Mark your calendars: Biola University will be hosting an intelligent design panel discussion on Friday, May 12, 2006, at 7:30 P.M. It will be held in Sutherland Auditorium. Michael Behe, Paul Nelson, Guillermo Gonzalez, and Jonathan Wells will be there.

I think they are looking for some intelligent Darwinians to grill them and ask them any tough questions they may have about intelligent design. If you are a local evolutionist (professor or maybe even just an advanced graduate student) and you are interested in participating in such a dialogue, let me know (idesignclub 'at' gmail 'dot' com) and I'll try to forward you to the right person.

Biola is about an hour away from UC Irvine, depending on traffic.

Dr. Henry Morris, widely recognized as the "father of modern creationism," died last night. Morris founded the Institute for Creation Research, which is one of the most visible creationist organizations in America.

William Dembski has some thoughts on his blog:

Henry Morris was a great man, and all critics of Darwinian evolution are in his debt for maintaining pressure on this pseudoscience when so much of the Western world capitulated to it.

May he now rest in peace in the presence of his Creator.

The next meeting will be this Thursday, March 2, at 6:00 P.M. in Humanities Hall 242. This week we'll have an open discussion about anything related to origins. Everyone is invited. See the Community Calendar for more information.

At the meeting, we will probably plan some events for next quarter. When should we show another documentary? Which speakers should we invite? With which campus clubs should we network? Should we try to host some sort of friendly debate?

The number of scientists publicly skeptical of Darwinism has grown to over 500. These scientists come from diverse fields like biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, and engineering. They have all signed "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism," which states the following:

"We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."

Check out the article from the New York Times, titled "Few Biologists but Many Evangelicals Sign Anti-Evolution Petition." This article acknowledges that 128 of the signers are biologists (and that doesn't count biochemists). Here is a part of the article:

"But random interviews with 20 people who signed the petition and a review of the public statements of more than a dozen others suggest that many are evangelical Christians, whose doubts about evolution grew out of their religious beliefs."

So from these 20 random interviews is the extrapolation that few biologists but many evangelicals have signed the petition. In reality, biology is the most represented field in the list.

The article does brings up a good point about how a religious belief can potentially affect one's position on evolution. However, I do not agree with the implicit assertion that a Christian is not fully capable of objectively looking at the evidence. After all, everybody has a prior belief. For instance, the prior belief of an atheist may make him cling to evolutionary theory even more.

For a contrast, see a more objective article.

Dembski has posted an interesting exchange between Michael Ruse and Daniel Dennett (who has just written a book about the evolutionary origins of religion).

Ruse strikes me as pretty decent guy. He is at least willing to dialog, and although he's a hard-core evolutionist, he and Dembski actually seem to have a genial relationship. Dennett is another story altogether (in the dialog department. I'm not making any judgement about his decency). He's a card-carrying member of the use-evolution-and-philosophy-to-deconstruct-everything-but-science-and-philosophy club. I really don't understand why he thinks that his thought isn't subject to the same evolutionary dismissal that he applies to the "dumb masses". Why are evolutionists the only ones allowed to transcend evolution?

This is what I really want to know, though: who is the consistent Darwinist? Is it Ruse for sticking to the evidence and just portraying evolution as a scientific theory? Or Dennett for carrying out the theory to its logical conclusions?

doctor_logic has made comments on a few of Art’s recent posts that deserve some thought. Below are my responses to some of his questions and arguments.

That humans re-invent things that are present in Nature is not evidence that nature was designed. Stochastic genetic algorithms have reproduced patented designs, so we know that ID is not required to build complex structures.
Interesting that you should bring up genetic algorithms. The No Free Lunch theorems have proven that, averaged over all cost functions, genetic algorithms perform no better than blind search. So to get a genetic algorithm to produce something useful, you need to start with a good cost function. But finding a good cost function is also no easier than blind search. The upshot is that genetic algorithms require an intelligently chosen cost function in order to perform well.

There do seem to be some results suggesting that the NFL theorems don’t hold under co-evolution. Last time I checked these were unpublished results, so I don’t know the details. Dembski, however, is unconvinced that this significantly improves the ability of genetic algorithms to generate more than is put into them (in the form of a cost function).

The problem with ID is that, without a predictive theory (a set of Natural laws that specifically predicts what we will observe), ID doesn't have any explanatory power.
The purpose of ID is to explain features of life (and the cosmos) that are not explainable by natural laws, so I don’t see the weight of this objection. If you define science naturalistically, then of course ID isn’t science by definition. But I don't see what is gained by this sleight-of-hand. The important question ought to be "is design detectable?", not "does detecting design fit my narrow definition of science?"

