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ID the Future podcast has a special edition worth checking out today:
Founding Father Thomas Jefferson on Intelligent Design
 Click here to listen.
Critics of intelligent design sometimes claim they are defending the principles of American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson in trying to ban discussions of intelligent design. In the words of one writer, “Thomas Jefferson makes it quite clear that there was not a consensus of support among the authors of the Constitution... to support theological doctrines such as intelligent design.” But would Thomas Jefferson himself agree? In this special July 4th edition of ID the Future, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow John West explores the real views of Jefferson on intelligent design.
Those textbook diagrams showing the supposed evolution of vision reveal a real blind spot. There are at least three big problems with this evolutionary narrative. First, the biochemistry, even in primitive eyes is numbingly complex. The notion that it evolved is nowhere motivated by the scientific evidence.
Second, if a new vision capability did just happen magically to arise, it would be worthless since there would be no interpretation of the new signals in the brain. And third, speaking of signals, the signal processing that goes on between the initial signal transduction and the brain is profound. The signal transduction, as phenomenally complex as that is, is only the beginning.
Continue reading "Did Vision Evolve?" »
Just a few months before the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, a newly released Zogby poll shows that the American public overwhelmingly rejects Darwinian theory in favor of intelligent design. When asked if life developed “through an unguided process of random mutations and natural selection,” a standard definition of Darwinism, only 33 percent of respondents said they agreed with the statement. But 52 percent agreed that “the development of life was guided by intelligent design.”
The poll results come from one of four questions commissioned by Discovery Institute for a national Zogby telephone survey conducted earlier in 2009. Results from the other three questions were released previously to coincide with the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth. The new results are highlighted below, and the full report is available here.
Question about Intelligent Design
Now, I am going to read you two statements about the development of life. Please tell me which statement comes closest to your own point of view—Statement A or Statement B?
Statement A: The development of life came about through an unguided process of random mutations and natural selection.
Statement B: The development of life was guided by intelligent design.
Statement A 33%
Statement B 52
Neither 7
Other/Not sure 8
Click here to download the full report
Last December, I wrote a post about a book titled Life on Other Planets, aimed at junior-high-aged kids. I found it at a local library. The book promoted materialist science fiction about the origin of life on earth.
More recently, the Seattle Public Library system had its annual booksale, and I loaded up. One now-former library book I bought was Journey from the Dawn: Life with the World’s First Family, by Donald Johansen and Kevin O’Farrell (Villard, 1990). I liked this book far better than Life on Other Planets, but instead of promoting materialist science fiction to kids on the origin of life, this one promoted science fiction to kids regarding paleoanthropology and the origin of humans.
Continue reading "Materialist Science Fiction on Human Evolution Promoted to Kids at Local Public Libraries" »
CSC Director Stephen C. Meyer will be in the studio shortly with national radio host Michael Medved to discuss his new book, Signature in the Cell, for the full second hour of the program. His segment will air live at 1:00pm PDT, and you can go here to listen.
In March, I blogged about how the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) usually tries to project a religion-friendly image, but somehow their “talking points” they released for Texas State Board of Education meeting in January advocated that activists press the SBOE to adopt scientism as the state’s official ideology and expressly deny the existence of the supernatural as a matter of state education policy. As the NCSE’s talking points argued: “Science posits that there are no forces outside of nature. Science cannot be neutral on this issue.… All educated people understand there are no forces outside of nature.” Yet in a recent radio interview with the Minnesota Atheists, Eugenie Scott claims that the NCSE “doesn’t take a stand on religious views” [16:40], even though asserting “there are no forces outside of nature” sure sounds like a stance on religious views to me. In the Minnesota Atheists radio interview, Dr. Scott also made other comments that suggest she was taking a stand on certain religious views.
