Author: Jonathan Witt
Derbyshire VI: Behe’s Bacterial Flagellum — Still Stirring Up Trouble for Darwin’s Defenders
John Derbyshire is on The Corner arguing that we can never safely infer that certain biological structures were designed. To a reader who asserted that organizational complexity cannot arise from impersonal processes, Derbyshire replies, “How do you know it can’t? It is true that the genesis of organizational complexity is not currently well understood; but to leap from that to telling me we shall NEVER be able to find a natural-law explanation for it is just dogma.” Derbyshire’s argument is worth confronting because it represents the opinion of leading Darwinists. Biologist Kenneth Miller, for instance, routinely makes just such an argument. Design theorist William Dembski responds thus: Miller claims that the problem with anti-evolutionists like Michael Behe and me is Read More ›
One of These Things is not Like the Other
BY KEITH PENNOCK Some school boards seem to have confused their role with that of the FDA, placing warning labels on textbooks as though they were a package of cigarettes that should be kept out of the hands of minors. Fortunately, there’s a better way. Rather than noting the scientific controversy over Darwinism by placing stickers on textbooks, we advise that school boards attempt to teach the controversy by augmenting their curriculum using supplemental materials. Ohio and Minnesota followed this approach, and now students there can learn both the strengths and weaknesses in Darwin’s theory. And neither state has been drawn into a legal flap. Smart.
Darwin, Derbyshire and the Dogma of the Gaps
John Derbyshire of The Corner, and Darwinists on every street corner, insist that we should never cram God into the gaps of our scientific knowledge. As if detecting design meant cramming the designer into the work itself: Imagine Leonardo da Vinci trapped inside the Mona Lisa. Derbyshire proceeds apace: “History shows that these puzzles always get resolved sooner or later in a natural way, … sending the ‘God of the Gaps’ traipsing off to find a new place where he can hang his starry cloak for a while.” Bracket off for the moment that this particular history of modern science is an urban legend. Derbyshire’s argument falls apart all by itself, apart from the historical record. Because more and more Read More ›
Darwinists Prove Computers Work!
In a recent post at The Corner, John Derbyshire wrote that “we are actually quite close to a point where we CAN do evolution in the lab.” To make his point, Derbyshire cited an article by Carl Zimmer in the February, 2005, issue of *Discover* Magazine: “Testing Darwin: Scientists at Michigan State University Prove Evolution Works.” We don’t buy it. Discovery fellow (and Ph.D. biologist) Jonathan Wells found the claims in Zimmer’s article laughable, and he was moved to write a satirical review that we are posting here. Although the tone is tongue-in-cheek, the quotes from Zimmer’s article are real, as is the force of Wells’ argument. Darwinists at Michigan State University Prove Computers Work by Jonathan Wells For centuries Read More ›
Derbyshire III: Soft Bodies a Femme Fatale for Darwinism
As we saw in Derbyshire II, the pattern of the fossil record doesn’t fit the Darwinian prediction of a gradually branching tree of life, even where punctuated equilibrium is invoked to shoehorn the transitional intermediates into those gaps John Derbyshire puts such faith in. The problem gets even uglier when Darwinists try to explain away the fossil record leading up to the Cambrian Explosion. What story do these strata tell? Animals didn’t exist; and then they did — not just dozens of species but dozen of phyla. If you want some idea of how large a category phyla is, consider that sharks, mice, humans and otters are all members of the same phylum. If natural selection working on random genetic mutation Read More ›