Tag Archives: Intelligent Design

Podcasts

New podcasts on academic freedom and intelligent design

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I found a couple of new podcasts on intelligent design on Post-Darwinist!

Here is the skinny:

Academic Freedom Update: Where Are We in 2009?

On this episode of ID the Future, CSC’s Casey Luskin gives listeners an update on what’s going on with academic freedom legislation around America. Academic freedom bills submitted in five states already this year, including Oklahoma, Iowa, New Mexico, Missouri and Alabama. Listen in to today’s podcast as Luskin explains how Darwinist opposition to the bills is showing why academic freedom legislation is necessary to protect teachers from a climate of intimidation.

Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased Without Intelligence

On this episode of ID the Future, CSC’s Robert Crowther highlights one of the foundational books of the theory of intelligent design. “No Free Lunch“, the sequel to mathematician and CSC senior fellow William Dembski’s Cambridge University Press book “The Design Inference”, explores key questions about the origin of specified complexity. No Free Lunch demonstrates that design theory shows great promise of providing insight in the field of evolutionary computation.

Do you know what intelligent design is? The definitive statement of the what intelligent design is was first published in 1998 by Cambridge University Press. The name of that book is “The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities”.

Here’s a little bio of the author, William Dembski. And here are some of his earned degrees:

  • Ph.D. philosophy University of Illinois at Chicago 1996
  • M.A. philosophy University of Illinois at Chicago 1993
  • Ph.D. mathematics  University of Chicago 1988
  • M.S. statistics  University of Illinois at Chicago 1983

If you put together the IQs of all the journalists who have ever written against intelligent design, the total number is actually lower than the IQ of William Dembski’s pinky finger nail clipping. An introduction to intelligent design is here. A chapter explaining intelligent design from a book published by Michigan State University Press is here.

Or, you can just read this sentence: intelligent design is what happens when you select letters and form sequences that have function. Like writing blog posts or software code. That’s intelligent design, and that’s all it is. Surprise! I do it all day at work. I’m doing it right now while I write this post. And it’s in your DNA, too. Sequences of amino acids and proteins arranged to have biological function.

My Dad, who reads everything I tell him to read because he’s such a great Dad, just finished Dembski’s new book “Understanding Intelligent Design: Everything You Need to Know in Plain Language”. He assures me it is extremely easy to understand, even for you helpless squishyheads who dropped math in grade 10.

Here is a good debate on whether the biological information in the simplest organism requires an intelligent designer.

Podcasts

Apologetics 315 lists the 16 best apologetics podcasts

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The list of podcasts is here.

Here are the ones I listen to:

1. Reasonable Faith – William Lane Craig
3. Unbelievable?
6. Defenders Podcast – William Lane Craig
11. Intelligent Design the Future

But there are a bunch of new ones I had never heard of in his list. Check it out!

And let me just plug a podcast that is not related to Christian apologetics: the Investors Business Daily podcast (RSS link). This is by far the best podcast available on issues ranging from economics, to foreign policy to social policy. I highly recommend this podcast.

Commentary

Different perspectives on the days of Genesis

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Over at Tough Questions Answered, they survey different views on the days of creation described in Genesis. Basically, there are two views: the young-earth creationist view, the old-earth creationist view. (Theistic evolution is nothing but atheism).

As my bio describes, I favor the old-earth view. I believe in micro-evolution (adaption to environment within different body plans), but I don’t believe that macro-evolution has been demonstrated in the fossil record or in the lab or in mathematical models of likely mutations and development parthways.

Christians are delighted to that the Bible is in agreement with what scientists have discovered about the origin of the universe, and it’s careful design to support the minimal requirements for complex life of any conceivable kind (given our physical laws and chemical diversity). But there is still one apparent disagreement between the Bible and science.

The apparent disagreement is that the book of Genesis describes the creation (asah, bara) of the earth as taking place in a series of days (yom). But there seems to be a tension between 6 24-hour days and a 4 billion year old earth. Are we stuck with a contradiction between science and Scripture here?

Here’s what TQA says:

The word yom can mean several things in Hebrew.  It can refer to a 24-hour period or it can refer to longer periods of time.  Which is the correct interpretation in Genesis 1?

In fact, Genesis 2:4 uses the word yom to describe the entire week of creation. And, St. Augustine, writing in the 5th century, interpreted the yoms of Genesis to be long periods of time, not 24-hour days. (And he also predicted the beginning of time at the creation).

For a solid scientific treatment that explains the possible meanings of yom and tries to reconcile it with what science tells us about the age of the earth, take a look at this paper by Dr. Walter Bradley of Baylor University.

Here is an excerpt that explains what the paper is about:

In this paper we would like to focus on the interpretation of the Hebrew words “yom” and “bara/asah” as they are used in the early chapters of Genesis to describe the time frame and mechanism of creation. A careful examination of both biblical and scientific data will be summarized. A critique of the current models based on this data will be made leading to our summary of how at present we think one may best harmonize all of the available information.

I think there are solid young-earth creationists out there, like Paul Nelson and Marcus Ross, but I agree with Bradley and Augustine on this question.

One last thing – the dividing line between Christian and non-Christian views on this issue depends on how you answer this question: “Does nature, including the realm of biology, show signs of having being created and designed by an intelligent agent – signs that are independent of the religious beliefs of observers”.

Both young earth and old earth creationists answer “yes”. Yes, the universe shows signs of being programmed by an Engineer. Atheists and “theistic evolutionists” answer no, there universe was not programmed by an Engineer. Intelligent design people also answer “yes”, but their theory is strictly mathematics (probability theory). What Genesis says is not relevant to intelligent design.