To make predictions, ID is going to have to talk about 1) what constitutes intelligence (is NDE intelligence? After all, genetic algorithms are considered a form of artificial intelligence in the software biz), 2) what constitutes design, 3) how was life manufactured, and 4) why was life manufactured.
1-3 are really great questions that definitely deserve a place in any robust theory of ID. 4 may be as well, if it can avoid being speculative.

For example, it is an ID hypothesis that CSI is a predictor of design. ID proponents argue that because we see CSI in artificial and biological systems, then the biological systems must be designed. However, a hypothesis cannot simultaneously be used as proof of its own claim. If it could, then I would be able to fine-tune a formula to return true when applied to photos of elephants and photos of nuclear reactors, and I could use that formula as evidence that elephants are susceptible to nuclear meltdown.
CSI-as-design-predictor is not a hypothesis that design theorists are testing by applying it to biological systems. If it were, your criticism would be accurate. CSI is an attempt to make rigorous the process of design inference that humans use all the time, and apply it to biological systems. If you don’t think that CSI is a good indicator of design, I think you at least must admit that humans distinguish design from chance and necessity all the time. There doesn’t seem to be any compelling reason why these criteria couldn’t be applied to biological systems.

What is the probability that an intelligent designer wanted to make a world that looks exactly like the one we see, as opposed to one we don't? A designer could have designed any of an infinite number of possible worlds (populated or otherwise), but chose this particular one. So how is ID explanatory here if it fails to say why this particular world had to exist?
I’m not sure why ID has to explain this to be a successful scientific research program. ID is explanatory because there are lots of things that intelligence explains that have nothing to do with choosing between possible worlds.

What scientific discovery would lower your confidence in ID? Let's say that we discover a theory of everything that tells us how all of the physical constants can be derived from one single constant, e.g., the speed of light. Will that lower your confidence in design? Or raise it?
Insofar as one single constant requires less fine-tuning than lots of unrelated constants, this would lower the cosmological evidence for design. Here are some predictions that would support ID:

1) Life and physics are unfathomably more complex than we currently realize. What we know now about biology and physics only scratches the surface. The more we know, the more we will learn how much we don’t know. This is why I asked in a previous post for some way to gauge what natural selection may reasonably be thought capable of producing with the limited resources (one planet, a few billion years) at its disposal. I predict that even a ludicrously conservative estimate will soon be outpaced (if it hasn’t been already) by our understanding of the complexity of life. As a result, I suspect that Biologists (like physicists) will be forced to conclude we are the result of some cosmic lottery to maintain naturalistic assumptions. This, however, is dependent on the rate of progress in the field. For a while they will continue to be able to claim that any apparently insurmountable probabilistic barriers are due to the fact that we don’t know enough about prebiotic chemistry, evolution, etc.

2) Modern genomics has revealed that the genetic differences between many remotely-related species (i.e., mice and humans) are mostly comprised of large-scale rearrangements of similar DNA fragments, and that it takes a relatively small number of these to turn one genome into the other. I predict that, with the advent of more sophisticated genetic engineering, it will be discovered that the specificity required by this sort of genomic shuffling is so great that chance and necessity can’t be expected to produce an advantageous arrangement on anything remotely approaching the level necessary for evolutionary change.

3) The more we learn about chemistry and the origin of life, the more we will realize that moledules do not self-organize to produce living systems, and that the barriers to life arising spontaneously are insurmountable

iDesign @ UCI is proud to present the following documentary about cosmological design and fine-tuning:

Title: "The Privileged Planet: The Search For Purpose In The Universe"

Date: Thursday, February 16, 2006

Time: 6:00 P.M.

Location: Humanities Hall 242

Admission: Free

Who Is Invited: Everyone

You can see a preview of the documentary here.

Here is an interesting article about a research study on self-repairing spacecrafts. Engineers at the University of Bristol are trying to mimic the natural healing process of our skin:

The challenge for Semprimoschnig was to replicate the human process of healing small cracks before they can open up into anything more serious. He and the team at Bristol did it by replacing a few percent of the fibres running through a resinous composite material, similar to that used to make spacecraft components, with hollow fibres containing adhesive materials."

We take this natural healing mechanism for granted, even though this ability to self-heal is very complicated.

