Dr Collins, top geneticist, and CHRISTIAN....

[Dr.Drock]

"Professor Will Provine teaches a course for incoming freshman at Cornell University. In it, he contends that Darwin’s theory of evolution makes it impossible to believe in the existence of a benevolent God, much less in the God of Christianity. Provine informs his students that by the end of the course any belief they have in God will be shattered. In fact, he gauges the success of the course by the number of new atheists it produces. "

I'm going to need proof that this professor teaches in such a way.

And this is a link to the questions that CB already answered and proved this math/philosophy type to be wrong on science.

William B. Provine

There's professor Provine's page, says nothing like that. You can even email him if you like if you have questions.

Department Overview

There's the department overview that he's a part of, says nothing like trying to make people into atheists.

Provine is an atheist, but i'm doubting he takes a poll before and after the class of number of atheists and judges the success of a his class on those results.





I think I'd find some new bloggers, mainly ones who are educated in science.

What math are you talking about Doc ?

The blogger you're providing a link to, his area of expertise is math and philosophy.

I'll take the biologists credentials in biology over his.

 

[Youwerecreated]

1. We can't. So most logical people would not make the assumption that it is unless presented with evidence.

2. What kind of intelligent life are you going to search for in biological systems? We're not going to find little ant cars. Intelligence across species is directly linked to brain structure. Intelligence DOES exist in biological systems. Animals have brains extremely similar to ours, we simply have a much more developed cerebral cortex.

3. What do you define as information rich? Any three nucleotides will form a codon that will create an amino acid in the presence of enzymes like RNA polymerase. That is information. That can, and does, form spontaneously. A nitrogen base is a simple compound, and that is the base unit of information your talking about here.

4. No structures in the cell no not resemble machines made by humans? What does that have to do with anything? Organelles in a cell resemble very simply lipid membranes that work either through an enzyme catalyst, some protein, or some form of stored energy like ATP. Lipid membranes form naturally. The basic theory about the origin of eukaryotic cells is that one prokaryotic cell enveloped a much smaller one, just like a cell does when it gathers "food". Thats the origin of the mitochondria.

5. Irreducibly complex systems are systems that are rendered useless when any single part is removed. According to intelligent design idiots, this means that complex systems could not have evolved from less complex ones because they would be missing a part and therefore be non functional. These systems do exist in biology, but they're no evidence against evolution. Thats like saying your car won't start when you remove the transmission, therefore the internal combustion engine is not built upon the same general technology of the steam engine. Just because i can't cut out my heart and still live, doesn't mean organisms didnt/dont exist without hearts.

6. I would say thats evidence for common descent. You would say that its evidence for common design. If the argument were that simple and that obvious aristotle would have come up with evolution. Evolution is built on much more solid foundations than the simple fact that we all have eyes.

7. No, they don't. You should actually read more scientific journals, you would be surprised. The creation of RNA from non-RNA is very possible. The creation of RNA that codes for specific proteins is possible. The creation of RNA that codes for proteins that create a cyclical reaction is possible. Therefore your argument is wrong in every sense of the word. Its not just wrong, its a lie.

"Researchers synthesized the basic ingredients of RNA, a molecule from which the simplest self-replicating structures are made. Until now, they couldn’t explain how these ingredients might have formed."

“Ribonucleotides are simply an expression of the fundamental principles of organic chemistry,” said Sutherland. “They’re doing it unwittingly. The instructions for them to do it are inherent in the structure of the precursor materials. And if they can self-assemble so easily, perhaps they shouldn’t be viewed as complicated.”

--Wired.com

8. I would say junk DNA would fit in with evolution way better. If human DNA is an amalgam of 3.8 billions years of genetic variation then you would expect random and junk DNA sequences. On the other hand, why would God create junk DNA sequences? That doesn't make sense to me.

9. If you could provide any proof of intelligent design of course i would take it into account. You could never provide proof, thats your problem, not my willingness to believe it. Evolution makes several predictions. So far all of them true. The only one not conclusively provable is speciation. Thats not evidence against or for evolution however. Because evolution doesn't predict speciation would happen so fast. You can't claim lack of sufficient speciation in 5000 years is evidence that evolution is wrong if evolution doesn't even claim it could happen in 5000 years.

10. Are you equating archeology with intelligent design? Seriously? We find pots and tools and such scattered around human skeletons. The correct analogy would be scattered organism fossils and carcasses around the skeleton of a god. When you fools find that, then your have a valid analogy.

Your still at the same old stuff. You copy pasta from creationist websites with a bunch of points that don't make sense and are totally irrelevant. It shows a total lack of knowledge about anything. Its funny when you keep talking about DNA and genetic information when you clearly dont even know the basics of how information is stored in DNA. You would be laughed out of every science lecture in the country.

Thanks for your answers This was not a test it was to show the intelligence involved with life. Gotcha!

Dr. Bill Dembski


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bill Dembski, one of the organizers of the Mere Creation conference, has a Ph.D. in mathematics and philosophy, and an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary. As a visiting scholar at Notre Dame, Dembski is investigating the foundations of design.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Professor Will Provine teaches a course for incoming freshman at Cornell University. In it, he contends that Darwin’s theory of evolution makes it impossible to believe in the existence of a benevolent God, much less in the God of Christianity. Provine informs his students that by the end of the course any belief they have in God will be shattered. In fact, he gauges the success of the course by the number of new atheists it produces.
In the foreword to my book The Design Revolution, Chuck Colson writes: “For years— far too many years—Darwinian evolution, the prevailing orthodoxy in the academy, faced no meaningful challenges. Those who believed in any other theory of biological origins were dismissed as religious cranks or fools. This is now beginning to change.”

Indeed, it is changing. With the rise of the intelligent design movement, the image of a defensive, beleaguered, overwhelmed student desperately trying to shore up religious faith against the onslaughts of an invincible Darwinian establishment is finally giving way. Instead, we now have the image of a confident, clued-in, empowered student shaking up the very professors, like Will Provine, who used to teach atheism for fun and profit. The profit may still be there, but the fun is now gone.

The reason the fun is gone is that more and more students are informing themselves about intelligent design and learning to ask the right questions that deflate Darwinism and its atheistic pretensions. According to arch-Darwinist Richard Dawkins, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Not any more. Intelligent design is showing that system after biological system is beyond the reach of blind purposeless material processes like the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection.

What is intelligent design? Intelligent design is the science that studies signs of intelligence. So defined, intelligent design seems innocuous enough, and includes such fields as archeology, cryptography, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Is a chunk of rock really an arrowhead? Is a random looking screed really an encrypted message? Is a radio transmission from distant space really a meaningful communication? Such questions are uncontroversial so long as they focus on signs of intelligence from designing agents that could conceivably have evolved by Darwinian means.

But what about signs of intelligence that cannot reasonably have originated from Darwinian or other materialistic processes? According to Darwinism, intelligence is not a basic creative force within nature but an evolutionary byproduct. In other words, Darwinism regards all intelligence as the product of evolution. In contrast, any intelligence responsible for biological systems could not be an evolved intelligence but must exist prior to the systems for which it is responsible. This explains why intelligent design is so controversial: it claims to discover signs of intelligence in biological systems for which the underlying intelligence is not, and indeed cannot be, an evolved intelligence. Thus, while not directly proving that God exists, intelligent design is far more friendly to theism than Darwinism.

Intelligent design puts the ball back in Darwinism’s court. It’s not just that students need no longer feel intimidated by Darwinist bullying. Rather, it’s that students are now in a position to challenge the Darwinian establishment head on. Darwinism is like a submarine—allow just one pinhole leak, and it implodes. The pinhole leak here is design. What’s more, students now have the tools to probe this leak. To do so effectively, however, they need to know the right questions to ask their biology teachers. What follows are ten such questions, along with some pointers to be aware of when asking them:

1. Design Detection
If nature, or some aspect of it, is intelligently designed, how can we tell?

For design to be a fruitful concept in the natural sciences, scientists have to be< sure they can reliably determine whether something is designed. For instance, Johannes Kepler thought the craters on the moon were intelligently designed by moon dwellers. We now know that the craters were formed by blind material processes (like meteor impacts). This worry of falsely attributing something to design only to have it overturned later has hindered design from entering the scientific mainstream.

