West: Theistic Evolution and the Gnostic Heresy

biology, Christianity, Creation, Culture, demiurge, Discovery Institute, Early Church, Evolution, Faith & Science, gnosticism, God and Evolution, Gospel of John, history, Intelligent Design, Jay Richards, John West, Judaism, Lucretius, Mandaeism, materialists, Richard Dawkins, Talmud, theism, Westminster Conference on Science and Faith
Friendliness to a design perspective might seem to be natural for any theist. Yet a prickly disdain is strangely common, especially among religious academics. Source
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Assessing Denis Noble’s (Non-ID) Critique of Darwinism

biology, Clarence Williams, Denis Noble, developmental genetics, DNA, embryo, Evolution, evolutionary biology, Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, fruit fly, Gerd Müller, horse, horse fly, Intelligent Design, James Shapiro, Jerry Coyne, Jonathan Wells, Neo-Darwinism, Oxford 50, Raju Pookottil, Royal Society, science, Susan Mazur, Third Way of Evolution, Why Evolution Is True, Zombie Science
No matter what we do to the DNA of a fruit fly embryo, there are only three possible outcomes: a normal fruit fly, a defective fruit fly, or a dead fruit fly. Source
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Fossil Friday: A Fossil Butterfly Lookalike

apomorphies, beetles, Brazil, butterflies, butterflies of the Jurassic, convergence, Crato Formation, Darwinism, design pattern, Fossil Friday, fossil record, genetic predispositions, insects, Intelligent Design, Kalligrammatidae, lacewing, Lower Cretaceous, Lower Jurassic, Makarkina adamsi, Makarkina kerneri, mouthparts, natural selection, neuropterans, paleontology, science, Simon Conway Morris, Stephen Jay Gould, tape of life, University of Tübingen, wing span
An intelligent design paradigm can easily accommodate convergences as a natural consequence of a designer reusing the same ideas in different constructions. Source
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Beyond Genes: Biologists Seek Purpose in Unknown Substances, Processes

Andrew Nelson, Arabidopsis thaliana, Bernhard Kramer, biology, bok choy, Boyce Thompson Institute, Brassica rapa, cell's, central dogma, Cornell University, genome, Human Genome Project, Intelligent Design, Junk DNA, Kyle Palos, Life Sciences, lincRNA, Mars, mustard species, non-coding RNAs, Reductionism, RNA, The Plant Cell, turnips, University of Zurich
There’s more going on in DNA and cells than the old Central Dogma predicted. The time has come to look beyond genes. Source
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Complex Specified Information in the Lowly Sponge

architecture, arthropods, astronauts, Cambrian animals, Cambrian Explosion, Cambrian News, Cambrian strata, cementer cells, collagen, Current Biology, DNA, epithelial tissue, European Union, Intelligent Design, Mars, science, self-organization, spicules, sponges, temperature, termite mounds, termites, transport cells, vertebrates
Sponges are outliers in biology’s big bang, the Cambrian explosion. Their embryos appear in Precambrian strata, leading some to consider them primitive. Source
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In Critiquing Dembski, Jason Rosenhouse Prioritizes Imagination over Reality

Ann Gauger, Arthur Hunt, bacterial flagella, biological structures, circular reasoning, Conservation of Information, design detection, Douglas Axe, Evolution, Günter Bechly, information, Intelligent Design, James Madison University, mathematics, mind, molecular machines, natural selection, Ola Hössjer, Panda's Thumb, probability space, Robert J. Marks, rotary motors, royal flush, specified complexity, The Failures of Mathematical Anti-Evolutionism, William Dembski, Winston Ewert
Jason Rosenhouse, a mathematician who teachers at James Madison University, is the author of the recent book The Failures of Mathematical Anti-Evolutionism. The purpose of the book is to discredit the mathematical and algorithmic arguments presented by ID proponents against the plausibility of undirected evolution crafting complex novelties. Rosenhouse focuses much of his critique on William Dembski’s design-detection formalism based on specified complexity. Dembski responded in detail to Rosenhouse’s arguments, highlighting Rosenhouse’s confusion over Dembski’s theoretical framework and its application to biological systems (here,here). Rosenhouse in turn responded to Dembski’s critique. His counter-response, published at Panda’s Thumb, reveals that his opposition to Dembski is not based on any flaws in the substance of Dembski’s work but instead on Rosenhouse’s unassailable faith in the limitless Read More › Source
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