A few days ago in one of my classes, the professor was explaining theories about the origin of life. At the beginning of the lecture, he made a throw-away comment about how we know that life "wasn't divinely created, it evolved."

He then went on to talk about how life might have begun. The consesus is that there is no convincing explanation of how life assembled itself on the early earth. RNA (a probably precursor to the current DNA/Protein model because it can both store information and catalyze reactions) is too complicated to have assembled itself, so the current theory is that something with a simpler backbone structure arose first, and was completely supplanted by RNA, so that there are no remnants of it. There are several candidates whose pre-biotic synthesis is less improbable than RNA, but mostly they are a handful of guesses. And that is just the backbone. The bases would have been at least as hard to synthesize on the early earth, and they are so perfectly suited for their role that here is no convincing simpler form.

The attitude among Biologists seems to be that we know life arose spontaneously, we just don't know how. But what is the evidence that life arose spontaneously? There is not currently any remotely convincing chemical evidence. More importantly, though, what would a Darwinist accept as evidence that life could not have arisen spontaneously? How improbable does the chemical evidence have to become before it counts, not as evidence that we don't know enough about prebiotic chemistry, but as evidence that life did not arise spontaneously?

For that matter, what evidence would a Darwinist allow to count against the theory that, as my professor said, "All you need is a self-replicating molecule, Natural Selection can do the rest"? It seems that there must be some theoretical limits on the power of natural selection... or at least on what natural selection can accomplish within a fixed time frame. I would absolutely love it if a Darwinist would propose some structure which either 1) could not have been produced by natural selection, or 2) could not have been produced by natural selection in (say) a few billion years. Without a framework that proposes realistic limits on natural selection, Darwinism is unfalsifiable.

Note that I am not asking for evidence of common descent (which in my experience comprises nearly all of the evidence for evolution), I am asking for evidence that the proposed mechanisms or something similar are capable of what they are being asked to do.

Check out the February issue of the Irvine Review, which is now out on the campus stands. This issue contains an article I wrote:

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Fine-Tuned For Life
Is the universe meant to support life?
by Arthur Asuncion

Did the universe come about solely through chance and natural processes? Or was it designed to be hospitable to life?

One of the most compelling evidences for the idea of cosmological intelligent design is the fact that the universe is finely tuned. In other words, the universe’s physical constants are precisely the right values that are needed in order to sustain life.

Consider the gravitational force constant, G. If you have taken a physics course, you may remember a familiar equation for gravitational force: F = G * m1 * m2 / r^2, where G = 6.67 * 10^-11. If G were slightly tweaked, complex life could not exist.

Other examples of finely tuned parameters are the strong nuclear force constant, weak nuclear force constant, electromagnetic force constant, and ratio of electron to proton mass. If these parameters were even slightly smaller or slightly larger, chemistry (as we know it) would not be possible, and molecules would probably not even exist. It would be almost impossible for life of any kind to be sustained in these conditions.

There are three possible explanations for this extraordinary universal fine-tuning: 1) there exists an underlying mechanism that correctly sets these parameters; 2) it happened by sheer luck; 3) it happened by intelligent design.

A January 2006 Nature article titled “Our Universe: Outrageous Fortune” highlights a shift in sentiment among scientists regarding the cause of this fine-tuning. According to the article, “[s]tring theorists and cosmologists are increasingly turning to dumb luck as an explanation” since the search for an underlying mechanism for fine-tuning has been unfruitful.

However, the probability of randomly selecting the correct values for these parameters is so infinitesimally small that it is unreasonable to think that sheer luck alone can be the explanation for cosmological fine-tuning.

In order to increase the probabilistic resources, some scientists have been driven to suggest that there exist millions of universes that are parallel to our own universe but have different laws and constants. Even though the probability of fine-tuning is astronomically low, a fine-tuned universe could hypothetical emerge if chance has an enormous ensemble of universes at its disposal.

In reality, this concept of a multiverse is a metaphysical postulate, since only one universe is scientifically observable, and that universe is our own. The hypothetical existence of millions of universes must be assumed by faith. Charles Townes, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, suggests that the entire postulate is fantastic:

“Some scientists argue that ‘well, there’s an enormous number of universes and each one is a little different. This one just happened to turn out right.’ Well, that’s a postulate, and it’s a pretty fantastic postulate — it assumes there really are an enormous number of universes and that the laws could be different for each of them. The other possibility is that ours was planned, and that’s why it has come out so specially” (UCBerkeleyNews interview, June 2005).

