx of stellar energy into a planet could cause atoms to rearrange themselves into nuclear power plants and spaceships and computers.” This, you say, ought to be “considered an open question” at least by scientists and the public alike. Why isn’t it?A. A typical college physics text I read contains the statement “One of the most remarkable simplifications in physics is that only four distinct Read More ›

SEATTLE — “Darwin’s attempt to explain the origins of all the magnificent species in the living world in terms of the struggle for survival is easily the dumbest idea ever taken seriously by science,” writes Dr. Granville Sewell in his new book In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design published by Discovery Institute Press.

What do you get when you add together the big bang, the fine-tuning of the laws of physics and the evolution of life? Definitely not a materialistic theory of origins, answers Sewell, a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas El Paso.

In this wide-ranging collection of essays, Sewell concludes that while there is much in the history of life that seems to suggest natural causes, there is little evidence to support Charles Darwin’s idea that natural selection of random variations can explain major evolutionary advances.