Mind Over Matter

California High Scool Class Pits Evolution Against Religion

2006-01-08T06:42:00.000-08:00

FRESNO – A rural California high school jumped into the national debate over teaching an alternative to evolution this week, offering the religion-based theory of "intelligent design" in a philosophy course.

Less than a month after a federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled against teaching the theory as science, a divided school board said Frazier Mountain High School in Lebec could teach the four-week winter session class after making the curriculum more philosophical and less scientific.

More...

Evolution and Its Discontents

2005-11-15T17:00:00.000-08:00

The Kansas Board of Education adopted new science standards last week that include required criticism of evolution. Some of the additions are below, paired with the mainstream understanding of evolutionary biology.

ADDITIONS TO KANSAS SCIENCE STANDARDS: Biological evolution postulates an unguided natural process that has no discernible direction or goal.

RESPONSE OF MAINSTREAM SCIENTISTS: "Unguided" is "a very slippery word," said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education. Scientific explanations of all natural processes, from hurricanes to supernovas, are all "unguided."

ADDITIONS TO KANSAS SCIENCE STANDARDS: The view that living things in all the major kingdoms are modified descendants of a common ancestor (described in the pattern of a branching tree) has been challenged in recently by such things as: Discrepancies in the molecular evidence (e.g., differences in relatedness inferred from sequence studies of different proteins) previously thought to support that view.

More...

Intelligent Design Won’t Vanish

2005-10-26T07:20:00.000-07:00

HARRISBURG — Supporters on each side of Dover’s federal court case over intelligent design considered the ramifications of the judge’s decision long before arguments began in court.

In the coming weeks, Judge John Jones III will determine if Dover’s board violated the Constitution’s establishment clause by adopting a statement mentioning intelligent design as an alternative to evolutionary theory. Plaintiffs say the statement amounts to teaching religion in public school science class.

The judge has some latitude in his ruling. He could rule, for example, only on the process board members followed in adopting the statement, or he could rule on whether intelligent design is science. Based on previous cases involving the establishment clause, some say what he determines could have a lasting effect on the intelligent-design movement.

More...

Kansas Museum Opens Evolution Exhibit

2005-10-26T04:57:00.000-07:00

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) -- Upstairs from the Natural Selections gift shop is what directors of the Museum of Natural History at the University of Kansas believe will be the latest word in an ongoing ruckus over evolution.

The ''Explore Evolution'' exhibit is part of a six-university program to educate the public about evolution and its role in explaining the natural world. The exhibit opens to the public Nov. 1, with the money coming from a $2.8 million National Science Foundation grant.

More...

'Intelligent Design' Supporters Gather

2005-10-25T16:05:00.000-07:00

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- Hundreds of supporters of "intelligent design" theory gathered in Prague in the first such conference in eastern Europe, but Czech scholars boycotted the event insisting it had no scientific credence.

About 700 scientists from Africa, Europe and the United States attended Saturday's "Darwin and Design" conference to press their contention that evolution cannot fully explain the origins of life or the emergence of highly complex species.

More...

Witness: Intelligent Design Needs Boost

2005-10-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

HARRISBURG — Because the scientific community is a monolith, impenetrable and often hostile to new theories, intelligent design proponents have to turn to the public schools to recruit support, a witness said Monday.

More...

Designed to put God into the gaps

2005-09-05T11:21:00.000-07:00

SOME saw the Virgin Mary, others a hint of Marilyn Monroe, and eventually a US casino paid $28,000 for a 10-year-old piece of burnt toast supposedly showing the holy image. For some, God's hand is seen in improbable places.But the desire for evidence of a higher being is taking a more scientific turn, at least according to the backers of the controversial theory of intelligent design. Through cellular machines and mathematical formula, they argue life is so complex it must have been the work of a mind.

More...

President Bush on Intelligent Design

2005-08-02T11:42:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON — President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss "intelligent design" alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life.

More...

