May 4th, 2012
The list below contains several different evidences one could use in approaching and formulating a design or fine-tuning argument.
- The universe had a beginning, the standard model of the big bang.
- Einstein’s general relativity and the general property of FLRW (Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker metric)
- Hubble expansion
- Gamrock’s prediction of CMB (1948)
- Penzias and Wilson CMD (1965)
- Hawking-Penrose singularity (1960’s)
- Thermodynamics
- Nucleosynthesis of light elements
- Inflationary cosmology
- BVG theorem (2003)
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Posted in Apologetics, Intelligent Design | No Comments »
May 3rd, 2012
Original story by Granville Sewell
As ENV readers may know, I wrote an article, “A Second Look at the Second Law,” that was reviewed and accepted by Applied Mathematics Letters (AML) in 2011, then withdrawn at the last minute because “our editors simply found that it does not consist of the kind of content that we are interested in publishing.” The circumstances surrounding the withdrawal were so embarrassing to the publisher that it ended up paying $10,000 in damages and publishing an apology in the journal. But they still refused to publish the article itself.
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Posted in Evolution, Intelligent Design | No Comments »
May 3rd, 2012
Original story by Ann Gauger
Meet carbamoyl phosphate synthetase (CPS), a remarkably complex enzyme. This enzyme uses bicarbonate, glutamine, ATP, and water to make carbamoyl phosphate via a multi-step reaction at three separate active sites, involving several unstable intermediates.
CPS is made of two protein chains with a combined length of over 1,400 amino acid residues. We now know from extensive biochemical data that a fully coupled CPS requires the hydrolysis of one glutamine and two molecules of MgATP for every molecule of carbamoyl phosphate formed.
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Posted in Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design | No Comments »
April 22nd, 2012
Original post by BBC Science & Technology.
Researchers have succeeded in mimicking the chemistry of life in synthetic versions of DNA and RNA molecules. The work shows that DNA and its chemical cousin RNA are not unique in their ability to encode information and to pass it on through heredity. The work, reported in Science, is promising for future “synthetic biology” and biotechnology efforts. It also hints at the idea that if life exists elsewhere, it could be bound by evolution but not by similar chemistry.
In fact, one reason to mimic the functions of DNA and RNA – which helps cells to manufacture proteins – is to determine how they came about at the dawn of life on Earth; many scientists believe that RNA arose first but was preceded by a simpler molecule that performed the same function.
However, it has remained unclear if any other molecule can participate in the same unzipping and copying processes that give DNA and RNA their ability to pass on the information they carry in the sequences of their nucleobases – the five chemical group “letters” from which the the two molecules’ genetic information is composed.
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Posted in Evolution, In The News | No Comments »
April 19th, 2012
Original article by David Klinghoffer.
Jet Propulsion Lab defense attorney Cameron Fox was observed to jump slightly with a nervous energy when she discussed an email memo potentially damaging to her client’s case. Judge Ernest Hiroshige was seen to put on his glasses and lean forward a bit when testimony from JPL manager Cab Burgess, apparently contradicting that email and calling Burgess’s candor into question, was projected on a screen in the court.
These were some of the more, hmm, dramatic highlights on Monday, the final day of the David Coppedge v. JPL trial that unfolded over the course of five weeks in Hiroshige’s Superior Court room in Los Angeles. Coppedge attorney William Becker gave his concluding arguments in the case, as did Ms. Fox for JPL.
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Posted in Culture, Intelligent Design | 3 Comments »
April 17th, 2012
I grew up going to a private Christian elementary school down in southern California. Because of my exposure to Christianity and God there, I grew up with a fear and basic knowledge of Jesus and his existence. After being switched to public school, I had retained my Christian identity but I never really followed through as a faithful believer–such as reading my bible, going to church, or praying. It was in the 8th grade when one morning my mother woke me up extremely early in the morning saying, “Get up! We’re going to church.” “What? Church? Huh?” Was my initial reaction. I had never attended a church service, outside of the chapel services I went to in my private school, in my life. I was entirely confused. We never went to church, and, out of nowhere, my mom is waking me up EARLY on a Sunday morning for his. Grudgingly, I stood up, got changed, and went with them to a small church that was couched into a little corner of a shopping center next to a pizza shop and a beauty salon.
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Posted in Why I'm a Christian | No Comments »
February 15th, 2012
There’s been a long running tradition in the Darwinian anti-ID camp propounding that there are no published peer-reviewed papers on intelligent design. Ever since this mantra was first popularly proclaimed they’ve been wrong. Below is a list of peer-reviewed articles cataloged by the Discovery Institute. For abstracts and more on the articles please visit
their site.
