Science and Culture Today | Page 1240 | Discovering Design in Nature

Want to know more about the Amazon.com bestselling book that made the Times Literary Supplement’s Top Books of 2009? Robert Deyes has a review of Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell below:

New Intelligent Design Book A Landmark Assault On Scientific Naturalism

In his recent book Signature In The Cell, Meyer presents a fresh outlook on one of the most compelling facets of the Intelligent Design case — that of biological information in DNA. Meyer provides a lucid and personal account of his own experiences as a scientist and philosopher revealing to the reader the watershed events that led to his move towards the intelligent design alternative.

Meyer’s historical overview of the key events that shaped origin-of-life biology is extremely readable and well illustrated. Both the style and the content of his discourse keep the reader focused on the ID thread of reasoning that he gradually develops throughout his book.

Meyer does a marvelous job in conveying the personal tensions that so characterized the DNA story. His extensive coverage of ‘turning point’ historical moments reveals an in-depth knowledge of the subject matter. Like few other scientific discoveries, that of the structure of DNA brought fundamental changes to our understanding of the chemistry of life since life itself could no longer be considered to be a mere product of matter and energy. As Meyer elaborates, information in the form of a DNA code had emerged as the critical player in defining the hereditary makeup of nature.

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Which of the items below is an exercise in science from a peer-reviewed journal, and which is an example of religion in a popular magazine? According to conservation of information theorems, performance of an arbitrarily chosen search, on average, does no better than blind search. Domain expertise and prior knowledge about search space structure or target location is therefore essential in crafting the search algorithm. The effectiveness of a given algorithm can be measured by the active information introduced to the search. We illustrate this by identifying sources of active information in Avida, a software program designed to search for logic functions using nand gates. Avida uses stair step active information by rewarding logic functions using a smaller number of Read More ›

“Before going on,” said Frost, “I must ask you to be strictly objective. Resentment and fear are both chemical phenomena. Our reactions to each other are chemical phenomena. Social relations are chemical relations. You must observe these feelings in yourself in an objective manner. Do not let them distract your attention from the facts.”

C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (1946)

The relevance of this passage from Lewis will be clear below. But first…

In nine highly readable chapters The Darwin Myth takes its reader from Darwin’s boyhood of wealth and privilege, to his brief stint in theology school, his quest for adventure, and the development of his “one long argument” that would form the remainder of his life’s work. This bold and uncompromising biography exposes Darwin “warts and all,” the flaws of Darwinian evolution, and the dark and disturbing consequences of a theory that easily lent itself to social Darwinism, the eugenics movement, and even Hitler’s völkisch racism.

Round-up of some recent noteworthy articles on ClimateGate:

While there have been many events to discuss intelligent design sponsored by the scientific establishment this year, few have dared to invite an actual design proponent. But on the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species, Biologic Institute Director Douglas Axe was invited to the National Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany, for a panel discussion titled Design without a Designer? where “the ‘bold generation’ of young thinkers turned up in droves, listening intently as the discussion went well beyond its advertised ninety minutes.”: Read more, including Dr. Axe’s opening statement, at the Biologic website.

Does science have a magisterium?

That’s the question Jay Richards puts to NRO’s John Derbyshire today at The American, where he aptly notes:

Derbyshire appeals to a scientific magisterium: “Science contains a core magisterium, which we can and do trust.” This should give anyone who has followed the climate change debate the creeps–a reaction Derbyshire anticipates in the column. But he seems blind to why talk of a scientific magisterium is creepy; so let me spell it out.

Other than listing the things Derbyshire thinks are settled and “without serious competitors,” he doesn’t really even identify what the magisterium is. This gives the impression that the magisterium is the subjectively determined list of things that people with power claim are settled. And that impression encourages the postmodern doubters of truth that Derbyshire hopes to keep back from the gates.

Ideas matter. That’s the lesson of history, and one brought into stark relief by Richard Weikart’s work as an historian. This week Dr. Weikart has an article that delves into what Darwinism really means for Darwinists and morality: The Darwin celebrations this year have reinforced my concern that Darwinism is not merely a scientific theory. For many Darwinists, it is much more than that. For some it is the basis for a secular worldview that not only rejects theism, but also promotes moral relativism. How clearly this is seen in Weikart’s example: A young man was performing rap songs on evolutionary themes that he had been commissioned to write and perform for the Darwin celebrations in Britain. He told us Read More ›

Sheril Kirshenbaum, who blogs at Chris Mooney’s blog Intersection, seems to have an better understanding of the ramifications of the ClimateGate fraud than Mooney does. This fraud will unravel the global warming hoax in short order (public opinion was moving against it even before ClimateGate), and it will likely lead to a civil war within science, pitting scientists who adhere to high standards of integrity against opportunists and ideologues who use science for their own purposes.

But Kirshenbaum gets the problem and the solution completely wrong.

Her post:

Post modernism is creeping into science. The bizarre rationalizations for the self-admitted scientific fraud perpetrated in the ClimateGate scandal are a radical departure from traditional scientific standards. Scientists are rushing to defend the indefensible: manipulating data, faking data, destroying data to prevent examination by other scientists, and conspiring to take control of peer review to advance a particular scientific theory. All of these acts constitute gross scientific misconduct, and several decades ago commission of any of these transgressions would have ended a scientific career. No so any more. The leading scientific journal Nature has defended all of these scientific crimes by asserting that these scientists were under stress, and the Nature editors have made the bizarre claim that evidence for Read More ›