iDesign @ UCI

Welcome Message To New Students

Interested in Origins?
Join the club.


Mission Statement

FAQ

Organization


MISSION STATEMENT:

iDesign Club at UCI seeks to foster scientific discussions regarding the origins of life and the universe. Theories such as Darwinian evolution, intelligent design, and creationism will be critically analyzed.


FAQ:

Q: WHAT IS THIS CLUB ABOUT?

Origins! We are interested in discussing alternative theories to the origins of biological structures. While the current mainstream theory in academia is Darwinian evolution, we would also like to discuss other viable ideas, such as intelligent design.

Q: WHO CAN BE A MEMBER OF THIS CLUB?

Anybody! Students of Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering, Anthropology, and Philosophy may especially find this club intriguing. However, you do not need to have a science background to be an effective member of this club.

Q: WHEN AND WHERE ARE CLUB MEETINGS?

Please check blog entries for time and place.

Q: WHAT IS THE MEMBERSHIP FEE?

Nothing! There are no membership dues.

Q: IS THIS CLUB BIASED TOWARDS ONE SPECIFIC THEORY OF ORIGINS?

Perhaps. Ponder the name of this club. This club is ideologically the mirror of another club at UCI, the Students for Science and Skepticism. However, our main goal is to give a balanced view of the controversy regarding the origins of life so that students can come to an informed conclusion themselves.

Q: WHAT DOES THE LETTER "i" STAND FOR IN iDESIGN?

Good question -- the answer is intelligent.

Q: WHERE IS THE CLUB CONSTITUTION?

We adhere to the minimum constitution that was provided by the Dean of Students. In the future, we plan to draft a comprehensive constitution and bylaws.

Q: IS iDESIGN AFFILIATED WITH ANY ORGANIZATION?

No. However, we are friends with the IDEA Center


ORGANIZATION:

PRESIDENT:
Arthur
Information and Computer Science

VICE PRESIDENT:
Brian
Biology / English

DIRECTOR:
Andrew
English / Economics



Wednesday, January 24, 2007

DNA Repair Mechanisms as evidence of design

William Bradford, over at Intelligently Sequenced, talks a lot about the evidence of design from cellular DNA repair mechanisms. The genomes of modern cells rely for their integrity on incredibly complicated methods of error-detection and repair. Focussing ID criticism here highlights a fundamental weakness in darwinian origin-of-life scenarios: In order for natural selection to improve a self-reproducing molecule, it must have a mostly reliable method of reproducing itself. Otherwise fit individuals would not be able to transfer their fitness to their descendants.

As we now know, it cannot just be taken for granted that a primitive cell (or even a pool of replicating rna) without repair mechanisms  could maintain its genetic information with enough accuracy to survive, let alone ensure that the descendants of fit individuals were likely to retain their parent's fitness advantage. This is a major obstacle to abiogenesis (as if spontaneously generating self-reproducing molecules wasn't hard enough :-).

Posted by Wedge at 4:22 PM

1 Comments:

Blogger William Bradford said...
Elaborating a bit, the genomic integrity of DNA in all species is continually threatened by a host of factors. There are multiple processes designed to deal with different types of problems. To give an idea of just how intricate these repair mechanisms are, consider one known as nucleotide excision repair (NER). This repair process removes UV induced lesions as well as chemical adducts from DNA. In humans there are about 25 proteins involved in the NER process and a disabling mutation affecting one of them can result in death. Of course NER and other repair mechanisms tend to eliminate most potentially disabling mutations. The complex of proteins involved in NER interact in coordinated fashion in a multi-step process.

These types of repair mechanisms do not subtlely suggest doubt as to the adaquacy of orthodox theories. They shout it.
1/26/2007 8:49 AM

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iDESIGN BLOGROLL:

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Design Watch
Creation-Evolution Headlines
Telic Thoughts
Uncommon Descent
ID the Future
ID Plus
CreationEvolutionDesign
Evolution News
Dualistic Dissension
ID in the UK
ID Update
Intelligently Sequenced


PRO-DESIGN SITES:

Access Research Network
IDEA Center
UCSD IDEA Club
ISCID


PRO-EVOLUTION SITES:

Panda's Thumb
Talk Origins
Students for Science and Skepticism at UCI
NAS: Science and Creationism


PRO-CREATION SITES:

Answers in Genesis
Institute for Creation Research
A.E. Wilder Smith
Reasons to Believe
Baraminology News
CreationWiki


OTHER INTERESTING SITES:

American Scientific Affiliation
Richard Sternberg


ANTEATER LINKS:

University of California, Irvine
New University
Irvine Review
School of Biological Sciences
School of Medicine
School of Physical Sciences
Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science
Henry Samueli School of Engineering
UCI Athletics
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