Proponents of intelligent design argue that they now have formulated a precise criterion that reliably infers intelligence while also avoiding Kepler’s mistake— the criterion of “specified complexity.” An event exhibits specified complexity if it is contingent in the sense of being one of several live possibilities; if it is complex in the sense of allowing many alternatives and therefore not being easily repeatable by chance; and if it is specified in the sense of exhibiting an independently given pattern. For instance, a repetitive sequence is specified without being complex. A random sequence is complex without being specified. A functional sequence, like DNA that codes for proteins, is both complex and specified, and therefore designed.

2. Generalizing SETI
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a scientific research program that searches for signs of intelligence from distant space. Should biologists likewise search for signs of intelligence in biological systems? Why or why not?

Biologists don’t have a problem with SETI. As far as they’re concerned, looking for signs of intelligence from distant space is a perfectly legitimate scientific enterprise. Nevertheless, many biologists regard it as illegitimate to look for signs of intelligence in biological systems. In their view, any such signs of intelligence are fundamentally misleading because the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection is supposed to be able to mimic the effects of intelligence apart from actual intelligence. As Richard Dawkins puts it, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Yes, biological systems appear to be designed. But in fact they are not designed, and to look for signs of actual intelligence will only lead biologists astray. Better to look not for signs of intelligence but for how natural selection explains certain apparent signs of intelligence. This is the received wisdom in the biological community. This received wisdom is at best a mistake and at worst a prejudice. It is entirely an open question whether all appearance of design in biology is only an appearance. Proponents of intelligent design argue that signs of actual intelligence are present in biological systems and lie beyond the reach of natural selection.

3. Biology’s Information Problem
How do we account for the complex information-rich patterns in biological systems? Where did they originate?

In a widely cited speech, Nobel laureate David Baltimore remarked, “Modern biology is a science of information.” Manfred Eigen, Bernd Olaf-Küppers, John Maynard Smith, and many other biologists have likewise identified information as biology’s central problem. For matter to be alive, it must be suitably structured. A living organism is not a mere lump of matter. Life is special, and what makes life special is the arrangement of its matter into very specific forms. In other words, what makes life special is information. Where did the information necessary for life come from? This question cannot be avoided. Life has not always existed. There was a time in the history of the universe when all matter was lifeless. And then life appeared—on earth and perhaps elsewhere. Biology’s information problem is therefore to determine whether (and if so how) purely natural forces are able to bridge the gulf between the organic and inorganic worlds as well as the gulfs between different levels of complexity within the organic world. Conversely, biology’s information problem is to determine whether (and if so how) design is needed to complement purely natural forces in the origin and subsequent development of life.

4. Molecular Machines
Do any structures in the cell resemble machines designed by humans? How do we account for such structures?

In December 2003, the biology journal BioEssays published a special issue on “molecular machines.” In the introductory essay to that issue, Adam Wilkins, the editor of BioEssays, remarked, “The articles included in this issue demonstrate some striking parallels between artifactual and biological/molecular machines. In the first place, molecular machines, like man-made machines, perform highly specific functions. Second, the macromolecular machine complexes feature multiple parts that interact in distinct and precise ways, with defined inputs and outputs. Third, many of these machines have parts that can be used in other molecular machines (at least, with slight modification), comparable to the interchangeable parts of artificial machines. Finally, and not least, they have the cardinal attribute of machines: they all convert energy into some form of ‘work’.”

How, then, do biologists explain the origin of such structures? They don’t. In 2001, cell biologist Franklin Harold published The Way of the Cell with Oxford University Press. In it he remarked: “There are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”

5. Irreducible Complexity
What are irreducibly complex systems? Do such systems exist in biology? If so, are those systems evidence for design? If not, why not?

Michael Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity raises acute difficulties for Darwinism. Irreducible complexity is a “package-deal” feature of many biological systems. Package deals are all-or-nothing deals. You can have the whole package or you can have none of it, but you can’t pick and choose pieces of it. In biology, especially at the molecular level, there exist molecular machines (see last question) that cannot be simplified without losing the machine’s function. In other words, take away parts and you can’t recover the machine’s function. One such irreducibly complex molecular machine that has become the mascot of the intelligent design movement is the bacterial flagellum. This is a tiny motor-driven propeller on the backs of certain bacteria. It is a marvel of nano-engineering, spinning at tens of thousands of rpm. Biologist Howard Berg at Harvard calls it “the most efficient machine in the universe.” It is irreducibly complex.

How do evolutionary theorists propose to account for such systems? They have no detailed, testable, step-by-step proposals for how irreducibly complex systems like this might have arisen. All evolutionary theorists have been able to do is note that because systems like the flagellum are irreducibly complex, they must have arisen via a gradual series of simpler systems that served functions different from the machine in question (the functions need to be different because to simplify an irreducibly complex system is to destroy its function). But merely appealing to such a gradual series of simpler systems doesn’t tell us how, or even whether, irreducibly complex systems evolved, much less by Darwinian or other materialist means. The burden on evolution’s defenders is to demonstrate that at least one irreducibly complex molecular machine found in nature really can be formed by some specific, fully articulated series of gradual steps. So far, evolutionary theorists have nothing like this. Wishful speculations is the best they’ve come up with.

6. Reusable Parts
Human designers reuse designs that work well. Life forms also repeat the use of certain structures (the camera eye, for example). Is this evidence for common descent, evolutionary convergence, common design, or a combination of these?

Within evolutionary biology, there are only two ways to explain similar biological structures. The first is to attribute them to common descent. Thus two organisms share a structure because they inherited it from a common evolutionary ancestor.

The other option is to attribute similar structures to convergence. Thus two organisms share a structure because it evolved more than once (separate evolutionary pathways “converged” on it). By adopting an engineering approach to biological structure, intelligent design explains similar structures in terms of common design. Note that this is not to preclude that a repeated structure arose via an evolutionary process. But in that case it would be a guided evolutionary process and not a blind, purposeless evolutionary process as in Darwinism. Common design, perhaps expressed through evolutionary convergence, accounts for the repetitions of many biological structures (like the camera eye in humans and squids) far better than common descent or blind evolutionary convergence.

7. Reverse Engineering
In trying to understand biological systems, molecular biologists often need to “reverse engineer” them. Is this evidence that the systems were engineered to begin with?

In regular engineering one begins with a plan to construct a machine that serves a given function and then builds the machine according to plan. In reverse engineering, by contrast, one starts with a finished machine and tries to determine what its purpose is and how it was constructed. Scott Minnich, a University of Idaho molecular biologist and prominent proponent of intelligent design, will often remark in his public lectures that the only way for biologists to understand the workings of the cell is to approach its various systems as a reverse engineer. Thus the molecular biologist may take a functioning system in the cell, perturb it, see how the cell behaves differently to infer the system’s function. Alternatively, the molecular biologist may interfere at various points in the system’s self-assembly to determine how the system is constructed. In all such cases, the molecular biologist acts as an engineer making intelligent interventions and not as a gambler throwing dice. If we need the science of engineering to understand biological systems, then it is a good bet that the systems are themselves designed.

8. Predictions
Do intelligent design theory and neo-Darwinian theory make different predictions? Take, for instance, junk DNA. For which of the two theories would the idea that large stretches of DNA are junk be more plausible?

Neo-Darwinian theory views any two organisms as having evolved from a common evolutionary ancestor and explains the evolution of any organism as the outcome of a blind, purposeless process. As a consequence, evolution is likely to exhibit many false starts, dead-ends, and remnants that serve no purpose (called “vestigial structures”). Intelligent design can accommodate such historical contingencies because it recognizes the operation of natural processes at odds with design (much as a rusted automobile is the effect both of design and natural forces—in this case, mechanical engineering and weathering).

Nonetheless, intelligent design argues that there are features of biological systems that lie beyond the reach of Darwinian and other material mechanisms. Moreover, unlike Darwinism, which sees organisms as cobbled together by a trial-and-error process (i.e., natural selection acting on random variations), intelligent design sees real design in organism and thus keeps looking for design even when evolutionary theorists throw in the towel and invoke vestigiality. Interestingly, most of the structures regarded as vestigial in humans a hundred years ago are now known to have a function (for instance, the appendix plays a role in the immune system). Similarly, molecular biologists are now finding uses for stretches of DNA previous referred to as “junk.” John Bodnar, for instance, has found “non-coding DNA in eukaryotic genomes [that] encodes a language which programs organismal growth and development.”

9. Following the Evidence
What evidence would convince you that intelligent design is true and neo-Darwinism is false? If no such evidence exists or indeed can exist, how can neo-Darwinism be a testable scientific theory?

