Science and Culture Today | Page 1233 | Discovering Design in Nature

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 ›

It’s that time of year! ID the Future just kicked off a series of podcasts for Academic Freedom Week, taking a look back over the academic freedom stories in the media last year and a look ahead to the current struggles for academic freedom in the debate over evolution and intelligent design. Leading off was today’s interview of ARN Executive Director Dennis Wagner, who discussed with Casey Luskin the expelling of Ben Stein from the University of Vermont, the censorship of Michael Behe’s Bloggingheads.tv interview, and the lawsuit against the California Science Center over their cancellation of the pro-ID film, Darwin’s Dilemma. Stay tuned to the entire series of podcasts this week at IDtheFuture.com.

Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini are arrving late to the Darwin doubting party, but are welcome attendees none the less. Below are some welcoming remarks from leading scientific voices in the intelligent design community.We just received a review copy of “What Darwin Got Wrong“, the new book attacking Darwinian evolution by Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, two thorougly materalistic scientists. Why does that matter? Because typically materialists have been the most ardent defenders of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. With the publication of this book, that is likely to change. For those of you wondering what this is all about let me back up to 2007 when Fodor published his first piece of heresy in the London Review of Books, Read More ›

Life arose without design or direction from any intelligent agent. Would you believe it did so in a sun-warmed ocean surface? No? Would you believe an earth-heated vent at the bottom of the same ocean? Would you believe an office microwave that hasn’t been cleaned since the Bush Administration?

The past week’s startling news of backpedaling from the “primordial soup” theory rang a bell, though I wasn’t instantly able to say whose comedy routine it put me in mind of. Hm, was it Monty Python? ScienceDaily carries the story:

For 80 years it has been accepted that early life began in a “primordial soup” of organic molecules before evolving out of the oceans millions of years later. Today the “soup” theory has been overturned in a pioneering paper in BioEssays which claims it was the Earth’s chemical energy, from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, which kick-started early life.

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A popular Darwinian meme is that humans and chimp genomes are ninety-something percent identical. It varies a bit, but usually hovers close to 99%. The meme hides all sorts of assumptions, of course, but the take home lesson for the headline reader is plain enough: we’re almost exactly the same as chimps.

Though the 99% number has received some qualifiers, and has even been referred to as a “myth” in Science, the basic idea remains firmly entrenched in the media collective consciousness.

But evidence seems to be piling up that the similarities are not nearly what has been advertised. Geneticist Richard Buggs has reflected on this, and has even predicted “that when we have a reliable, complete chimpanzee genome, the overall similarity of the human genome will prove to be close to 70% (and very far from 99%).”

It will be interesting to see how Buggs’ prediction holds up over time. If he’s right, this will be one more switch from “meme” to “myth” in the Darwinian ledger.

If that dictum looks like a bumper sticker, I apologize — but it’s true all the same. Most of the philosophy of science can be captured by a handful of bumper stickers. Anyway, keep the dictum in mind. In this second installment of the “Seeing Ghosts in the Bushes” blog series — part 1 is here — we’ll ask how the theory of common descent could be tested by fossils. The principle of “what evidence cannot question, evidence cannot support” will be our main guide.

Download the Complete “Truth or Dare” with Dr. Ken Miller Lecture GuidePermission Granted to Copy and Distribute for Educational Use. Links to our 7-Part Series Responding to Ken Miller: • Part 1: Science and Religion: Is Evolution “Random and Undirected”?• Part 2: Misrepresenting the Definition of Intelligent Design• Part 3: Confusing Evidence for Common Ancestry With Evidence for Darwinian Evolution• Part 4: The Name-Dropping Approach to Transitional Fossils• Part 5: Spinning Tales About the Bacterial Flagellum• Part 6: Misrepresenting Michael Behe’s Arguments for Irreducible Complexity of the Blood Clotting Cascade• Part 7: Ken Miller and the Evolution of the Immune System: “Not Good Enough”? Over the past few months, we’ve posted excerpts of a lecture guide to the claims of Read More ›

Download the Complete “Truth or Dare” with Dr. Ken Miller Lecture GuidePermission Granted to Copy and Distribute for Educational Use. Links to our 7-Part Series Responding to Ken Miller: • Part 1: Science and Religion: Is Evolution “Random and Undirected”?• Part 2: Misrepresenting the Definition of Intelligent Design• Part 3: Confusing Evidence for Common Ancestry With Evidence for Darwinian Evolution• Part 4: The Name-Dropping Approach to Transitional Fossils• Part 5: Spinning Tales About the Bacterial Flagellum• Part 6: Misrepresenting Michael Behe’s Arguments for Irreducible Complexity of the Blood Clotting Cascade• Part 7 (This Article): Ken Miller and the Evolution of the Immune System: “Not Good Enough”? Brown University biologist Ken Miller often attacks ID proponent Michael Behe, and in doing Read More ›

Florida has all the fun. Fresh on the heels of the Signature in the Cell event in Tampa, we have learned from our friends at the C. S. Lewis Society that Discovery Senior Fellow David Berlinski will be speaking at a couple events this week, including “The Deniable Darwin: Has Science Buried Religion?” this Thursday, Feb 4th at 3:30 pm. The presentation will take place at Florida International University’s Graham Center Room 140. Following that, there will be Darwin vs. Design “Pizza Bash” featuring Dr. Berlinski and Dr. Tom Woodward this Saturday: Pizza Kick-off: On Saturday, Feb 6th at 6:00 pm, at the First Alliance Church of Ft. Lauderdale (900 SW 31st Ave.) Dr. Tom Woodward and the C. S. Read More ›

Over the past couple of months at Jerry Coyne’s blog, Why Evolution Is True, he and Matthew Cobb have written several blog posts attacking Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell — by my count, five posts. The most recent by Coyne accusesMeyer of dishonesty: Meyer does not mean well. He is spreading lies and confusing people by distorting real science. Is that the unfortunate result of “meaning well”? Do you think that because somebody is a “Christian brother,” he’s incapable of lying for Jesus? Isn’t it strange, though, that for all the persistent attacks on Meyer, in quite personal terms, Professor Coyne hasn’t dared toactually read Steve’s book? That’s obvious because Coyne’s throwaway summary ofits contents — Signature “maintains that Read More ›