Now before I say any of this, it must be noted that Dr. Scott states upfront in the interview that the NCSE’s “goals are not to promote disbelief” [17:10] but rather that her organization’s “goals are to help people understand evolution and hopefully accept it” [17:20]. She applauds her organization for working with Christians, including evangelical Christians, and when she speaks she regularly discusses examples of Christians who accept evolution. That's all fine and good--but what does Dr. Scott believe personally about these issues? What happens, in Dr. Scott’s mind, when students do “understand evolution and hopefully accept it”? When asked why evolution is always “under siege,” she states in this interview: “Evolution is the scientific explanation that has the most repercussions, shall we say, for people’s worldview and religious perspective. Evolution tells you that humans share kinship with all other creatures. For some, that’s a very liberating and exciting idea, and it makes them feel one with nature and it’s empowering and so forth. For others, it’s threatening. If your view is a human exceptionalism kind of view, that humans are separate from nature and special -- especially if they are special to God as in some Christian traditions, then evolution is going to be threatening to you.” [48:05-48:50] Did you catch that? She just stated that evolution is “threatening to you” if you believe that humans “are special to God as in some Christian traditions.”
Continue reading "Eugenie Scott Claims Evolution Is Threatening to Certain Christian Traditions" »
One of the many fascinating designs in biology is the workings of our senses. Here, for example, is a description of new findings on the actions of hair cells in the inner ear. It is yet another example of biology leaving evolution in the dust:
Microvilli (stereocilia) projecting from the apex of hair cells in the inner ear are actively motile structures that feed energy into the vibration of the inner ear and enhance sensitivity to sound. The biophysical mechanism underlying the hair bundle motor is unknown. In this study, we examined a membrane flexoelectric origin for active movements in stereocilia and conclude that it is likely to be an important contributor to mechanical power output by hair bundles. We formulated a realistic biophysical model of stereocilia incorporating stereocilia dimensions, the known flexoelectric coefficient of lipid membranes, mechanical compliance, and fluid drag. Electrical power enters the stereocilia through displacement sensitive ion channels and, due to the small diameter of stereocilia, is converted to useful mechanical power output by flexoelectricity. This motor augments molecular motors associated with the mechanosensitive apparatus itself that have been described previously. The model reveals stereocilia to be highly efficient and fast flexoelectric motors that capture the energy in the extracellular electro-chemical potential of the inner ear to generate mechanical power output. The power analysis provides an explanation for the correlation between stereocilia height and the tonotopic organization of hearing organs. Further, results suggest that flexoelectricity may be essential to the exquisite sensitivity and frequency selectivity of non-mammalian hearing organs at high auditory frequencies, and may contribute to the “cochlear amplifier” in mammals.
Editor's Note: This is crossposted at Cornelius Hunter's blog, Darwin's God.
Yesterday, ENV spoke with Michael A. Flannery about his new book Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Intelligent Evolution: How Wallace’s World of Life Challenged Darwinism (Erasmus Press). While credited as evolution's co-discoverer, Wallace fell away from the Darwinian faith and came to espouse a view remarkably suggestive of intelligent design. Now, the rest of the interview.
ENV: Scientifically, how does Wallace's culminating work, World of Life, stand up today as compared to Darwin’s Origin of Species?
MAF: That’s a complex question. Darwin’s Origin is really a metaphysical treatise supported by some biological speculations and those speculations give it the appearance of science. The thing that makes this question so difficult to answer is that for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was Thomas Henry Huxley’s brilliant public relations campaign on behalf of Darwin’s theory, Darwinism has lodged itself as the reigning biological paradigm and Origin is its magnum opus. All this means is that everyone has probably heard of (if not read) Darwin’s Origin, but few would even know who Wallace is, much less know his World of Life. That’s a big reason I wrote this book in the first place.
But that said, Darwin’s book had major problems from the start. For one thing, the title simply doesn’t deliver. It purports to be a book on the origin of species but tells us nothing of the origin of life itself, the very root of origins. Nevertheless, the book has had an influence far out of proportion to its actual value in moving science forward. For example, I can’t think of a single medical advance that is dependent upon it. In fact, Louis Pasteur, who exploded the old view of abiogenesis (biological life from nonliving matter), proved biogenesis — namely, that life must come from life — and gave us germ theory of disease, was a vocal opponent of evolution. Most of the so-called evolutionary “advances” in science we hear about have nothing to do with Darwin’s central theory of macroevolution, that random mutation eventually would produce speciation; they are really just examples of microevolution (species variation) which was wholly uncontroversial even in Darwin’s day. We could have gotten that from Wallace’s World of Life.