The evolutionist J. B. S. Haldane was once asked what would convince him that evolution was false. He replied that finding a rabbit fossil in pre-Cambrian rocks would do quite nicely. Such a fossil would, by standard geological dating, be out of sequence by several hundreds of millions of years. Certainly such a finding, if rigorously confirmed, would overturn the current understanding of the history of life. But would it really overturn neo-Darwinism or confirm intelligent design? It would not. Haldane’s rabbit is easily enough explained as an evolutionary convergence. Moreover, for the materialist biologist, no evidence whatsoever could confirm intelligent design.

So long as some unknown or unexplored Darwinian evolutionary pathway might have led to the formation of some biological structure or organism, it is to be preferred over an intelligent design explanation. And since the unknown and unexplored allow for an infinity of loopholes, the committed materialist regards Darwinian and other materialist explanations of life’s origin and subsequent development as always trumping intelligent design, regardless of the evidence. Note that intelligent design does not stack the deck this way. In particular, unlike Darwinism, intelligent design is refutable. To refute intelligent design, it is enough to display specific, fully articulated Darwinian pathways for the complex systems that, according to intelligent design, lie beyond the reach of the Darwinian mechanism (systems like the bacterial flagellum in question 5). Though Darwinists mistakenly charge intelligent design with being untestable, it’s their theory that in fact is untestable.

10. Identifying the Designer
Can we determine whether an object is designed without identifying or knowing anything about its designer? For instance, can we identify an object as an ancient artifact without knowing anything about the civilization that produced it?

As the science that studies signs of intelligence, intelligent design investigates the effects of intelligence and not intelligence as such. A sign, after all, is not the thing signified. Intelligent design does not try to get into the mind of a designer or speculate about the characteristics of a designer. Its focus is not on the identity of a designer (the thing signified) but on the artifacts due to a designer (the sign). A designer’s identity and characteristics are, to be sure, interesting questions, and one may be able to infer something about what a designer is like from the designed objects that a designer produces. But the identity and characteristics of a designer lie outside the scope of intelligent design. That’s as it should be. The fact is that we infer design repeatedly and reliably without knowing anything about the underlying designer. Some biologists, beforethey permit intelligent design into biology, require getting into the mind of the designer and knowing what sorts of biological systems we should expect from the designer. But, as Stanford philosopher of biology Elliott Sober admits, “To infer watchmaker from watch, you needn’t know exactly what the watchmaker had in mind; indeed, you don’t even have to know that the watch is a device for measuring time. Archaeologists sometimes unearth tools of unknown function, but still reasonably draw the inference that these things are, in fact, tools.”

Phillip Johnson has written an insightful book titled The Right Questions: Truth, Meaning and Public Debate. In that book he shows that truth is best served not by having all the answers but by knowing the right questions, especially the tough questions suppressed by the intellectual elite of our society. In particular, truth demands that we ask the tough questions about Darwin and evolution. As Richard Halvorson has aptly remarked, “We must refuse to bow to our culture’s false idols. Science will not benefit from canonizing Darwin or making evolution an article of secular faith. We must reject intellectual excommunication as a valid form of dealing with criticism: the most important question for any society to ask is the one that is forbidden.” Intelligent design doesn’t have all the answers. But it is asking the right questions—questions forbidden by the Darwinian establishment. For a more thorough examination of the questions posed here, as well as many others, consult my new book The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design (InterVarsity, 2004).


Ten Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher About Design

Creationist are not stupid people as your side tries to make us out to be.

Yes you are. that entire post was totally useless. you didnt even address any of my answers to those questions. What an idiot.

Hello ,you admitted to intelligence what is the source of this intelligence you admitted to ?

The point of the whole thing is to get you to do what you did and i admire that you admitted to it.

Most evolutionist would not have done so.

 

[Dr.Drock]

Thanks for your answers This was not a test it was to show the intelligence involved with life. Gotcha!

Dr. Bill Dembski


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bill Dembski, one of the organizers of the Mere Creation conference, has a Ph.D. in mathematics and philosophy, and an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary. As a visiting scholar at Notre Dame, Dembski is investigating the foundations of design.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Professor Will Provine teaches a course for incoming freshman at Cornell University. In it, he contends that Darwin’s theory of evolution makes it impossible to believe in the existence of a benevolent God, much less in the God of Christianity. Provine informs his students that by the end of the course any belief they have in God will be shattered. In fact, he gauges the success of the course by the number of new atheists it produces.
In the foreword to my book The Design Revolution, Chuck Colson writes: “For years— far too many years—Darwinian evolution, the prevailing orthodoxy in the academy, faced no meaningful challenges. Those who believed in any other theory of biological origins were dismissed as religious cranks or fools. This is now beginning to change.”

Indeed, it is changing. With the rise of the intelligent design movement, the image of a defensive, beleaguered, overwhelmed student desperately trying to shore up religious faith against the onslaughts of an invincible Darwinian establishment is finally giving way. Instead, we now have the image of a confident, clued-in, empowered student shaking up the very professors, like Will Provine, who used to teach atheism for fun and profit. The profit may still be there, but the fun is now gone.

The reason the fun is gone is that more and more students are informing themselves about intelligent design and learning to ask the right questions that deflate Darwinism and its atheistic pretensions. According to arch-Darwinist Richard Dawkins, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Not any more. Intelligent design is showing that system after biological system is beyond the reach of blind purposeless material processes like the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection.

What is intelligent design? Intelligent design is the science that studies signs of intelligence. So defined, intelligent design seems innocuous enough, and includes such fields as archeology, cryptography, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Is a chunk of rock really an arrowhead? Is a random looking screed really an encrypted message? Is a radio transmission from distant space really a meaningful communication? Such questions are uncontroversial so long as they focus on signs of intelligence from designing agents that could conceivably have evolved by Darwinian means.

But what about signs of intelligence that cannot reasonably have originated from Darwinian or other materialistic processes? According to Darwinism, intelligence is not a basic creative force within nature but an evolutionary byproduct. In other words, Darwinism regards all intelligence as the product of evolution. In contrast, any intelligence responsible for biological systems could not be an evolved intelligence but must exist prior to the systems for which it is responsible. This explains why intelligent design is so controversial: it claims to discover signs of intelligence in biological systems for which the underlying intelligence is not, and indeed cannot be, an evolved intelligence. Thus, while not directly proving that God exists, intelligent design is far more friendly to theism than Darwinism.

Intelligent design puts the ball back in Darwinism’s court. It’s not just that students need no longer feel intimidated by Darwinist bullying. Rather, it’s that students are now in a position to challenge the Darwinian establishment head on. Darwinism is like a submarine—allow just one pinhole leak, and it implodes. The pinhole leak here is design. What’s more, students now have the tools to probe this leak. To do so effectively, however, they need to know the right questions to ask their biology teachers. What follows are ten such questions, along with some pointers to be aware of when asking them:

1. Design Detection
If nature, or some aspect of it, is intelligently designed, how can we tell?

For design to be a fruitful concept in the natural sciences, scientists have to be< sure they can reliably determine whether something is designed. For instance, Johannes Kepler thought the craters on the moon were intelligently designed by moon dwellers. We now know that the craters were formed by blind material processes (like meteor impacts). This worry of falsely attributing something to design only to have it overturned later has hindered design from entering the scientific mainstream.

Proponents of intelligent design argue that they now have formulated a precise criterion that reliably infers intelligence while also avoiding Kepler’s mistake— the criterion of “specified complexity.” An event exhibits specified complexity if it is contingent in the sense of being one of several live possibilities; if it is complex in the sense of allowing many alternatives and therefore not being easily repeatable by chance; and if it is specified in the sense of exhibiting an independently given pattern. For instance, a repetitive sequence is specified without being complex. A random sequence is complex without being specified. A functional sequence, like DNA that codes for proteins, is both complex and specified, and therefore designed.

2. Generalizing SETI
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a scientific research program that searches for signs of intelligence from distant space. Should biologists likewise search for signs of intelligence in biological systems? Why or why not?

