Category: Life Sciences
Which Steve said “design is an excellent and irrefutable explanation”?
Q: Which Steve said design is an excellent and irrefutable explanation?Hint: He didn’t write Signature in the Cell. This incredible interaction came at last Friday night’s presentation of Signature in the Cell by Stephen Meyer at Biola University in front of 1,400 attendees and hundreds more watching the event streamed live on the internet. In a panel discussion after his lecture, Meyer met two of his critics head-on, one of whom essentially conceded that intelligent design is a better explanation than an unguided process like Darwinian evolution. The critics were Steve Matheson, a theistic evolutionist from Calvin College, and Arthur Hunt a Darwinist and biologist from the University of Kentucky. Both have written critically of SITC and intelligent design and Read More ›
Biola to Broadcast Signature in the Cell Event Live on Friday
Even if you can’t make it to the free Signature in the Cell event in Southern California this Friday, you’re in luck. Biola University will be broadcasting the event with Stephen Meyer live for a fee. According to the website: The broadcast fee helps subsidize the cost of the event, and the cost of producing and hosting the video broadcast. It is intendend primarily for large groups and we hope you choose to view it in a group to foster discussion about this topic. Discussion groups, interested friends, churches, families and individuals are encouraged to participate in the broadcast on Friday at 7pm PDT. Go here for system requirements (a computer with high-speed internet) and ordering information.
Interview With Author of New Paper on the Limits of the Darwinian Mechanism
Pretty much everyone agrees that natural selection acting on random genetic mutations can explain some things. The really interesting question is, how much can it explain? Since Darwin’s mechanism seems intuitively plausible, we’re often tempted just to trust our intuitions rather than to look at the hard data. And yet the data increasingly show that, whatever its intuitive attractions, the powers of selection and mutation are surprisingly limited. In many cases, new biological functions require several mutations. And everyone agrees that natural selection doesn’t have foresight. But it’s widely assumed that if each of the individual mutations leading to new functions are themselves adaptive, then natural selection can traverse the pathway. Again, this makes intuitive sense. But what about the Read More ›
Darwin’s Dilemma Heads to LA This Weekend With ID Scientists, Experts
The last time Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record was scheduled for a screening in the Los Angeles area, it sparked a couple (still ongoing) lawsuits. This time, the film is showing at Biola University, with scientific experts from the film speaking on a panel afterwards, including Paul Nelson, Richard Sternberg, Douglas Axe, and Stephen Meyer. This notable group will then discuss the details of what is “one of the most difficult and dynamic counterexamples to Darwinian evolution that the fossil record has ever revealed” — a show worth catching in its own right. According to the Biola website, the event runs from 9 am – 12 pm this Saturday at Mayers Auditorium, Biola University, and will Read More ›
Nature Reports Discovery of “Second Genetic Code” But Misses Intelligent Design Implications
Last month Rob Crowther wrote about a news article in Nature that opposed junk-DNA thinking. According to a new Nature News story, “The code within the code: Computational biologists grapple with RNA’s complexity,” scientists are just beginning to understand the complexity of the processes that create proteins in our cells. The article reports that the distinction we normally see in human technology between hardware and software breaks down in biology, where molecules like RNA can both carry messages and help process those messages — a “second genetic code,” or the “splicing code”: One of the most beautiful aspects of the genetic code is its simplicity: three letters of DNA combine in 64 different ways, easily spelled out in a handy Read More ›