Science

British journalist Christopher Bookerhas a refreshing perspective in his latest column. He recently spent some time with scientists in France and considered their varied experiences with questioning Darwin: Three months ago I spent a fascinating few days in a villa opposite Cap Ferrat, France, taking part in a seminar with a dozen very bright scientists, some world authorities in their field. Although most had never met before, they had two things in common. Each had come to question one of the most universally accepted scientific orthodoxies of our age: the Darwinian belief that life on earth evolved simply through the changes brought about by an infinite series of minute variations. The other was that, on arriving at these conclusions, they Read More ›

Links to our 9-Part Series Responding to Nature‘s Evolution Evangelism Packet: • Part 1: Evaluating Nature’s 2009 “15 Evolutionary Gems” Darwin-Evangelism Kit• Part 2: Microevolutionary Gems: Lizards, Fish, Snakes, and Clams • Part 3: Microevolutionary Gems: Bird-Sized Evolutionary Change• Part 4: Microevolutionary Gems: Flea and Guppy-Sized Evolutionary Change• Part 5: Microevolution Meets Microevolution• Part 6: Evolutionary “Gems” or “Narrative Gloss”?• Part 7: Muscling Past Homology Problems in Nature’s Vertebrate Skeleton “Evolutionary Gem”• Part 8: Of Whale and Feather Evolution: Two Macroevolutionary Lumps of Coal• Part 9 (This Article): Evolutionary Biologists Are Unaware of Their Own Arguments: Reappraising Nature‘s Prized “Gem,” Tiktaalik Download Our Full Response to the Packet as a PDF. The final “gem” from Nature‘s evolution-evangelism packet which remains Read More ›

At Discovery News (here and here), Bruce Chapman notes that Stephen Hawking’s dismissal of design in the universe has gone largely uncriticized in the US. Not so in his homeland. American media have tended to uncritical worship before Stephen Hawking and his new tome, a rebuke of The Grand Design. The Wall Street Journal has had three articles on it, one by Hawking. On CNN, Larry King was like a flustered peasant bowing before an oracle: he reads a question, the oracle speaks, he reads the next question… The English themselves are not in such awe. There has been a small parade of dismissive reviews, including some by bored scientists who found nothing new in Hawking’s argument that natural laws Read More ›

Scientists from Discovery Institute and Biologic Institute are heading to Texas to Southern Methodist University Thursday, September 23rd for a special evening event: 4 Nails in Darwin’s Coffin Presents New Scientific Challenges to Darwinian Evolution. Following a screening of Darwin’s Dilemma they will answer questions from attendees.

Three years ago Discovery funded and organized a two-day conference on the SMU campus titled Darwin vs. Design and featuring several scientists including Stephen Meyer who will also be at this year’s event. At that event some of the faculty and other Darwin activists around Dallas said that such a discussion had “no place on an academic campus” and tried to shut it down.

We thought that created a teachable moment. So we called their bluff and offered an opportunity for Darwinist faculty to debate the scientists and scholars in attendance. Not surprisingly they did what smart cardplayers do when they have a losing hand, they folded.

How hard is it to understand what we’re not teaching intelligent design means? It means exactly that. Yet for some strange reason there are Darwinist bloggers who insist on passing on false information. Over at The Stir, Julie Marsh uses Stephen Hawking’s recent assertions that the natural laws of physics preclude any intelligent designer as a springboard to jump on the Texas State Board of Education for teaching intelligent design. News flash: they aren’t teaching intelligent design, and no board members have proposed such a thing. Even the Darwin loving Dallas Morning News has clearly reported the Texas State Board of Education’s position against teaching intelligent design. “Should “intelligent design” – the cousin of creationism – be taught in science Read More ›

Nature news is reporting another feathered dinosaur. The title of the Nature news article says, “Crested dinosaur pushes back dawn of feather.” This dinosaur is from around 130 mya, but feathers are already known from the bird Archaeopteryx around 150 mya. So how does it push back the origin of feathers? Their reasoning is that the feathers on this new species, dubbed Concavenator corcovatus, appear in a different lineage than the one that supposedly led to birds. Since “such structures [feathers] are unlikely to have evolved separately in both groups” they use evolutionary reasoning to infer that “the common ancestor of the two predatory dinosaur branches, ‘could have been feathered’.” This pushes the origin of feathers back to “Middle Jurassic Read More ›

[Ed. Note: The previously published version of this post referred to Francisco Ayala as “of the BioLogos Foundation.” While Dr. Ayala has been a guest blogger with BioLogos, he is not directly affiliated with the foundation.]

Late last year, the eminent Christian philosopher and proponent of intelligent design, William Lane Craig, crossed swords in debate with the avid apologist for Darwinian evolution, Francisco Ayala. The debate was chaired by philosopher of physics Bradley Monton of the University of Colorado, an ID sympathizer, though a convinced atheist himself. Monton is the author of the book, Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design. A fascinating ID the Future interview with Professor Monton can be downloaded here.

Following Dr. Ayala’s opening statement, Dr. Craig commenced his presentation by carefully setting out the definition of ID as the study of legitimate design inferences. Craig stipulated that, were Ayala to attempt to refute the inference to design with respect to biological systems, he would need to do one of two things. Either Ayala would need to directly challenge the legitimacy of the explanatory filter (presumably by demonstrating that it incorporates false positives) or demonstrate that the systems featured in biology do not meet the criteria of the explanatory filter. Setting aside the discussions pertaining to the tenability of universal common ancestry, Craig set about to argue that Ayala’s attempts to disqualify ID on scientific grounds were doomed because he had failed to demonstrate, in his published work, that the dual forces of random mutation and natural selection, are causally sufficient to account for macroevolution. He also argued that Ayala’s more numerous attempts to disqualify ID on theological grounds are completely irrelevant to the process of drawing a design inference from biological phenomena, because none of the arguments for ID aspire to show that the designer possesses the qualities of omnibenevolence or omnipotence. After all, Craig argued, a design inference is still warranted with respect to a medieval torture rack, regardless of the malevolent purposes of the system’s design. Questions pertaining to the nature of the designer are for natural theology, not for the scientific research program of ID. This is what distinguishes the modern concept of ID from the Watchmaker argument of William Paley’s Natural Theology.

Reached today for comment about Stephen Hawking’s new book, the Universe said that Professor Hawking should receive no credit for the ideas. “You humans naively assume that ‘physicists’ exist, who discover theories,” said the Universe. “But I did it all. Me. The transitory entity known to you as ‘Stephen Hawking’ is merely an epiphenomenon of the laws of nature, otherwise known as Me, the Universe itself. Mindless physical stuff, the only thing that ever really existed, or ever will exist.” “Hawking, and that other guy — what’s his face, Dawkins — have been stealing my royalties for years. I’ve got some lawyers working on that.” “Anyway, I don’t know why Hawking and Dawkins, or Harris and Dennett and the rest Read More ›

In the previous post, I discussed a recent paper in Trends in Genetics, “Causes and evolutionary significance of genetic convergence,” which notes that that genetic convergence is not uncommon, even though only a “restricted number of substitutions” at the genetic level can create novel phenotypic traits. This data not only shows that functional genotypes are rare, but it also poses a much deeper problem for evolutionary thinking–one that challenges the very basis for constructing phylogenetic trees. The main assumption behind evolutionary trees is that functional genetic similarity implies inheritance from a common ancestor. But “convergent” genetic evolution shows that there are many instances where functional similarity is not the result of inheritance from a common ancestor. So when we find Read More ›