Biologists don’t have a problem with SETI. As far as they’re concerned, looking for signs of intelligence from distant space is a perfectly legitimate scientific enterprise. Nevertheless, many biologists regard it as illegitimate to look for signs of intelligence in biological systems. In their view, any such signs of intelligence are fundamentally misleading because the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection is supposed to be able to mimic the effects of intelligence apart from actual intelligence. As Richard Dawkins puts it, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Yes, biological systems appear to be designed. But in fact they are not designed, and to look for signs of actual intelligence will only lead biologists astray. Better to look not for signs of intelligence but for how natural selection explains certain apparent signs of intelligence. This is the received wisdom in the biological community. This received wisdom is at best a mistake and at worst a prejudice. It is entirely an open question whether all appearance of design in biology is only an appearance. Proponents of intelligent design argue that signs of actual intelligence are present in biological systems and lie beyond the reach of natural selection.

3. Biology’s Information Problem
How do we account for the complex information-rich patterns in biological systems? Where did they originate?

In a widely cited speech, Nobel laureate David Baltimore remarked, “Modern biology is a science of information.” Manfred Eigen, Bernd Olaf-Küppers, John Maynard Smith, and many other biologists have likewise identified information as biology’s central problem. For matter to be alive, it must be suitably structured. A living organism is not a mere lump of matter. Life is special, and what makes life special is the arrangement of its matter into very specific forms. In other words, what makes life special is information. Where did the information necessary for life come from? This question cannot be avoided. Life has not always existed. There was a time in the history of the universe when all matter was lifeless. And then life appeared—on earth and perhaps elsewhere. Biology’s information problem is therefore to determine whether (and if so how) purely natural forces are able to bridge the gulf between the organic and inorganic worlds as well as the gulfs between different levels of complexity within the organic world. Conversely, biology’s information problem is to determine whether (and if so how) design is needed to complement purely natural forces in the origin and subsequent development of life.

4. Molecular Machines
Do any structures in the cell resemble machines designed by humans? How do we account for such structures?

In December 2003, the biology journal BioEssays published a special issue on “molecular machines.” In the introductory essay to that issue, Adam Wilkins, the editor of BioEssays, remarked, “The articles included in this issue demonstrate some striking parallels between artifactual and biological/molecular machines. In the first place, molecular machines, like man-made machines, perform highly specific functions. Second, the macromolecular machine complexes feature multiple parts that interact in distinct and precise ways, with defined inputs and outputs. Third, many of these machines have parts that can be used in other molecular machines (at least, with slight modification), comparable to the interchangeable parts of artificial machines. Finally, and not least, they have the cardinal attribute of machines: they all convert energy into some form of ‘work’.”

How, then, do biologists explain the origin of such structures? They don’t. In 2001, cell biologist Franklin Harold published The Way of the Cell with Oxford University Press. In it he remarked: “There are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”

5. Irreducible Complexity
What are irreducibly complex systems? Do such systems exist in biology? If so, are those systems evidence for design? If not, why not?

Michael Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity raises acute difficulties for Darwinism. Irreducible complexity is a “package-deal” feature of many biological systems. Package deals are all-or-nothing deals. You can have the whole package or you can have none of it, but you can’t pick and choose pieces of it. In biology, especially at the molecular level, there exist molecular machines (see last question) that cannot be simplified without losing the machine’s function. In other words, take away parts and you can’t recover the machine’s function. One such irreducibly complex molecular machine that has become the mascot of the intelligent design movement is the bacterial flagellum. This is a tiny motor-driven propeller on the backs of certain bacteria. It is a marvel of nano-engineering, spinning at tens of thousands of rpm. Biologist Howard Berg at Harvard calls it “the most efficient machine in the universe.” It is irreducibly complex.

How do evolutionary theorists propose to account for such systems? They have no detailed, testable, step-by-step proposals for how irreducibly complex systems like this might have arisen. All evolutionary theorists have been able to do is note that because systems like the flagellum are irreducibly complex, they must have arisen via a gradual series of simpler systems that served functions different from the machine in question (the functions need to be different because to simplify an irreducibly complex system is to destroy its function). But merely appealing to such a gradual series of simpler systems doesn’t tell us how, or even whether, irreducibly complex systems evolved, much less by Darwinian or other materialist means. The burden on evolution’s defenders is to demonstrate that at least one irreducibly complex molecular machine found in nature really can be formed by some specific, fully articulated series of gradual steps. So far, evolutionary theorists have nothing like this. Wishful speculations is the best they’ve come up with.

6. Reusable Parts
Human designers reuse designs that work well. Life forms also repeat the use of certain structures (the camera eye, for example). Is this evidence for common descent, evolutionary convergence, common design, or a combination of these?

Within evolutionary biology, there are only two ways to explain similar biological structures. The first is to attribute them to common descent. Thus two organisms share a structure because they inherited it from a common evolutionary ancestor.

The other option is to attribute similar structures to convergence. Thus two organisms share a structure because it evolved more than once (separate evolutionary pathways “converged” on it). By adopting an engineering approach to biological structure, intelligent design explains similar structures in terms of common design. Note that this is not to preclude that a repeated structure arose via an evolutionary process. But in that case it would be a guided evolutionary process and not a blind, purposeless evolutionary process as in Darwinism. Common design, perhaps expressed through evolutionary convergence, accounts for the repetitions of many biological structures (like the camera eye in humans and squids) far better than common descent or blind evolutionary convergence.

7. Reverse Engineering
In trying to understand biological systems, molecular biologists often need to “reverse engineer” them. Is this evidence that the systems were engineered to begin with?

In regular engineering one begins with a plan to construct a machine that serves a given function and then builds the machine according to plan. In reverse engineering, by contrast, one starts with a finished machine and tries to determine what its purpose is and how it was constructed. Scott Minnich, a University of Idaho molecular biologist and prominent proponent of intelligent design, will often remark in his public lectures that the only way for biologists to understand the workings of the cell is to approach its various systems as a reverse engineer. Thus the molecular biologist may take a functioning system in the cell, perturb it, see how the cell behaves differently to infer the system’s function. Alternatively, the molecular biologist may interfere at various points in the system’s self-assembly to determine how the system is constructed. In all such cases, the molecular biologist acts as an engineer making intelligent interventions and not as a gambler throwing dice. If we need the science of engineering to understand biological systems, then it is a good bet that the systems are themselves designed.

8. Predictions
Do intelligent design theory and neo-Darwinian theory make different predictions? Take, for instance, junk DNA. For which of the two theories would the idea that large stretches of DNA are junk be more plausible?

Neo-Darwinian theory views any two organisms as having evolved from a common evolutionary ancestor and explains the evolution of any organism as the outcome of a blind, purposeless process. As a consequence, evolution is likely to exhibit many false starts, dead-ends, and remnants that serve no purpose (called “vestigial structures”). Intelligent design can accommodate such historical contingencies because it recognizes the operation of natural processes at odds with design (much as a rusted automobile is the effect both of design and natural forces—in this case, mechanical engineering and weathering).

Nonetheless, intelligent design argues that there are features of biological systems that lie beyond the reach of Darwinian and other material mechanisms. Moreover, unlike Darwinism, which sees organisms as cobbled together by a trial-and-error process (i.e., natural selection acting on random variations), intelligent design sees real design in organism and thus keeps looking for design even when evolutionary theorists throw in the towel and invoke vestigiality. Interestingly, most of the structures regarded as vestigial in humans a hundred years ago are now known to have a function (for instance, the appendix plays a role in the immune system). Similarly, molecular biologists are now finding uses for stretches of DNA previous referred to as “junk.” John Bodnar, for instance, has found “non-coding DNA in eukaryotic genomes [that] encodes a language which programs organismal growth and development.”

9. Following the Evidence
What evidence would convince you that intelligent design is true and neo-Darwinism is false? If no such evidence exists or indeed can exist, how can neo-Darwinism be a testable scientific theory?

The evolutionist J. B. S. Haldane was once asked what would convince him that evolution was false. He replied that finding a rabbit fossil in pre-Cambrian rocks would do quite nicely. Such a fossil would, by standard geological dating, be out of sequence by several hundreds of millions of years. Certainly such a finding, if rigorously confirmed, would overturn the current understanding of the history of life. But would it really overturn neo-Darwinism or confirm intelligent design? It would not. Haldane’s rabbit is easily enough explained as an evolutionary convergence. Moreover, for the materialist biologist, no evidence whatsoever could confirm intelligent design.

