Science and Culture Today | Page 1235 | Discovering Design in Nature

Peloza v. Capistrano Independent Unified School District is a well-known case from the 9th Circuit in 1994 where a federal court of appeals found that it is legal to teach evolution even if a teacher feels it conflicts with his religious beliefs. While the court was correct to hold that it is perfectly legal to require that evolution be part of the curriculum, unfortunately they expressed no sympathy whatsoever for the millions of Americans who feel that teaching evolution is not religiously neutral. 1. SummaryIn Peloza v. Capistrano, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a teacher can be ordered to teach evolution, even if the theory conflicts with his or her religious beliefs.93 John Peloza, a high school Read More ›

To the EditorThe Times Literary SupplementThe RNA World Sir:Having with indignation rejected the assumption that the creation of life required an intelligent design, Mr Fletcher has persuaded himself that it has proceeded instead by means of various chemical scenarios. These scenarios all require intelligent intervention. In his animadversions, Mr Fletcher suggests nothing so much as a man disposed to denounce alcohol while sipping sherry. The RNA world to which Mr Fletcher has pledged his allegiance was introduced by Carl Woese, Leslie Orgel and Francis Crick in 1967. Mystified by the appearance in the contemporary cell of a chicken in the form of the nucleic acids, and an egg in the form of the proteins, Woese, Orgel and Crick argued that Read More ›

It’s always easier to refute your opponent’s position by replacing it with an outlandish straw man. The most recent issue of the Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology contains a paper by Guillermo Paz-y-Miño of University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Avelina Espinosa of Roger Williams University, titled “Integrating Horizontal Gene Transfer and Common Descent to Depict Evolution and Contrast It with ‘Common Design’” that takes this approach to attacking intelligent design (ID). As suggested by the title, the article attempts to critique the argument that similar features in diverse organisms can be explained by common design. It cites to both a 1996 paper by Paul Nelson in Biology and Philosophy and a response to Francis Collins published by myself and Logan Gage Read More ›

Signature in the Cell continues to stir up debate and attract attention as Thomas Nagel’s selection of SITC as one of the Books of the Year brought on an interesting series of letters, where Nagel was attacked (he responded, and he was attacked again) by a Darwinist who told people forgo reading SITC and instead just read Wikipedia.

This week, author Stephen Meyer himself responds in a letter, with a shortened version published yesterday. (Nagel himself responded with a letter that is published on the same page by TLS.) Below is Meyer’e letter in its entirety.

To the Editor
The Times Literary Supplement
Natural Selection and the Origin of Biological Information

I’ve been honored by the recent attention my book Signature in the Cell has received in your letters section following Thomas Nagel’s selection of it as one of your books of the year for 2009.

Unfortunately, the letters from Stephen Fletcher criticizing Professor Nagel for his choice give no evidence of Dr. Fletcher having read the book or any evidence of his comprehending the severity of the central problem facing chemical evolutionary theories of life’s origin.

In Signature in the Cell, I show that, in the era of modern molecular genetics, explaining the origin of the first life requires–first and foremost–explaining the origin of the information or digital code present in DNA and RNA. I also show that various theories of undirected chemical evolution–including theories of pre-biological natural selection–fail to explain the origin of the information necessary to produce the first self-replicating organism.

Yet, in his letters to the TLS (2 and 16 December), Stephen Fletcher rebukes Nagel (and by implication my book) for failing to acknowledge that “natural selection is a chemical as well as a biological process.” Fletcher further asserts that this process accounts for the origin of DNA and (presumably) the genetic information it contains.

Not only does my book address this very proposal at length, but it also demonstrates why theories of pre-biotic natural selection involving self-replicating RNA catalysts–the version of the idea that Fletcher affirms–fail to account for the origin of genetic information.

Indeed, either Dr. Fletcher is bluffing or he is himself ignorant of the many problems that this proposal faces.

Read More ›

SACRAMENTO—California Senate Minority Leader Dennis Hollingsworth has sent a letter to the California Science Center (CSC) requesting documents related to the Center’s cancellation of a screening last October of the pro-intelligent design documentary “Darwin’s Dilemma.” The screening was sponsored by the American Freedom Alliance (AFA), a private group that had rented the Center’s IMAX theater. Senator Hollingsworth’s letter follows two lawsuits filed against the state government-operated Science Center charging that it violated both the First Amendment and California’s open records law in its effort to stop the screening and then cover up the real story behind the cancellation.“The constitutional implications of [the Science Center’s] actions are concerning” wrote Senator Hollingsworth in the letter, citing various court decisions protecting private parties Read More ›

Each year the Access Research Network (ARN) provides an excellent service to the intelligent design (ID) debate by publishing its Top ID Stories of the year. They recently released their “Key Darwin and Design Science News Stories of the Year” for 2009, but before I review some of them I want to make a preliminary note about ARN. ARN is one of the most important ID organizations in large part because their online “media resources” bookstore has a huge collection of ID resources, ranging from books to videos to audio products, and even YouTube clips. There are conspiracy theorists at Wikipedia who claim that ARN “acts as a de facto auxiliary website to the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Read More ›

If you’re wondering what a major one-night event with some of the leading voices challenging Darwinian evolution sounds like, here’s your chance to find out. If you’re interested in attending this year’s conference, featuring Michael Medved again, along with Dr. Stephen Meyer and Dr. David Berlinski, be warned: Last year’s conference sold out, and over 200 were turned away. Click here to secure your place with a ticket in advance.From our friends at the C. S. Lewis Society: Last year’s conference, “Darwin’s Legacy: The Hidden Story,” was held by the C. S. Lewis Society at the University of South Florida and featured Michael Medved and Professor Steve Fuller of the University of Warwick, along with CSLS director Tom Woodward. Highlights Read More ›

Over at Scott McKnight’s blog at Beliefnet, an anonymous blogger has started a review thread on Steve Meyer’s book. Signature in the Cell. While the blogger (“RJS”) says he ultimately disagrees with Meyer’s argument, it’s clear that he takes Meyer’s argument seriously and is trying to do his best to present the argument accurately. This is much more than can be said for the many hysterical and misinformed “critiques” of Meyer’s argument that are now floating around the Internet. Anyone who’s actually read the book will know that most of these critiques are cliches that Meyer addresses in detail in the book, suggesting that the critics don’t even know the argument they are criticizing.

A civil review like this is welcomed, and I look forward to reading the installments.

In his first installment, RJS suggests that there’s a promising “third way” that Meyer doesn’t address in the book:

I was recently asked by an e-mailer to comment on a new study about evolution of prions based via a process like Darwinian selection. Prions are misfolded proteins (or misfolded protein complexes). They aren’t alive. They can’t replicate on their own. They require their host’s cellular machinery for producing new proteins they can “misfold” in order to propagate. Prions can be dangerous because they propagate themselves by misfolding other properly folded proteins produced in the cell. The misfolded proteins don’t always function property, and this can disrupt activity in the cell. As the BBC article states, “Prions are associated with 20 different brain diseases in humans and animals.” The new research just shows that prions don’t always make perfect copies Read More ›