In contrast, Wallace’s book is a more complete and comprehensive work. It assumes common descent but argues that it is guided and infused with design. Its principle thesis presents what I call intelligent evolution, the idea of common descent based upon natural selection strictly bounded by the principle of utility in which nature is viewed as having design and purpose within a theistic context. Wallace understood that the origin of life could be addressed more simply as a problem of cellular complexity. Haeckel, an early and ardent Darwin supporter, had a very simplistic idea of the cell as merely a mass of protoplasm. Darwin held similar reductionist views. But Wallace knew better; the cell was a far more complex and intricate system. Wallace discusses this at length in The World of Life, thus making it far more prescient than the Origin.
Continue reading "How Evolution's Co-Discoverer Discovered Intelligent Design, Part II" »
Last year I wrote a series of posts about biomimetics (also called “biomimicry”), a term used to describe the way human engineers mimic nature in order to improve human technology. In fact, I recently blogged about how biomimicry of cuttlefish luminescence in new television technology further strengthens the case for intelligent design (ID) in biology. Even some members of the media cannot deny the relevance of biomimicry to the ID debate. A recent article in the London Telegraph was titled “Biomimicry: Why the World is Full of Intelligent Design.” It reported, “Forget human ingenuity -- the best source of ideas for cutting-edge technology might be in nature, according to experts in 'biomimicry'.” Of course the writer felt compelled to deny that there is any real design in nature, stating, “We humans like to think we're pretty good at design and technology -- but we often forget that Mother Nature had a head start of 3.6 million years” (NB: the writer probably meant to say “3.6 billion years”). Nevertheless, the article goes on to discuss various technological breakthroughs based upon biology. Some examples:
Continue reading "Biomimicry and Intelligent Design Seeing Increased Media Coverage" »
One of the most unfortunate aspects of the debate over Darwinian evolution and intelligent design is that so much of it is based on misunderstandings, caricatures, and an unwillingness to engage in genuine dialogue. Sadly, even those who claim to be for open dialogue often aren’t. Thus, Stephen Barr’s willingness to engage in a serious exchange of views on evolution, theism, and intelligent design is commendable—and refreshing. Even if we do not persuade each other about our respective positions, we may help illuminate the real points at issue, and that is certainly a positive result.
After Barr’s latest salvo, I can say that we agree on at least one thing: The need for “clear thought” when it comes to Darwinian evolution. Alas, we seem to differ on what clear thought entails. In an effort to promote the clarity we both desire, I’d like to pose three questions to Dr. Barr:
1. Since you reject the Darwinian idea that evolution is undirected, why not make that disagreement perfectly clear and call your version of evolution “teleological evolution” or “directed evolution,” rather than trying to conflate your view with the terms “Darwinism” or “Darwinian evolution,” which only adds confusion to the discussion?
Continue reading "The Need for Clear Thinking about Evolution: Three Questions for Stephen Barr" »
To judge from previews, the new Darwin biographical movie Creation will emphasize the challenge Darwinian theory posed from the beginning to religious belief. Yet the life of evolution’s co-discoverer, Alfred Russel Wallace, suggests that properly understood, and that’s a major proviso, evolution needn’t upset faith at all. On the contrary, Wallace reasoned from what he knew about life’s history to a belief that an “Overruling Intelligence” guided life’s development, much as intelligent design (ID) does today. Science historian Michael A. Flannery calls Wallace’s evolutionary thinking a “preamble” to ID.
An opportunity to evaluate this provocative claim is now before us in the form of Flannery’s new edition of Wallace’s great work, A World of Life (1910), which slims the dense and massive volume down to a manageable size and includes an illuminating introduction by Flannery. His book is Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Intelligent Evolution: How Wallace’s World of Life Challenged Darwinism (Erasmus Press).
Wallace famously arrived at his own version of evolutionary theory while Darwin was still sitting on his. When Wallace made contact and shared his thoughts, Darwin panicked and rushed to make his theory public so as not to be scooped. Yet the two men did not formulate their ideas in exactly the same way. As Flannery writes, “Wallace emphasized the ‘principle of utility,’ namely, that ‘no organ or attribute can exist in a natural species unless it is or has been useful to the organisms that possess it.’”