So long as some unknown or unexplored Darwinian evolutionary pathway might have led to the formation of some biological structure or organism, it is to be preferred over an intelligent design explanation. And since the unknown and unexplored allow for an infinity of loopholes, the committed materialist regards Darwinian and other materialist explanations of life’s origin and subsequent development as always trumping intelligent design, regardless of the evidence. Note that intelligent design does not stack the deck this way. In particular, unlike Darwinism, intelligent design is refutable. To refute intelligent design, it is enough to display specific, fully articulated Darwinian pathways for the complex systems that, according to intelligent design, lie beyond the reach of the Darwinian mechanism (systems like the bacterial flagellum in question 5). Though Darwinists mistakenly charge intelligent design with being untestable, it’s their theory that in fact is untestable.

10. Identifying the Designer
Can we determine whether an object is designed without identifying or knowing anything about its designer? For instance, can we identify an object as an ancient artifact without knowing anything about the civilization that produced it?

As the science that studies signs of intelligence, intelligent design investigates the effects of intelligence and not intelligence as such. A sign, after all, is not the thing signified. Intelligent design does not try to get into the mind of a designer or speculate about the characteristics of a designer. Its focus is not on the identity of a designer (the thing signified) but on the artifacts due to a designer (the sign). A designer’s identity and characteristics are, to be sure, interesting questions, and one may be able to infer something about what a designer is like from the designed objects that a designer produces. But the identity and characteristics of a designer lie outside the scope of intelligent design. That’s as it should be. The fact is that we infer design repeatedly and reliably without knowing anything about the underlying designer. Some biologists, beforethey permit intelligent design into biology, require getting into the mind of the designer and knowing what sorts of biological systems we should expect from the designer. But, as Stanford philosopher of biology Elliott Sober admits, “To infer watchmaker from watch, you needn’t know exactly what the watchmaker had in mind; indeed, you don’t even have to know that the watch is a device for measuring time. Archaeologists sometimes unearth tools of unknown function, but still reasonably draw the inference that these things are, in fact, tools.”

Phillip Johnson has written an insightful book titled The Right Questions: Truth, Meaning and Public Debate. In that book he shows that truth is best served not by having all the answers but by knowing the right questions, especially the tough questions suppressed by the intellectual elite of our society. In particular, truth demands that we ask the tough questions about Darwin and evolution. As Richard Halvorson has aptly remarked, “We must refuse to bow to our culture’s false idols. Science will not benefit from canonizing Darwin or making evolution an article of secular faith. We must reject intellectual excommunication as a valid form of dealing with criticism: the most important question for any society to ask is the one that is forbidden.” Intelligent design doesn’t have all the answers. But it is asking the right questions—questions forbidden by the Darwinian establishment. For a more thorough examination of the questions posed here, as well as many others, consult my new book The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design (InterVarsity, 2004).


Ten Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher About Design

Creationist are not stupid people as your side tries to make us out to be.

Yes you are. that entire post was totally useless. you didnt even address any of my answers to those questions. What an idiot.

Hello ,you admitted to intelligence what is the source of this intelligence you admitted to ?

The point of the whole thing is to get you to do what you did and i admire that you admitted to it.

Most evolutionist would not have done so.

Him admitting that animals have intelligence in their brains is what you've been trying for this whole time?

What person who doesn't deny evolution has ever said no animals have intelligence?

 

[cbirch2]

Hello ,you admitted to intelligence what is the source of this intelligence you admitted to ?

The point of the whole thing is to get you to do what you did and i admire that you admitted to it.

Most evolutionist would not have done so.

LMAO wow. If you would read through my response i clearly did not.

Kind of like how you admitted to speciation. You still dont understand that one.

 

[cbirch2]

And just so were clear here, im not even interested in debating the origin of life. I'm sure i could point to all sorts of evidence, and im sure you could copy pasta from a creationist website to "disprove" all of it, but you would still be unable to prove anything about intelligent design. Evidence for abiogensis/evolution has been provided for about 60 pages. How about you provide one post that even hints that the christian creation story is anything but a fairy tale.

You think you proved something with those 10 little questions. Responding to that was the biggest waste of 10 minutes ever. Its was totally pointless and irrelevant. You seem to think just because i answered those questions, i admitted to intelligent design. I assure you nothing in my post suggests anything like that at all.

Are you capable of making a series of logical deductions, or even just a single one? If so, walk me through exactly what i admitted to. I would love to hear it.

 

[Dr.Drock]

And just so were clear here, im not even interested in debating the origin of life. I'm sure i could point to all sorts of evidence, and im sure you could copy pasta from a creationist website, but you would still be unable to prove anything about intelligent design.

You think you proved something with those 10 little questions. Responding to that was the biggest waste of 10 minutes ever. Its was totally pointless and irrelevant. You seem to think just because i answered those questions, i admitted to intelligent design. I assure you nothing in my post suggests anything like that at all.

Are you capable of making a series of logical deductions, or even just a single one? If so, walk me through exactly what i admitted to. I would love to hear it.

Yeah i read every word of your post and have no idea where he's getting that you admitted in any tiny, marginal way that there's an intelligent designer.

 

[Youwerecreated]

"Professor Will Provine teaches a course for incoming freshman at Cornell University. In it, he contends that Darwin’s theory of evolution makes it impossible to believe in the existence of a benevolent God, much less in the God of Christianity. Provine informs his students that by the end of the course any belief they have in God will be shattered. In fact, he gauges the success of the course by the number of new atheists it produces. "

I'm going to need proof that this professor teaches in such a way.

And this is a link to the questions that CB already answered and proved this math/philosophy type to be wrong on science.

William B. Provine

There's professor Provine's page, says nothing like that. You can even email him if you like if you have questions.

Department Overview

There's the department overview that he's a part of, says nothing like trying to make people into atheists.

Provine is an atheist, but i'm doubting he takes a poll before and after the class of number of atheists and judges the success of a his class on those results.





I think I'd find some new bloggers, mainly ones who are educated in science.

Here are some quotes from his students evolutionist like him and people of faith maybe not so much.



EvoEvo


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he's an evolution teacher, of course he's an athiest. if you can't stand athiesm then take another course. extremely helpful and incredibly knowlegeable..he talked to me for two hours in his office hours about random stuff related to my research paper.



12/31/07

BIOEE207


Good Quality

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The lectures (not required) & sections (req) are at times thought provoking. Dr. Provine is clearly passionate about the subject, though biased. Grades are based on 3 equally weighted essays; 2 out of 3 of the essay topics assigned were extremely obscure. Grading was fair. Papers were far more work than they were worth. Do S/U option or don't take.


12/14/06

Bioee207


Good Quality

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Lectures energetic and interesting, although not really required because exams are based only on papers and entirely up to the discretion of the TA. Pretty hostile to religion, a bit close-minded, but definitely makes you think.


11/29/06

hist287


Poor Quality

Easiness2

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Don't ever take this class! Ignore the comments on the bottom! The lectures are interesting sometimes, but they do not pertain to the assignments at all! Sometimes, it pertains to the readings... Moreover, the paper topics are very obfuscating. The TAs grading are very subjective as well (not really that lenient in my opinion!). TAKE OTHER SCIENC

10/28/05

HIST/BIOEE
287


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This is a great class. Provine is so energetic and so fascinated with evolution. He makes you want to learn all about evolution. I love going to his lectures. I really love the class mainly because of him. Warning: this guy is a preaching athiests and is obviously *very* bias against christians, religion, and intelligent design.


I believe my blogger pegged him correctly. Thes quotes were take by rate my professor.

 

[Youwerecreated]

"Professor Will Provine teaches a course for incoming freshman at Cornell University. In it, he contends that Darwin’s theory of evolution makes it impossible to believe in the existence of a benevolent God, much less in the God of Christianity. Provine informs his students that by the end of the course any belief they have in God will be shattered. In fact, he gauges the success of the course by the number of new atheists it produces. "

I'm going to need proof that this professor teaches in such a way.

And this is a link to the questions that CB already answered and proved this math/philosophy type to be wrong on science.

William B. Provine

There's professor Provine's page, says nothing like that. You can even email him if you like if you have questions.

Department Overview

There's the department overview that he's a part of, says nothing like trying to make people into atheists.

Provine is an atheist, but i'm doubting he takes a poll before and after the class of number of atheists and judges the success of a his class on those results.





I think I'd find some new bloggers, mainly ones who are educated in science.

What math are you talking about Doc ?

The blogger you're providing a link to, his area of expertise is math and philosophy.

I'll take the biologists credentials in biology over his.

I think mine is pretty impressive.

 

[cbirch2]

Yes you are. that entire post was totally useless. you didnt even address any of my answers to those questions. What an idiot.

Hello ,you admitted to intelligence what is the source of this intelligence you admitted to ?

