Richardthughes
Posts: 11178
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| Quote | Evolutionary Informatics as Intelligent Design and not as Theistic Evolution
William Dembski
The paper on evolutionary informatics by Robert Marks and me that was recently published in an IEEE journal (go here for the paper) continues to generate discussion on the Internet. One criticism is that it at best is consistent with theistic evolution but does not support ID. I think this is a mistake. I’ve said for over a decade now that ID is consistent with the most far-flung evolutionary change. The key contention of ID is that design in nature, and in biology in particular, is detectable. Evolutionary informatics, by looking at the information requirements of evolutionary processes, points to information sources beyond evolution and thus, indirectly, to a designer. Theistic evolution, by contrast, accepts the Darwinian view that Darwinian processes generate the information required for biological complexity internally, without any outside source of information. The results by Marks and me are showing that this cannot be the case. The paper just published is only the first installment. It essentially lays out our accounting procedure for measuring the information in evolutionary search. We have two forthcoming papers that flesh out our larger project (available at www.evoinfo.org/publications), showing that attempts to account for the information internally, without an external information source, all founder.
Posted in Intelligent Design, theistic evolution | Comments Off
23 August 2009
Functional Interdependencies Tighten The Noose On Darwinists’ ‘Received Wisdom’
Robert Deyes
Synopsis Of The Fourth Chapter Of Nature’s IQ By Balazs Hornyanszky and Istvan Tasi
As an avid participant of the compass-based sport of orienteering in the 1980s, one of the roles I was frequently assigned to was that of ‘course designer’. Meeting the needs of the many orienteering enthusiasts who turned up on competition day was a formidable task that required the cooperative efforts of a large number of individuals. Errors in communicating course layout or map design could have been navigationally disastrous for all concerned. Of course few of us need reminding of nature’s own ‘grand schemes’ of cooperative synchrony epitomized in the colonies of over eleven thousand ant species that today grace our planet. Workers, soldiers, fertilizing males and queens ‘play their instruments’ in an orchestra that is in part directed by the activity of a family of molecules called pherormones.
Read more »
Posted in Intelligent Design | 1 Comment »
23 August 2009
Biosemiotics and Intelligent Design
Mario A. Lopez
Semiotix – Stephen Pain
The distinction between “theorising” and “belief” is extremely important because our attitude differs towards them. In a theory the reified concept of the sign does not have an ontological status but an epistemological one. While in belief, the concept has often a clear ontological one. Uexküll believed in his concept of the Bauplan in the same way as Bergson believed in the vital force. The concept of a plan is of course no different from the creationist’s concept of “intelligent design”. Any usage of the Bauplan is further complicated by its ideological usage in The Biological State, Uexküll‘s template for the German State, one that was anti-democratic and in many instances attractive to the Nazi of the 1930’s. Here I might bring in a Viennese philosopher of biology, Felix Mainx, who contributed an entry to an encyclopaedia of science of which Charles Morris was one of the main editors. After the terrible experience of the Nazi period, Mainx spent a lot of time analysing in detail the wrongs of vitalist biology or “parabiology” as he called it. Certainly, Uexküll’s theory of the Bauplan falls into this category:
The same holds for the concepts “plan”, “constructed plan”, “functional pattern”, and the like. It is characteristic of many parabiological theories that they turn such concepts into things to which they attribute an action on the “substrate” of organic events. (Mainx, p.637)
Read More…
More info here, here,
here and here
Posted in Biology, Chemistry, Evolution, Genomics, Human evolution, Informatics, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life, Self-Org. Theory | No Comments »
23 August 2009
Robert Wright and the New Pragmatism
Cornelius Hunter
In recent years evolutionists have been trying to pin down the theological implications of evolution. If evolution is true–and of course evolutionists believe it is true–then what does this tell us about god? From blogs to books to conferences at the Vatican, the “fact” of evolution is being integrated with our theology. The latest example of this science-informs-religion movement is Robert Wright’s op-ed piece in today’s New York Times which resurrects Charles Peirce’s pragmatism. It is yet another example of evolution’s abuse of science.
Read more
Posted in Intelligent Design | 8 Comments »
23 August 2009
And there you have it!