Scientists have not found an underlying mechanism that can explain fine-tuning. Sheer luck cannot be invoked without assuming the metaphysical concept of the existence of millions of universes. The only other alternative is cosmological intelligent design, which is the idea that a Designer has intelligently calibrated the constants in order to sustain life.

A critic may ask, “Doesn’t intelligent design appeal to a metaphysical cause?” Actually, the concept of intelligent design is no more metaphysical than the hypothetical concept that millions of universes exist. And Ockham’s Razor would favor intelligent design over the concept of an elaborate multiverse, since intelligent design is more direct as an explanation.

If one accepts that this physical universe had a beginning, then one is forced to appeal to a metaphysical cause. For how can there be any physical explanation for the origin of the physical universe?

In addition to the fine-tuning of constants, another positive evidence for cosmological intelligent design is the simplicity and beauty of the physics equations themselves. Einstein once said:

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."

This simplicity and comprehensibility of physical laws suggests that the universe is more than just a mere fluke of nature, since we would not expect sheer luck to produce mathematically elegant and simple laws.

From the current amount of scientific evidence, we can reliably infer that cosmological intelligent design is the most rational explanation for fine-tuning in the universe. Let’s be grateful, for without fine-tuning, we would not exist.

I've blogged about the amazing LED lights in butterflies before, but now here's an article in IEEE Spectrum that prominently bears the words, "intelligent design," in the caption of a picture of these butterflies (HT: ID Update). IEEE Spectrum is a magazine for engineers. Generally, it seems that engineers are more keen at noticing design, since they are designers themselves.

Here's a clip of the article:

Designing LEDs, Erchak solved essentially the same problem by placing a distributed Bragg reflector beneath his LED and a photonic crystal above it—just as nature has done for P. nireus. "Who knows how much time could have been saved if we'd seen this butterfly structure 10 years ago," says Vukusic.

Given that many complex technologies (like these LED lights) are embedded in nature, which inference about their origins is more valid? Did these technologies arise stochastically from an unguided evolutionary process with no goal in mind? Or were they artifacts of design due to an intelligent agency?

The article begins by telling us about an intelligent MIT engineer who designs an efficient LED by carefully creating a particular structure. Later, there is the discovery that a butterfly has an efficient LED that posesses the same exact structure. This isomorphism between the structure that the engineer builds and the structure that is later found in the butterfly is very strong positive proof for intelligent design. We can rationally infer that this LED structure found in butterflies was designed...unless we rule out design a priori.

If one works within the cohesive framework of intelligent design, one could look around at nature and potentially find useful designs which could be copied for technological purposes. This scientific field is known as biomimicry (see here and here). In the article, Vukusic suggests that they could have saved a lot of time if they had found and copied the LED in this butterfly.

I think that intelligent design can be used as an overarching framework to achieve new scientific breakthroughs and innovations in technology. Let's not limit science from making these discoveries.

Note: The links to the article now require login.

According to IDEA Center, there are about 25 active IDEA clubs. IDEA stands for "Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness," and IDEA clubs are pro-design.

I have a request for these IDEA clubs: please blog. I, and probably many others, would like to know how the origins debate is going in other universities. The IDEA club at Berkeley has taken a good first step by making a blog-like site. It would be great to see other blogs at universities like UCSD, Stanford, Cornell, etc. Blogging doesn't cost any money -- all you would need is time.

Blogs are pretty effective. For example, see the blogs of conservative campus newspapers like the Dartmouth Review and the Stanford Review. The IDEA clubs might want to follow the example of these conservative newspapers. Just as these newspapers are trying to counter the progressive (liberal) leanings of the universities, IDEA clubs are also trying to swim against the strong Darwinian mindset that has taken hold of the scientific community.

I recently gave a presentation about creationism and intelligent design in one of my classes. The presentation highlights the similarities and differences between creationism and ID. My classmates were generally interested in the subject and asked many intriguing questions. My professor (a very genial and fair evolutionist) shook hands afterwards and said, "Good job." All in all, it was a very enjoyable experience.

In my opinion, ID is a broad concept and creationism is a specialized subset of ID. Creationism starts from the Bible as a springboard (which is not wrong in and of itself), while ID attempts to start from scientific observations.

Of course, one can be both a creationist and an ID supporter at the same time. In artificial intelligence, there's a concept known as bidirectional search, where simultaneous searches begin at both the start state and the end state. A solution is found when the two search trees meet in the middle.

Note: Use Internet Explorer to correctly view the powerpoint slides.