The point of the whole thing is to get you to do what you did and i admire that you admitted to it.

Most evolutionist would not have done so.

Him admitting that animals have intelligence in their brains is what you've been trying for this whole time?

What person who doesn't deny evolution has ever said no animals have intelligence?

LMAO! Is that what he thinks i admitted to? Wow.

YWC, you really are funny. When i say animals have intelligence, i mean there is not very much anatomic difference between the nervous system in humans and in other mammals. If im an athiest, which i am, i obviously dont believe in a soul or anything. All thought and mental activity is a result of electrical activity between neurons in the brain. Therefore animals DO have intelligence, because they have a relatively well developed brain. The only difference between humans and other animals, in terms of intelligence, is the thin, dense film of neurons covering the entire brain called the cerebral cortex. Ours is more dense, thicker, and with more surface area. That is what i mean by intelligence. It had nothing to do with an intelligent creator. Maybe you should read that post again.

 

[Dr.Drock]

"In fact, he gauges the success of the course by the number of new atheists it produces. "



Still not the tiniest shred of evidence of this, that's an outrageous claim to make with no proof.

 

[Dr.Drock]

Hello ,you admitted to intelligence what is the source of this intelligence you admitted to ?

The point of the whole thing is to get you to do what you did and i admire that you admitted to it.

Most evolutionist would not have done so.

Him admitting that animals have intelligence in their brains is what you've been trying for this whole time?

What person who doesn't deny evolution has ever said no animals have intelligence?

LMAO! Is that what he thinks i admitted to? Wow.

YWC, you really are funny. When i say animals have intelligence, i mean there is not very much anatomic difference between the nervous system in humans and in other mammals. If im an athiest, which i am, i obviously dont believe in a soul or anything. All thought and mental activity is a result of electrical activity between neurons in the brain. Therefore animals DO have intelligence, because they have a relatively well developed brain. The only difference between humans and other animals, in terms of intelligence, is the thin, dense film of neurons covering the entire brain called the cerebral cortex. Ours is more dense, thicker, and with more surface area. That is what i mean by intelligence. It had nothing to do with an intelligent creator. Maybe you should read that post again.

Has to be, that's the only time I saw you reference intelligence.


How someone could equate that in any way to intelligent design is beyond me.

 

[cbirch2]

" Intelligence DOES exist in biological systems. Animals have brains extremely similar to ours, we simply have a much more developed cerebral cortex. "

I forgot i have to be extremely careful what i say. Now hes going to twist that into me believing in an intelligent creator. Wow.

No friend, you dont get it. Your talking about searching for intelligent life in the normal biosphere. Im saying you dont have to look far. I would consider most animal life fairly intelligent. Just because a cat cannot vocalize its thoughts doesnt mean its not thinking something semi-coherent.

Otherwise idk what your talking about with searching for intelligent life in the normal biosphere. The search for seti is a search for life using radio signals. There is no parallel in the normal biosphere.

The problem here, as always, is that im using the correct term for intelligence and your using it like no scientific or logical person would; to refer to a creator. Im using it to say "a cat can be considered relatively intelligent", and your using it to say "a cat was intelligently designed".

One is science and one is a bedtime story.

 

[Youwerecreated]

Hello ,you admitted to intelligence what is the source of this intelligence you admitted to ?

The point of the whole thing is to get you to do what you did and i admire that you admitted to it.

Most evolutionist would not have done so.

LMAO wow. If you would read through my response i clearly did not.

Kind of like how you admitted to speciation. You still dont understand that one.

Sorry, i was mistaken,i do see where Doc pointed it out.

But a few questions out of that article i am intersted in asking.

1. Where did the information necessary for life come from?

2. complex information-rich patterns in biological systems, Where did they originate?

This guy disagrees with you on question four.

4. the biology journal BioEssays published a special issue on “molecular machines.” In the introductory essay to that issue, Adam Wilkins, the editor of BioEssays, remarked, “The articles included in this issue demonstrate some striking parallels between artifactual and biological/molecular machines. In the first place, molecular machines, like man-made machines, perform highly specific functions. Second, the macromolecular machine complexes feature multiple parts that interact in distinct and precise ways, with defined inputs and outputs. Third, many of these machines have parts that can be used in other molecular machines (at least, with slight modification), comparable to the interchangeable parts of artificial machines. Finally, and not least, they have the cardinal attribute of machines: they all convert energy into some form of ‘work’.”


How, then, do biologists explain the origin of such structures?

Question

5. Michael Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity raises acute difficulties for Darwinism. Irreducible complexity is a “package-deal” feature of many biological systems. Package deals are all-or-nothing deals. You can have the whole package or you can have none of it, but you can’t pick and choose pieces of it. In biology, especially at the molecular level, there exist molecular machines (see last question) that cannot be simplified without losing the machine’s function. In other words, take away parts and you can’t recover the machine’s function. One such irreducibly complex molecular machine that has become the mascot of the intelligent design movement is the bacterial flagellum. This is a tiny motor-driven propeller on the backs of certain bacteria. It is a marvel of nano-engineering, spinning at tens of thousands of rpm. Biologist Howard Berg at Harvard calls it “the most efficient machine in the universe.” It is irreducibly complex.

How do evolutionary theorists propose to account for such systems?

7. In regular engineering one begins with a plan to construct a machine that serves a given function and then builds the machine according to plan. In reverse engineering, by contrast, one starts with a finished machine and tries to determine what its purpose is and how it was constructed. Scott Minnich, a University of Idaho molecular biologist and prominent proponent of intelligent design, will often remark in his public lectures that the only way for biologists to understand the workings of the cell is to approach its various systems as a reverse engineer. Thus the molecular biologist may take a functioning system in the cell, perturb it, see how the cell behaves differently to infer the system’s function. Alternatively, the molecular biologist may interfere at various points in the system’s self-assembly to determine how the system is constructed. In all such cases, the molecular biologist acts as an engineer making intelligent interventions and not as a gambler throwing dice. If we need the science of engineering to understand biological systems.

Why is this not evidence of design ?

 

[Youwerecreated]

And just so were clear here, im not even interested in debating the origin of life. I'm sure i could point to all sorts of evidence, and im sure you could copy pasta from a creationist website to "disprove" all of it, but you would still be unable to prove anything about intelligent design. Evidence for abiogensis/evolution has been provided for about 60 pages. How about you provide one post that even hints that the christian creation story is anything but a fairy tale.

You think you proved something with those 10 little questions. Responding to that was the biggest waste of 10 minutes ever. Its was totally pointless and irrelevant. You seem to think just because i answered those questions, i admitted to intelligent design. I assure you nothing in my post suggests anything like that at all.

Are you capable of making a series of logical deductions, or even just a single one? If so, walk me through exactly what i admitted to. I would love to hear it.

We are not discussing creation,we are discussing these things that show intelligence involved with life,we are talking evolution.

 

[Youwerecreated]

Now let's start covering what prominent evolutionist have to say.

The Theory of Evolution: True Science or Dogma?

Sean D. Pitman, MD
May, 2008


Evolutionary ideas are generally thought to refer to the origin of living things. However, such ideas have seeped into many aspects of science - to include sciences dealing with both living and non-living things. For example, the study of the formation of the stars, galaxies, and the universe itself employs evolutionary ideas in the sense that natural non-deliberate non-directed changes acting over time can produce all of the features of our universe. Likewise, Darwin famously proposed that the variety of life itself is entirely the result of similar non-deliberate natural processes acting over time. Darwin published his seminal book, On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, in 1859. Until Darwin, evolutionary ideas, though prevalent in the scientific community, had not really taken hold. Most scientists still believed that an intelligent or even a divine force was at work in Nature and that this was responsible for certain aspects of living things and of the universe itself.
So, why were Darwin's ideas so fundamentally unique and life-changing? Well, as the famous British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins put it in his 1986 book, The Blind Watchmaker, "Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."
In other words, Darwinian ideas, if accepted and expanded a bit, remove the need for God or any other directed intelligent force at work in the entire universe. If taken to its logical conclusion, as Dawkins has, Darwinian thinking removes the need for any other force beyond the supreme non-intelligent non-directed non-caring forces of all-powerful Nature Herself. Ultimately then, no other forces exist, or at least no other forces give evidence of their existence within our world or universe.
This is quite a startling idea. It was in fact Earth-shattering when Darwin first presented it. According to William Provine [Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University], "Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly.