William Dembski
Janna Levin, Columbia astrophysicist, gives us the cutting-edge science on the origin of the universe: there was nothing, really nothing, nothing at all … but the potential to exist. Was it Aristotle who said that nothing admits no predicates? So where did nothing get the potential to exist and then bring the universe into existence? Not to worry. Janna does give us this assurance: “We know that something happened.” Yes, this is science at its best. Let’s not bring God or design into this discussion — we wouldn’t want to be accused of “acting stupidly.” Oh, one more thing, she’s an assistant professor (go here). Want to bet that she doesn’t have problems getting tenure? Compare this to Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State.
YouTube Source
Posted in Eyes Rolling, Religion, Science | 44 Comments »
22 August 2009
Szostak on Abiogenesis: Just Add Water
Cornelius Hunter
This month’s Scientific American is another example of evolution’s influence on science. Read more
Posted in Intelligent Design | 45 Comments »
21 August 2009
[Off-topic:] School Answering Machine
William Dembski
I’m told that the Maroochydore High School, Queensland, Australia, staff voted unanimously to record the following message on their school telephone answering machine, prompted by a school policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for their children’s absences and missing homework. Apparently, the school and teachers are being sued by parents who want their children’s failing grades changed to passing grades — even though those children had double-digit absences during the semester and didn’t do enough work to finish their classes.
LISTEN AND ENJOY!
Posted in Humor | 26 Comments »
21 August 2009
If and when The New York Times finally tanks … what will it mean for intelligent design?
O'Leary
Here’s my MercatorNet column about the decline of traditional media (known to bloggers as “legacy mainstream media”). Anyone interested in the intelligent design controversy should think carefully about how the media are changing.
Hint: Imagine a world in which media went to someone other than the Darwin lobby to find out what might be wrong with Darwinism …
I don’t accept the thesis that the old media declined because they were partisan. Rather they became more ridiculously partisan as they were declining.
Single-minded partisanship is – in a free society – usually an outcome of consumer choice. People can get their news from lots of sources. So if they choose your source, you can develop the story as you like.
But – by contrast – how many air traffic controllers are permitted to bug pilots with their opinions about politics and religion? How many weather forecasters would last long if they likewise bugged farmers seeking data on the tornado watch?
So the tsunami of consumer choices in media fuels partisanship – but also opportunity. Read more »
Posted in Intelligent Design | 4 Comments »
21 August 2009
More Chimp-Human Genome Problems
Cornelius Hunter
One of evidences for evolution that has been strongly touted in recent years is the fact that the genomes of the human and chimpanzee are so similar. About 98.4% of the instructions in our genome match the chimp’s. We must share a common ancestor, so goes the argument which doesn’t worry about how humans and chimps could be so different. With a 98.4% match, evolution must be true. That, of course, is not a scientific argument. But leaving that aside, when we look under the hood we actually find that comparisons of the human and chimp genomes contradict evolution.
Read more
Posted in Intelligent Design | 28 Comments »
20 August 2009
Evidence for an early prokaryotic endosymbiosis
Mario A. Lopez
Hypothesis
Nature 460, 967-971 (20 August 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature08183
James A. Lake
Endosymbioses have dramatically altered eukaryotic life, but are thought to have negligibly affected prokaryotic evolution. Here, by analysing the flows of protein families, I present evidence that the double-membrane, Gram-negative prokaryotes were formed as the result of a symbiosis between an ancient actinobacterium and an ancient clostridium. The resulting taxon has been extraordinarily successful, and has profoundly altered the evolution of life by providing endosymbionts necessary for the emergence of eukaryotes and by generating Earth’s oxygen atmosphere. Their double-membrane architecture and the observed genome flows into them suggest a common evolutionary mechanism for their origin: an endosymbiosis between a clostridium and actinobacterium.
You’ll have to pay for this one, but I think it will make an interesting read. Read more…
Posted in Biology, Evolution, Science | No Comments »
20 August 2009
PZ Myers Does It Again
Clive Hayden
PZ Myers has, once again, railed against something that he doesn’t understand at his blog Pharyngula. Hi PZ! Notice that he doesn’t actually address the content of Dr. Dembski and Dr. Marks’ paper, which you can read here: Conservation of Information in Search: Measuring the Cost of Success, published at the IEEE. Given his argument, he doesn’t know how to measure the cost of success, yet claims that Dr. Dembski doesn’t understand selection. A bit of advice PZ, the argument presented by Dr. Dembski and Dr. Marks is very sophisticated PZ, your mud slinging isn’t PZ, you need to step it up PZ. I know this new stuff isn’t ez, but you may want to consider a response that has actual content PZ. Your argument against this peer-reviewed paper is still in its infancy, or, more accurately, still in the pharyngula stage, embryonic in its development.