This emphasis led to the increasingly rapid unraveling of Wallace’s confidence that natural selection by itself could account for the most interesting features of life: major items like sentience, the complexity of the cell and of the hemoglobin molecule, the origin of life itself, and more discrete features like a bird’s wing and feathers (evidence of a “preconceived design,” Wallace wrote) and the “unnecessarily elaborate” patterns and coloration of butterfly wings. Vladmir Nabokov — novelist, lepidopterist, and Darwin doubter — would make that same observation in the middle 20th century, as I’ve noted in this space previously.
Adding to all this Wallace’s comfort with the idea of common descent, it starts to sound like a mix of Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, and William Dembski. ENV was intrigued, naturally, and caught up with Flannery to pose a few questions.
Continue reading "How Evolution's Co-Discoverer Discovered Intelligent Design, Part I" »
If you hvaen't got your copy of Signature in the Cell yet here's a chance to try before you buy. You can get a good sneak peek inside SITC over at the Harper Collins website. Click here to Browse Inside.
A recent paper in BioEssays, "MicroRNAs and metazoan macroevolution: insights into canalization, complexity, and the Cambrian explosion," admits the lack of a "materialistic basis" -- that is, a plausible materialistic explanation -- of the Cambrian explosion. As the article states: Thus, elucidating the materialistic basis of the Cambrian explosion has become more elusive, not less, the more we know about the event itself, and cannot be explained away by coupling extinction of intermediates with long stretches of geologic time, despite the contrary claims of some modern neo-Darwinists.
(Kevin J. Peterson, Michael R. Dietrich and Mark A. McPeek, "MicroRNAs and metazoan macroevolution: insights into canalization, complexity, and the Cambrian explosion," BioEssays, Vol. 31 (7):736 - 747 (2009).) The authors give no indication that they themselves support intelligent design (ID), and it seems they are still hopeful for a “materialistic” explanation for the Cambrian explosion, but they nonetheless give a witty nod to some observations and arguments made by ID proponents:
Continue reading "BioEssays Article Admits “Materialistic Basis of the Cambrian Explosion” is “Elusive”" »
As David Klinghoffer reported yesterday, Dr. Meyer kicked off his new book Signature in the Cell with an address to the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, during which he explained why materialistic theories are drawing a blank in origin of life research. They can't explain where biological information comes from. Now you can watch Dr. Meyer as he talks about how he answers the question that evolutionists can't in his new book.
CSC director Stephen C. Meyer launched his important new book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and Evidence for Intelligent Design, with a speech today at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. In Signature, Dr. Meyer exposes the increasingly evident hopelessness of materialist explanations of life’s origins and makes a fresh, powerful, and seemingly conclusive new scientific argument for intelligent design.
Dr. Meyer began by noting that in this Charles Darwin dual anniversary year, we should keep in mind that Darwin’s presumed “primary legacy is that he refuted the design argument.” That argument, in turn, had long been regarded as the most compelling that exists for religious belief. The phenomenal success of the New Atheist movement, represented by Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens & Co., is based on the premise that Darwin successfully explained “the appearance of design without real design.” But what if the premise is mistaken?
In Washington, Dr. Meyer alluded to the business of the capital city, comparing the complex path by which a bill introduced in Congress becomes a law to the far more complex path by which genes encoded in DNA are translated into proteins, the building blocks of life.
"The biological information in DNA runs the show in biology," Meyer said. Explaining where it comes from is the enigma faced by life-origins researchers.
Materialist solutions of the enigma all face insuperable challenges, Meyer continued. For example, theories that hypothesize the operation of “pre-biotic natural selection presuppose what needs to be explained in the first place, namely the existence of self-replicating organisms,” without which no advantageous feature that is selected could be retained and passed on. It is a “question-begging explanation,” Meyer said.
Continue reading "Stephen Meyer Launches Signature in the Cell With a Speech at the Heritage Foundation" »
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Does belief in evolution
How did life begin? Powerful