&#8226; No gods worth having exist;
&#8226; No life after death exists;
&#8226; No ultimate foundation for ethics exists;
&#8226; No ultimate meaning in life exists; and
&#8226; Human free will is nonexistent." 1

Of course there are those evolutionists who would take exception with the likes of Dawkins and Provine. Some evolutionary scientists even claim the title of Christian - like evolutionary biologist and famous apologist Kenneth Miller (from Brown University) who is a "devout Catholic". Francis Collins, who first sequenced the human genome, is also an active Christian. Of course, these evolutionary scientists draw a distinct line between "science" and "religion" or "faith".
So, what is the difference between "science" and "religion"? For many if not most who are religious, religion is based more on feeling or desire or a personal "experience" with a God or God-like "higher power" while science is more empirical, testable, and repeatable by others outside of ones self and is able to generate "predictive value" with use of the "scientific method".
My question is, what is the point or value of one's religion or "faith" if it has absolutely no basis in any sort of physical, testable, potentially falsifiable reality? How it this sort of religious belief or faith any different from a child's belief in Santa Claus? Sure, it might be able to provide warm fuzzy feelings of goodness, but when it comes to a solid hope or assurance, a source of true deep comfort that is more than wishful thinking, what good is such a religion or faith?
As it turns out, there are a number of prominent scientists who are cautiously if not openly questioning the very basic assumptions of naturalism and Darwinian-style evolution. Even when it comes to the non-living aspects of this universe a number of famous scientists are starting to see clear scientific evidence of deliberate manipulation - of intelligent design. For example, Charles Hard Townes, winner of a Nobel Prize in Physics and a UC Berkeley professor makes the following interesting argument:

"Intelligent design, as one sees it from a scientific point of view, seems to be quite real. This is a very special universe: it's remarkable that it came out just this way. If the laws of physics weren't just the way they are, we couldn't be here at all. The sun couldn't be there, the laws of gravity and nuclear laws and magnetic theory, quantum mechanics, and so on have to be just the way they are for us to be here.
Some scientists argue that "well, there's an enormous number of universes and each one is a little different. This one just happened to turn out right." Well, that's a postulate, and it's a pretty fantastic postulate &#8212; it assumes there really are an enormous number of universes and that the laws could be different for each of them. The other possibility is that ours was planned, and that's why it has come out so specially."

Eugene Wigner (Nobel Prize in Physics) also noted in his widely quoted paper, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Physical Sciences, that scientists often take for granted the remarkable--even miraculous--effectiveness of mathematics in describing the real world:

"The enormous usefulness of mathematics is something bordering on the mysterious . . . . There is no rational explanation for it . . . . The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve." 5

Interesting comments for an acclaimed "modern" genius with a Nobel Prize in physics.

When it comes to living things, there are also a number of prominent scientists who are beginning to doubt the power of mindless nature alone to explain both the origin and the diversity of living things on this planet. Sir Frederick Hoyle [first proposed the Big Bang Theory] and Chandra Wickramasinghe (well-known mathematician) wrote:

&#8220;No matter how large the environment one considers, life cannot have had a random beginning . . .
From the beginning of this book we have emphasized the enormous information content of even the simplest living systems. The information cannot in our view be generated by what are often called 'natural' processes, as for instance through meteorological and chemical processes. . . Information was also needed. We have argued that the requisite information came from an 'intelligence'.&#8221; 4

From their book, There Must be a God, Wickramasinghe and Hoyle explain:

Once we see . . . that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics on which life depends are in every respect &#8216;deliberate,&#8217; or &#8216;created&#8217;.
I now find myself driven to this position by logic. There is no other way in which we can understand the precise ordering of the chemicals of life except to invoke the creations on a cosmic scale. . . .
We were hoping as scientists that there would be a way round our conclusion, but there isn't." 3

Wickramasinghe was especially shocked by this conclusion. He notes his bewilderment in the following passage:

"It is quite a shock. From my earliest training as a scientist I was very strongly brainwashed to believe that science cannot be consistent with any kind of deliberate creation. That notion has had to be very painfully shed. I am quite uncomfortable in the situation, the state of mind I now find myself in. But there is no logical way out of it." 4

So, while it is quite clear that apparently mindless natural processes do have certain powers that are often amazing, it is also quite clear that these powers are limited in explanatory power when it comes to certain features of both living and non-living things in our world and in our universe. When it comes to living things in particular, Darwinian-style evolution does actually work to produce some rather mundane changes over time - to include certain forms of antibiotic resistance, flightless birds on windy islands, cavefish without eyes, sickle cell anemia, and the like. But, it also has very clear limitations that remain statistical limitations given billions or even trillions upon trillions of years of time.
A little research will show that all known examples of evolution in action never produce a novel protein-based system of function that requires more than a few hundred specifically arranged amino acid building blocks working together at the same time. Yet, every living thing has far more complex protein-based systems that require a minimum of thousands of these specifically arranged amino acid building blocks. For example, the flagellar motility system found in bacteria like E. coli require a minimum of over 10,000 specifically coded amino acids all working together at the same time for minimum useful motility function. No such system, or even a subpart of such a system, has been shown to evolve in observable time. And, statistically systems at such high levels of functional complexity could not evolve even in trillions of years of time. There simply are no detailed statistical calculations or even estimates concerning the time needed to evolve such a system, or even between the proposed intermediate steps to gain such a system, in all of scientific literature.6
Such features of living things give just as much evidence to support a belief or "faith" in an intelligent designer behind such phenomena as any described by forensic scientists, anthropologists, or even SETI scientists. There is simply no fundamental difference or basis for belief or "faith" - scientific or otherwise. This is why even a few Nobel Laureates are starting to take another look at intelligent design as a viable scientific theory that should be explored further rather than be completely discarded at the behest of the popular atheists and blind-faith Christians who are currently prominent in mainstream science today.
In short, one's religion can be scientific and one's science can be one's religion. There need be no dividing line between the two. They can in fact be, and I suggest should be, one and the same. God is the author of both Nature and the written Word. His signature is clearly evident in both for those who are open to it - even for those mainstream scientists trained without any religious background or motivation. Should not we then who have both the works of nature and the written Word be all the more in awe of God, his power, majesty and his amazing love for us? A fallen race on this tiny planet in the vastness of His creation?


References:

1. Provine, William B. [Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University], "Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life", Abstract of Will Provine's 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address.
2. Powell, Bonnie Azab, 'Explore as much as we can': Nobel Prize winner Charles Townes on evolution, intelligent design, and the meaning of life", NewsCenter, June 17, 2005, (Nobel Prize winner Charles Townes on evolution and "intelligent design")
3. Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, As quoted in "There Must Be A God," Daily Express, Aug. 14, 1981 and "Hoyle On Evolution," Nature, Nov. 12, 1981, 105.)
4. Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (1981), p. 148, 150.
5. Eugene Wigner, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Physical Sciences," Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13 (1960): 1-14.
6. Sean Pitman, "The Evolution of the Flagellum and the Climbing of Mt. Improbable", May 2006, Online article accesses April 2008 (The Evolution of the Flagellum

 

[cbirch2]

Sorry, i was mistaken,i do see where Doc pointed it out.

But a few questions out of that article i am intersted in asking.

1. Where did the information necessary for life come from?

2. complex information-rich patterns in biological systems, Where did they originate?

This guy disagrees with you on question four.

4. the biology journal BioEssays published a special issue on “molecular machines.” In the introductory essay to that issue, Adam Wilkins, the editor of BioEssays, remarked, “The articles included in this issue demonstrate some striking parallels between artifactual and biological/molecular machines. In the first place, molecular machines, like man-made machines, perform highly specific functions. Second, the macromolecular machine complexes feature multiple parts that interact in distinct and precise ways, with defined inputs and outputs. Third, many of these machines have parts that can be used in other molecular machines (at least, with slight modification), comparable to the interchangeable parts of artificial machines. Finally, and not least, they have the cardinal attribute of machines: they all convert energy into some form of ‘work’.”


How, then, do biologists explain the origin of such structures?

Question

5. Michael Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity raises acute difficulties for Darwinism. Irreducible complexity is a “package-deal” feature of many biological systems. Package deals are all-or-nothing deals. You can have the whole package or you can have none of it, but you can’t pick and choose pieces of it. In biology, especially at the molecular level, there exist molecular machines (see last question) that cannot be simplified without losing the machine’s function. In other words, take away parts and you can’t recover the machine’s function. One such irreducibly complex molecular machine that has become the mascot of the intelligent design movement is the bacterial flagellum. This is a tiny motor-driven propeller on the backs of certain bacteria. It is a marvel of nano-engineering, spinning at tens of thousands of rpm. Biologist Howard Berg at Harvard calls it “the most efficient machine in the universe.” It is irreducibly complex.