Since evolution of the kind PZ subscribes to cannot be witnessed, the argument has moved into genetic algorithms with the advent of computational abilities to determine the affair, and the IEEE is an entirely appropriate place to publish on that subject. We’re not going anywhere, we’ll give him time to catch up and educate himself to the tenets of the paper’s actual content. And if/when he does, maybe he’ll write another blog, and possibly write one with active information, that is, actual information, or else his argument will never reach it’s target.
Posted in Darwinism, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science | 124 Comments »
20 August 2009
Metaprogramming and DNA
niwrad
In informatics metaprogramming is a technique consisting in developing computer programs (sets of instructions) that output other programs. While simple programming means instructions generating data, metaprogramming means instructions generating instructions. In general the prefix “meta” means a thing/cause that stays at a higher semantic/ontological level than another thing/effect (in the case of metaprogramming we have a two-level hierarchy where a parent program creates child programs). For a tutorial introduction to metaprogramming see for example the following Jonathan Bartlett’s brilliant articles:
one, two and three.
DNA contains instructions, biological code for working-out various constructive cellular jobs (making proteins, setting developmental parameters, etc.). Question (inspired by the above ascertainment and readings): does DNA contain also meta-programs beyond simple programs?
Much DNA (outside its coding-for-proteins portions) seems without function (junk-DNA). Is it possible that some junk-DNA is meta-code able to assembly other DNA code? This could be an interesting ID prediction. Many have noted as the information amount contained in the genomes seems really too little to account for the overall complexity of organisms. Metaprogramming would be exactly one of the techniques able to compress the biological information. Read more »
Posted in Genomics, Informatics, Intelligent Design | 52 Comments »
20 August 2009
Darwin’s finches by Harry Hill
Andrew Sibley
youtube video – Harry Hill puts a fresh spin on Darwinism
Sorry not embedded, but you will enjoy this UK TV comedian’s take off of Darwinism and his finches
Posted in Intelligent Design | 3 Comments »
19 August 2009
New Peer-Reviewed Pro-ID Article in Mainstream Math/Eng Literature
William Dembski
William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II, “Conservation of Information in Search: Measuring the Cost of Success,” IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics A, Systems & Humans, vol.39, #5, September 2009, pp.1051-1061.
*****For the official listing, go here.
*****For a pdf of the article, go here.
P.S. Our critics will immediately say that this really isn’t a pro-ID article but that it’s about something else (I’ve seen this line now for over a decade once work on ID started encroaching into peer-review territory). Before you believe this, have a look at the article. In it we critique, for instance, Richard Dawkins METHINKS*IT*IS*LIKE*A*WEASEL (p. 1055). Question: When Dawkins introduced this example, was he arguing pro-Darwinism? Yes he was. In critiquing his example and arguing that information is not created by unguided evolutionary processes, we are indeed making an argument that supports ID.
Posted in Informatics, Intelligent Design | 9 Comments »
19 August 2009
SETI Gets New Toys!
Mario A. Lopez
Quest to find life beyond Earth gets technological boosts
By Andrea Pitzer, Special for USA TODAY 8/19/09
The search for intelligent life in the universe is still on.
Despite the absence of interstellar tourists to date, astronomers at the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) are hoping that we are not alone.
And with new spacecraft to locate planets circling nearby stars, as well as more effective listening devices here at home, scientists have more tools at their disposal to find Earth-like planets or signs of other life forms.
But the possibility of intelligent life is what interests scientists at SETI. Using SETI’s 42-antenna Allen Telescope Array in Northern California, they can listen in many directions for unusual radio signals coming from space.
According to institute astronomer Seth Shostak, Carl Sagan posited that more than a million civilizations might be capable of broadcasting signals. Scientist and author Isaac Asimov hypothesized that the number might be half that. SETI astronomer Frank Drake has estimated the number might be closer to 10,000.
Read more…
Posted in Eyes Rolling, Humor, Just For Fun, Off Topic, Psychology, Religion | 17 Comments »
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Chickenshit, Dembski.
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