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Intelligent Design Implications Disclaimed as Biomimicry Increasingly Discussed in Scientific Literature
A recent Reuters article titled “IBM uses DNA to make next-gen microchips” explains, as the title suggests, that microchip manufacturers are finding it cheaper and more efficient to use DNA as a framework on which to build microchips. The news story is based upon a new article in the journal Nature Nanotechnology proposing that DNA can form a template for building microchips: “DNA origami, in which a long single strand of DNA is folded into a shape using shorter ‘staple strands’6, can display 6-nm-resolution patterns of binding sites, in principle allowing complex arrangements of carbon nanotubes, silicon nanowires, or quantum dots.” This article is part of a much bigger trend, as scientific journals are increasingly discussing biomimetics. The journal Philosophical Read More ›
Dear Ben…
To: Ben SteinFrom: Walter DurantyNew York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist (deceased, but never fired).936,287,434 Seventh CircleMoloch Township, Gehenna. Dearest Ben,My condolences on your involuntary departure from the New York Times. Down Here, we all find it very amusing.Yea, we all know that you got canned by the Grey Lady- by e-mail, no less. The pretense: your ‘crime’ was to hawk the services of an on-line credit report company that the Times management thought unethical.Of course, causing people who trusted you to lose money would have been your quickest ticket to promotion at the ‘Newspaper with a of Record.’ Pinch Sulzberger reduced the value of the stock of the world’s ‘Newspaper of Record’ by 6 billion dollars (1999 50 bucks /share; Read More ›
Ken Miller’s Double Standard: Improves His Own Arguments But Won’t Let Michael Behe Do the Same (Updated)
In a recent post, I noted that Ken Miller misrepresented Michael Behe’s arguments on the irreducible complexity of the blood clotting cascade in his book, Only a Theory. When I blogged at the end of last year about Miller’s similar mistakes at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, Dr. Miller responded by making me aware of something I did not previously remember: apparently Michael Behe wrote the section in Of Pandas and People on blood clotting. The treatment of the blood clotting cascade in Pandas (1993) could possibly be subject to Miller’s arguments, but as I showed, Behe’s treatment of the topic in Darwin’s Black Box (1996) would not be refuted in any way by Miller’s arguments. To summarize and review, Read More ›
New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Article From William Dembski and Robert Marks Challenges the Creative Mechanism of Darwinian Evolution
A new article titled “Conservation of Information in Search: Measuring the Cost of Success,” in the journal IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics A, Systems & Humans by William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II uses computer simulations and information theory to challenge the ability of Darwinian processes to create new functional genetic information. (For a PDF of the article, see here.) Darwinian evolution is, at its heart, a search algorithm that uses a trial and error process of random mutation and unguided natural selection to find genotypes (i.e. DNA sequences) that lead to phenotypes (i.e. biomolecules and body plans) that have high fitness (i.e. foster survival and reproduction). Dembski and Marks’ article explains that unless you start Read More ›
A “Heretic” in Jewish Terms? Someone Who Denies Intelligent Design
Last week some readers of my Beliefnet blog had a hard time accepting that the rabbinic term “apikoros,” a kind of heretic, denotes someone who rejects — if I may use the contemporary term — intelligent design. One fellow, by a rigorous Google search, even believed he’d found Internet-based proof that an apikoros designates a Christian! Um, no. The Mishnah uses the word without explanation, for a category of persons who have no share in the World to Come. The Talmud links it with insolence either to the face of the Sages or in their presence. (See Sanhedrin 90a, 99b.) Maimonides finds an etymological connection to an Aramaic word for “disparagement.” But what of the idea content of the term? Read More ›