How do evolutionary theorists propose to account for such systems?

7. In regular engineering one begins with a plan to construct a machine that serves a given function and then builds the machine according to plan. In reverse engineering, by contrast, one starts with a finished machine and tries to determine what its purpose is and how it was constructed. Scott Minnich, a University of Idaho molecular biologist and prominent proponent of intelligent design, will often remark in his public lectures that the only way for biologists to understand the workings of the cell is to approach its various systems as a reverse engineer. Thus the molecular biologist may take a functioning system in the cell, perturb it, see how the cell behaves differently to infer the system’s function. Alternatively, the molecular biologist may interfere at various points in the system’s self-assembly to determine how the system is constructed. In all such cases, the molecular biologist acts as an engineer making intelligent interventions and not as a gambler throwing dice. If we need the science of engineering to understand biological systems.

Why is this not evidence of design ?

1. Havent we been over this? The basic unit of information in DNA is a nitrogeneous base. These are very simple organic molecules. There is no mystery of how they could form.

2. Again, information rich means nothing. Just because theyre information rich right now does not mean they always were.

4. None of those similarities mean anything. He just defined a machine in like 4 different ways. That doesnt mean anything in terms of how they originated or how they function. Organelles within a cell operate completely differently than machines we create. If you actually understood the structure of organelles you wouldnt ask about their origin. They are simple lipid membranes. How dont you get that?

5. The entire concept of irreducible complexity is the result of one giant fallacy. Like i said, just because your car cant run without a transmission doesnt mean the I.C.E isnt a result of a the steam engine. Look at the evolution of the circulatory system. Our circulatory system would not work as is without a 4 chambered heart. If you suddenly lost your right ventricle, you would die. That doesnt mean amphibians dont have 3 chambers and fish dont have two. The whole argument is based on a very obvious logical fallacy. Not surprising, since creationists love those.

7. First of all, you totally ignored my statement about RNA synthesis. Second, the number of experiments we can do in a lab is still minuscule compared to the number of chemical reactions that could take place in just a second across the surface of the earth. Our inability to create life in a petri dish isnt evidence for or against evolution (or intelligent design). Its just evidence of our inability to control that number of molecules that precisely. The chances of a simple prokaryotic cell (no organelles) being formed spontaneously somewhere in the oceans of primitive earth within the last 4 billion years are a lot greater than us creating it in a petri dish in 50.

 

[cbirch2]

Dude why dont you post something from your own knowledge, or at least a summarized version of something you find on the internet. You keep posting exact copy pasta, essentially proving that you dont know enough to make a coherent argument using your own words and based upon your own knowledge.

Im not going to read through your wall of text that wont even make a coherent or relevant point in the first place.

Summarize what you read and post references at the bottom or as you go. Thats how its done friend. Prove to me you know SOMETHING.

 

[Youwerecreated]

Sorry, i was mistaken,i do see where Doc pointed it out.

But a few questions out of that article i am intersted in asking.

1. Where did the information necessary for life come from?

2. complex information-rich patterns in biological systems, Where did they originate?

This guy disagrees with you on question four.

4. the biology journal BioEssays published a special issue on “molecular machines.” In the introductory essay to that issue, Adam Wilkins, the editor of BioEssays, remarked, “The articles included in this issue demonstrate some striking parallels between artifactual and biological/molecular machines. In the first place, molecular machines, like man-made machines, perform highly specific functions. Second, the macromolecular machine complexes feature multiple parts that interact in distinct and precise ways, with defined inputs and outputs. Third, many of these machines have parts that can be used in other molecular machines (at least, with slight modification), comparable to the interchangeable parts of artificial machines. Finally, and not least, they have the cardinal attribute of machines: they all convert energy into some form of ‘work’.”


How, then, do biologists explain the origin of such structures?

Question

5. Michael Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity raises acute difficulties for Darwinism. Irreducible complexity is a “package-deal” feature of many biological systems. Package deals are all-or-nothing deals. You can have the whole package or you can have none of it, but you can’t pick and choose pieces of it. In biology, especially at the molecular level, there exist molecular machines (see last question) that cannot be simplified without losing the machine’s function. In other words, take away parts and you can’t recover the machine’s function. One such irreducibly complex molecular machine that has become the mascot of the intelligent design movement is the bacterial flagellum. This is a tiny motor-driven propeller on the backs of certain bacteria. It is a marvel of nano-engineering, spinning at tens of thousands of rpm. Biologist Howard Berg at Harvard calls it “the most efficient machine in the universe.” It is irreducibly complex.

How do evolutionary theorists propose to account for such systems?

7. In regular engineering one begins with a plan to construct a machine that serves a given function and then builds the machine according to plan. In reverse engineering, by contrast, one starts with a finished machine and tries to determine what its purpose is and how it was constructed. Scott Minnich, a University of Idaho molecular biologist and prominent proponent of intelligent design, will often remark in his public lectures that the only way for biologists to understand the workings of the cell is to approach its various systems as a reverse engineer. Thus the molecular biologist may take a functioning system in the cell, perturb it, see how the cell behaves differently to infer the system’s function. Alternatively, the molecular biologist may interfere at various points in the system’s self-assembly to determine how the system is constructed. In all such cases, the molecular biologist acts as an engineer making intelligent interventions and not as a gambler throwing dice. If we need the science of engineering to understand biological systems.

Why is this not evidence of design ?

1. Havent we been over this? The basic unit of information in DNA is a nitrogeneous base. These are very simple organic molecules. There is no mystery of how they could form.

2. Again, information rich means nothing. Just because theyre information rich right now does not mean they always were.

4. None of those similarities mean anything. He just defined a machine in like 4 different ways. That doesnt mean anything in terms of how they originated or how they function. Organelles within a cell operate completely differently than machines we create. If you actually understood the structure of organelles you wouldnt ask about their origin. They are simple lipid membranes. How dont you get that?

5. The entire concept of irreducible complexity is the result of one giant fallacy. Like i said, just because your car cant run without a transmission doesnt mean the I.C.E isnt a result of a the steam engine. Look at the evolution of the circulatory system. Our circulatory system would not work as is without a 4 chambered heart. If you suddenly lost your right ventricle, you would die. That doesnt mean amphibians dont have 3 chambers and fish dont have two. The whole argument is based on a very obvious logical fallacy. Not surprising, since creationists love those.

7. First of all, you totally ignored my statement about RNA synthesis. Second, the number of experiments we can do in a lab is still minuscule compared to the number of chemical reactions that could take place in just a second across the surface of the earth. Our inability to create life in a petri dish isnt evidence for or against evolution (or intelligent design). Its just evidence of our inability to control that number of molecules that precisely. The chances of a simple prokaryotic cell (no organelles) being formed spontaneously somewhere in the oceans of primitive earth within the last 4 billion years are a lot greater than us creating it in a petri dish in 50.

So in other words, by you not answering any of the questions you're avoiding the accurate answer,which is Design.

That is disingenuous,but not surprising.

That my firends is why their theory is so wrong, they rule out obvious evidence of intelligence because if they admit it, they can't rule out God the creator which is where all life and the complexity of life originated. That is nothing more than defending your religion on their part.

 

[Youwerecreated]

Dude why dont you post something from your own knowledge, or at least a summarized version of something you find on the internet. You keep posting exact copy pasta, essentially proving that you dont know enough to make a coherent argument using your own words and based upon your own knowledge.

Im not going to read through your wall of text that wont even make a coherent or relevant point in the first place.

Summarize what you read and post references at the bottom or as you go. Thats how its done friend. Prove to me you know SOMETHING.

I did.

 

[Alucard]

Darwin himself said his theory of evolution was absurd ...That the human eye alone is so complex it could never evolve naturally ... Somehow Darwinist continue to find a way to ignore this fact ... If Darwin were alive today would consider believers in evolution morons...

Can I have a link that shows Darwin said his entire life's work was absurd?



Please not a link to an evangelical site that says he said it with no proof.

I'm not here to do your research... Buy the works of Charles Darwin and read them... He starts off his theoretical conclusions with that statement about the human eye... Its how he introduces the theory..

Get off this stupid messageboard and read a book... start there..