Publications Supportive of Intelligent Design Published in Peer-Reviewed Scientific Journals, Conference Proceedings, or Scientific Anthologies.
- David L. Abel, “Is Life Unique?,” Life, Vol. 2:106-134 (2012).
- Joseph A. Kuhn, “Dissecting Darwinism,” Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, Vol. 25(1): 41-47 (2012).
- Douglas D. Axe, Philip Lu, and Stephanie Flatau, “A Stylus-Generated Artificial Genome with Analogy to Minimal Bacterial Genomes,” BIO-Complexity, Vol. 2011(3) (2011).
- Stephen C. Meyer and Paul A. Nelson, “Can the Origin of the Genetic Code Be Explained by Direct RNA Templating?,” BIO-Complexity, Vol. 2011(2) (2011).
- Ann K. Gauger and Douglas D. Axe, “The Evolutionary Accessibility of New Enzyme Functions: A Case Study from the Biotin Pathway,” BIO-Complexity, Vol. 2011(1) (2011).
- Ann K. Gauger, Stephanie Ebnet, Pamela F. Fahey, and Ralph Seelke, “Reductive Evolution Can Prevent Populations from Taking Simple Adaptive Paths to High Fitness,” BIO-Complexity, Vol. 2010 (2) (2010).
- Michael J. Behe, “Experimental Evolution, Loss-of-Function Mutations, and ‘The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution,’” The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 85(4):1-27 (December 2010).
- Douglas D. Axe, “The Limits of Complex Adaptation: An Analysis Based on a Simple Model of Structured Bacterial Populations,” BIO-Complexity, Vol. 2010(4):1 (2010).
- Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, “Mutagenesis in Physalis pubescens L. ssp. floridana: Some further research on Dollo’s Law and the Law of Recurrent Variation,”Floriculture and Ornamental Biotechnology, 1-21 (2010).
- George Montañez, Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, and Robert J. Marks II, “A Vivisection of the ev Computer Organism: Identifying Sources of Active Information,” BIO-Complexity, Vol. 2010(3) (2010).
- William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II, “The Search for a Search: Measuring the Information Cost of Higher Level Search,” Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, Vol. 14 (5):475-486 (2010).
- Douglas D. Axe, “The Case Against a Darwinian Origin of Protein Folds,” BIO-Complexity, Vol. 2010 (1) (2010).
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Posted in Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design | 7 Comments »
February 7th, 2012
The argument from junk DNA suggests that a designer would be maximally efficient in his use of information. There appears to be some information that does not execute or have any meaningful coding. Darwinism takes this issue and uses it as the result of the prediction that there would be left over information not being used due to natural selection and random mutation. However, it doesn’t appear that all junk DNA is actually junk.
The classical model of the genome was developed to support the Darwinian New Synthesis and was based on these assumptions:
- Genetic determinants are discrete physical units
- Only the collection of genes (genotype) is real; organismal development and traits (the phenotype) are epiphenomenal
- The structure of gene can be explained solely in terms of population genetics (mutation and selection/genetic drift)
The presuppositions of the model
- Genomes are the only carriers of phenotypic determinants; no laws of form exist à phenotypes mirror genotypes
- Genomes are aggregates of simple entities that are constantly changing entails that phenotypes are always transforming
- Genomes can be recombined and mutated in an unlimited way à morphological evolution is “open-minded”
- Any two sets of genomes are connected by a finite number of mutations à morphological gaps are illusory
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Posted in Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science | 1 Comment »
February 6th, 2012
When evaluating population drift/evolution one must keep in mind a pattern/process distinction.
- To be explained: A pattern of a sequence of ancestors to present (a phylogenetic sequence)
- Explanation: High random mutation rates + high selection coefficients –> Incremental genetic change over time (“evolution”)
We now know that the majority of anatomical changes unique to fully aquatic cetaceans (Pelagiceti) appeared during just a few million years.
Here are only a few of the changes that had to have occurred during the transition to a fully marine whale
- Counter-current heat exchanger for intra-abdominal testes
- Ball vertebra
- Tail flukes and musculature
- Blubber for temperature insulation
- Ability to drink sea water (reorganization of kidney tissues)
- Reverse orientation of fetus in the uterus
- Nurse young underwater (modified mammae)
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Posted in Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Science | 11 Comments »