Open Mind (Mente Abierta)

2005-08-01T21:54:00.000-07:00

Intelligent design theory reaches "open minds" in Barcelona, Spain.
___________________________________________________

Justo cuando los científicos pensaban que entendían cómo los procesos naturales explicaban el orden del universo, descubrieron un tipo muy especial de complejidad, llamado información, en la naturaleza. La experiencia les ha enseñado que, donde sea que encuentren información, pueden estar seguros de encontrar inteligencia tras ella. Como resultado de los descubrimientos del siglo 20, los científicos están aprendiendo que los mismos métodos que ellos habían usado para descubrir las causas naturales (razonando por la experiencia), ahora apuntan a una causa inteligente. Pero esto va en contra de las suposiciones que los científicos habían hecho en el siglo 19. ¿Pueden los científicos del siglo 20 liberarse a sí mismos de sus suposiciones del siglo 19 antes de entrar al 21?

[translation]

Just when scientists thought they understood how natural processes explained the order in the universe, they discovered a special sort of complexity, termed information, in nature. The experience has taught them that, wherever information is found, they are sure to find intelligence behind it...

On Mind Over Matter

2005-07-28T14:55:00.000-07:00

When Darwin first published his book, On the Origin of Species, he did more than present a theory of evolution. Although his theory did not explain the emergence of the original species from which all others allegedly evolved, he presented a mechanism which attempts to explain the origin of all species thereafter. Instead of providing a rigorous account for minor variation within a species, he attempted to provide an account for the origin of the diverse number of species we see today; consequently, from less complex ancestral organisms.

In an attempt to account for diversity, or novel organisms which supposedly descended from pre-existing ones, he ran into a lot of problems. He found that transitional forms were lacking, and that complexity (such as that found in the eye) was a real threat to his theory. Darwin was aware that facile explications were inadequate to account for systems which possessed such complexity:

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.
[Darwin C., 252]

Natural selection, working on pre-existing (less complex) systems, is supposed to be the mechanism responsible for the emergence of complexity. Working itself up through small gradual successions (with modification), the eye, Darwin reasoned, could have been formed from crude light sensitive elements. He figured that since the eye varies from species to species, and variations are heritable, then the eye could have become more complex, generation through generation; each grade being useful to its possessor.

This explanation raises more questions than it answers. Indeed, the novel genetic information necessary to evolve and construct complex systems requires far more than gene duplication, mutation, and natural selection. To arrive at such specified complexity, there must be a mechanism for adaptation. Moreover, since environmental tracking has only proven natural selection as a conserving mechanism, the question of evolutionary novelties remains unanswered. Darwinists insist that, given enough time, a minor variation within a species will result in major morphologic change, and thus, account for an innovation of species and their physiological adaptations. This is our point of disagreement. Their contention ultimately rejects teleological conclusions, and in doing so, reject the idea that nature exhibits design; a common archetype (as opposed to common ancestry). To Darwinists "design" is a misnomer because the term implies intelligent agency. This is the crux of the argument: Is natural law capable of producing design without intelligence? In other words, does nature possess a creative ingenuity that is ultimately guided by chance, or does nature's "apparent" design necessitate one to invoke intelligence?

Intelligent Design (ID) advocates propose that nature exhibits design, and that this design is not apparent, but real. They argue that "design" without "intelligence" is absurd, and furthermore, that the idea that nature's intricacy does not exhibit the sort of design which is empirical and attributable to intelligence--can be subjected to critical analysis. ID as a rigorous scientific program, can be the instrument used to scrutinize and infer where design may be present. If design is a measurable condition for which mathematical and scientific parameters exist, then their investigation would be a great contribution to our state of knowledge about our universe. Just as cryptographers attempt to decode the hidden message in a sequence of symbols, Intelligent Design theorists attempt to find the biotic message in systems that are marked by irreducible complexity and complex specified information. ID attempts to resolve the nature of functional complexity and attempts to detect or account for the generating function giving rise to the system's structural complexity.

Mind Over Matter is dedicated to have both camps explore the various available resources of knowledge; and allow the public to decide whether nature is free from the presumptions of Darwinism, or whether it exhibits the sort of design which can only be attributable to intelligence. We want to allow both Darwinists and Intelligent Design advocates to engage in discussions by giving them the platform to present their ideas openly.

This weblog is not intended to promote "anti-evolutionism." Although it is obviously pro-ID; our intentions are to promote a scientific worldview that is free from misleading information and prejudice. We hope that, as each side presents their contentions, people begin to understand both sides clearly enough to make thoughtful decisions about what they believe in regard to our origins.

--Mario A. Lopez