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Intelligent Design

How to Get a Genetic Code by Chance
February 19, 2004
The Feb. 17 issue of Current Biology1 has a Q&A magazine feature on the genetic code.  After dismissing some myths about it being universal, consisting of only 20 amino acids and obligated to only three codons (there are some minor exceptions to these mostly-true principles: see 04/30/2003), the authors tackle the big question: where did […]
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Intelligent Design

Irreducible Complexity: Can It Be Explained Away?
February 18, 2004
When Sharon Begley, writing in the Wall Street Journal Feb. 13, criticized the intelligent design movement (see reprint on Access Research Network), Michael Behe answered with a pointed reply five days later.  Begley particularly singled out the concept of “irreducible complexity.”  Behe’s reply, defending the validity of irreducible complexity (a term he coined in his […]
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Amazing Facts

DNA Is a Code Operated by Another Code
February 17, 2004
The discovery in the 1950s that DNA stored a coded language was amazing, but recently a new level of complexity has come to the awareness of biochemists.  Apparently, another code determines which DNA genes will be opened for expression and which should be suppressed.     The Feb. 14 issue of Science News1 describes the […]
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Intelligent Design

Scientists Probe Differences Between Living and Nonliving Chemicals
February 15, 2004
“All life forms are composed of molecules that are not themselves alive.  But in what ways do living and nonliving matter differ?  How could a primitive life form arise from a collection of nonliving molecules?”  Any article beginning with questions like that is bound to be interesting.  That’s how Rasmussen et al. tantalized readers of […]
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Education

New Website Aids Slow Process of Dethroning Darwin
February 13, 2004
A new website, Darwin and Design.com, based on the book co-authored by Stephen Meyer and John Angus Campbell, has been announced by Discovery Institute.  Meanwhile, Ohio anticreationists are trying to caricature a proposed lesson plan on critical analysis of evolution by identifying it with intelligent design theory.  �Intelligent design isn�t even covered in this lesson,� […]
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Education

Legality Argument
February 3, 2004
The Discovery Institute has posted remarks by David DeWolf, a law professor, to the Darby, Montana School District.  He addresses concerns that have been raised about the legality and constitutionality of a proposed change to their science policy that would permit “teaching the controversy” about origins in the science classroom. Has it come to this, […]
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Intelligent Design

How to Get Engineering Without an Engineer
January 28, 2004
The study of complex systems is all the rage these days (see, for example, 08/18/2003 entry).  In the Jan. 28 issue of Nature,1 J. M. Ottino (Northwestern University) mixes up biology with human design in his Concepts essay on “Engineering complex systems.”     “Complex systems,” he explains, “can be identified by what they do […]
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Intelligent Design

10 More Questions
January 27, 2004
As a follow-up to Jonathan Wells’ popular (or notorious, depending on your point of view) 10 Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher About Evolution, William Dembski has come up with 10 Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher About Design.     Dembski has also recently published a new book, The Design Revolution, “Answering the Toughest […]
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Education

Book
January 7, 2004
The Discovery Institute in Seattle has published a new book, Darwinism, Design and Public Education, by John Angus Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer, encouraging schools to teach both sides of the controversy over Darwinism vs Intelligent Design. The Darwin Party’s spin doctoring that students should be protected from the controversy over Darwinism is unpopular and […]
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Bible and Theology

Discussions Increase About Science and Religion
January 5, 2004
Cary McMullen, writing for the Lakeland Ledger (Florida), has listed some recent developments indicating that more and more scientists and theologians are becoming interested in the relationship between science and religion.  His list spans a spectrum from atheistic opinions of Stephen Weinberg to neo-orthodox views of Fuller Seminary, with a variety of voices and views […]
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Bible and Theology

In the Beginning Was the Bit
December 30, 2003
Is intelligent design theory making an inroad into secular science?  One might think so, based on a book review published in the Jan. 1 issue of Nature,1 entitled, “The bits that make up the Universe.”  Michael A. Nielsen reviews a new book by Hans Christian van Baeyer, Information: The New Language of Science (Weidenfeld & […]
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Intelligent Design

Phillip Johnson Honored, Still Wedging
December 13, 2003
Phillip E. Johnson, the Berkeley law professor who spearheaded the Intelligent Design movement, has been named “Daniel of the Year” by World Magazine (cover story, Dec. 13, 2003, also reproduced on Access Research Network).  Johnson has often used the metaphor of a wedge splitting a log.  Intelligent design, he believes, is the Wedge of Truth […]
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Intelligent Design

Evolutionary Theorizing: Only Atheists Need Apply
December 7, 2003
Simon Conway Morris is a thorough-going evolutionist and anticreationist.  You would think that would make the editors of Science happy, but on Dec. 5 they printed a scathing review by Douglas E. Irwin1 of his recent book Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe.  Though Morris accepts the full story of Darwinian common ancestry, […]
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Education

Judge Rules ID Unconstitutional
December 20, 2002
Judge John E. Jones III gave his ruling on the Dover school board case in favor of the plaintiffs, as expected.  His wording against the board was strident, even accusing them of lying about their religious motives for including intelligent design (ID) as an alternative to evolution.  He spoke of the “breathtaking inanity” of the […]
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Cell Biology

Cells Find Signal in the Noise
December 20, 2002
Parents at an amusement park know the challenge of picking out their child’s voice, or even hearing their own hollering, in the noise of the crowd.  Yelling won’t help much if the rest of the crowd is yelling also.  Acoustic engineers know that raising the volume while playing back a noisy tape amplifies the noise […]
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