Free Republic

Thanks to Baron Scarpia for alerting us to this website, which outlines the rigorous academic standards [Quote-miners, please note: this is sarcasm] which William Dembski’s students have to achieve in his courses on Intelligent Design and Christian Apologetics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary: http://www.designinference.com/teaching/teaching.htm If you follow the links, you will see that it is full of gems: we won’t spoil them for you by flagging them all up, but – just to whet your appetite – you will notice that, at both undergrad and masters level, there are courses for which 20% of the final marks come from having...

...Embarrassed Darwinists The next for consideration is Jonathan Wells and his Icons of Evolution. A stinging critique of ten familiar textbook evidences for evolution, Wells’ book provoked shrill cries of dismay from Darwinists, including Jerry Coyne and Eugenie Scott. Wells’ reply is highlighted as a rhetorically powerful rebuttal in which he catches his critics in scientific carelessness and in the debate tactic of ‘shifting the goalposts’. An example is the issue of embryonic homology—the Darwinian claim that embryos in various vertebrates look alike at various stages of development, and that this indicates common ancestry. Wells pointed out the extensive dissimilarities...

DEBATE THREADThis INFORMAL debate will focus on Part 1 and 2 of Alex Williams' paper "Life's irreducible structure." Williams' paper will serve as the affirmative, namely: (A) All aspects of life (not just bacterial flagellums and blood clotting cascades) lie beyond the reach of naturalistic explanations, and (B) only intelligent design meets the criterion of an acceptable historical inference according to the Law of Cause and Effect. Part 1 of Alex Williams' paper follows. A link to Part 2 can be found in reply #1. It is strongly suggested that both papers be read before participating in the discussion/debate. One...

"Intelligent design." It's been in the news a lot lately. Lawsuits over textbook stickers, the presentation of evolution and the legality of presenting alternatives, have thrust the term into public awareness. But just what is intelligent design? To hear some folks talk, you'd think it's a scam to sneak Genesis into science classrooms. Yet intelligent design has nothing to do with the six days of creation and everything to do with hard evidence and logic. Intelligent design (ID) is grounded on the ancient observation that the world looks very much as if it had an intelligent source. Indeed, as early...

The father of modern young-earthism, Henry Morris, made a number of criticisms about intelligent design in his review of the book The Design Revolution. Some of it included the normal accusations of intelligent design theorists of not being faithful to the Bible (i.e. read: "They don't accept young-earthism like we told them to"). William A. Dembski replies in, "Intelligent Design's Contribution to the Debate Over Evolution: A Reply to Henry Morris."

Searching for small targets in large spaces is a common problem in the sciences. Because blind search is inadequate for such searches, it needs to be supplemented with additional information, thereby transforming a blind search into an assisted search. This additional information can be quantified and indicates that assisted searches themselves result from searching higher-level search spaces--by conducting, as it were, a search for a search. Thus, the original search gets displaced to a higher-level search. The key result in this paper is a displacement theorem, which shows that successfully resolving such a higher-level search is exponentially more difficult than...

Within information theory, information typically measures the reduction of uncertainty that results from the knowledge that an event has occurred. But what if the item of knowledge learned is not the occurrence of an event but, rather, the change in probability distribution associated with an ensemble of events? This paper takes the usual account of information, which focuses on events, and generalizes it to probability distributions/ measures. In so doing, it encourages the assignment of “generalized bits” to arbitrary state transitions of physical systems. In particular, it provides a theoretical framework for characterizing the informational continuity of evolving systems and...

http://www.worldmag.com/world/home.asp

In criticizing Phillip Johnson's "intelligent design creationism," Robert Pennock raises a particularly worrisome legal consequence of Johnson's view. According to Pennock, Johnson insists "that science admit the reality of supernatural influences in the daily workings of the world." But what if the same reasoning that Johnson is trying to import into science were adopted in Johnson's own area of specialization--the law (Johnson is a law professor at UC Berkeley)? Here's the concern as Pennock lays it out in Tower of Babel (p. 295): "For the law to take [Johnson's view] seriously as well, it would have to be open to...

I thought a new thread was a good idea, and here seems to be a good place to put it, so as not to clutter up "News". The only topic available was "heated discussion", though. ;) If any clarification about the pictures is needed, just say so, and I will try to at least highlight the part that I am interested in for you. Remember that I'm interested in the objects or structures or artifacts being represented, so don't be thrown off if the illustrations seem abstract.