Tag: Inference to the Best Explanation

Illustration of Helicobacter pylori bacteria on an abstract blue background. Medical concept.

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post

Author
Michael Behe

Date
September 19, 2022

Categorized
Intelligent Design

Tagged
Alvin Plantinga, design hypothesis, Eliott Sober, inductive argument, inductive reasoning, Inference to the Best Explanation, Intelligent Design, irreducible complexity, Michael Behe, Pat Flynn, Paul Draper, purposeful arrangement of parts, Richard Swinburne, Thomas Reid}

Behe Answers the Best Objections to Irreducible Complexity and ID, Pt. 1

_{Michael Behe

September 19, 2022

Intelligent Design}

On today’s ID the Future Lehigh University biologist Michael Behe addresses what Philosophy for the People host Pat Flynn considers some of the best objections to Behe’s central intelligent design argument. As far back as the 1996 book Darwin’s Black Box, Behe has argued that certain features in biology are irreducibly complex. That is, they require numerous essential parts, each carefully fitted to its task and integrated with the other parts, in order for the molecular machine or system to function at all. Two examples are the bacterial flagellum motor and the blood clotting cascade. Such systems are, in Behe’s words, irreducibly complex and could not have arisen through any blind and gradual evolution process. The better explanation for their Read More ›

dog and cat play together. cat and dog lying outside in the yard. kitten sucks dog breast milk. dog and cat best friends. love between animals.

^{Type
post

Author
Michael Behe

Date
August 31, 2022

Categorized
Intelligent Design

Tagged
argument from knowledge, cichlid fish, common descent, Darwin Devolves, Darwin’s Black Box, Darwin’s finches, Darwinian Evolution, Darwinism, death before the Fall, devolution, Evolution, evolutionary theory, From the Crust of the Earth, genetic code, genetic information, genus, God, Hawaiian drosophila, Inference to the Best Explanation, Intelligent Design, Lake Victoria, macroevolution, Matthew Ramage, Michael Behe, Microevolution, Molecular Machines, Natural Selection, Naturalism, Pat Flynn, Philosophy for the People, Pope Benedict, proofs of God, purposeful arrangement of parts, random variation, Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth, Thomas Aquinas, Thomism}

Behe and Ramage: Evolution’s Limits and the Fingerprints of Design

_{Michael Behe

August 31, 2022

Intelligent Design}

Today’s ID the Future wraps up a debate over evolution and intelligent design between Lehigh University biologist Michael Behe and Benedictine College theologian Michael Ramage. Both Behe and Ramage are Catholic, and they carry on their conversation in the context of Catholic thinking about nature and creation, in particular the work of Thomas Aquinas and contemporary Thomist philosophers. Ramage seeks to integrate his Thomistic/personalist framework with modern evolutionary theory’s commitment to macroevolution and common descent. Behe doesn’t discount the possibility of common descent but lays out a case that any evolution beyond the level of genus (for instance, the separate families containing cats and dogs) cannot be achieved through mindless Darwinian mechanisms and, instead, would require the contributions of a Read More ›

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post

Author
Günter Bechly

Date
July 14, 2021

Categorized
Intelligent Design

Tagged
abrupt appearance in the fossil record, Cambrian Explosion, Christianity, Darwinian gradualism, Darwinism, Evolution, fine tuning, Fossil Record, Günter Bechly, Inference to the Best Explanation, Intelligent Design, Joshua Swamidass, Justin Brierley, methodological materialism, Natural Selection, Neo-Darwinism, neutral evolution, origin of the universe, random mutation, Rube Goldberg, Theism, Unbelievable, William Lane Craig}

An ID Debate, Pt. 2: Joshua Swamidass and Günter Bechly

_{Günter Bechly

July 14, 2021

Intelligent Design}

Today’s ID the Future concludes a debate over the merits of intelligent design and modern evolutionary theory. Günter Bechly is a distinguished German paleoentomologist who was an atheist and Darwinist but became convinced of theism after he finally decided to read some of the books written by leading ID proponents and found their arguments far stronger than he had been led to believe from second-hand accounts. S. Joshua Swamidass is a computational biologist at Washington University in Saint Louis who says ID may or may not be true in some part of what it affirms, but while he believes in a Creator, he doesn’t find the central arguments of intelligent design proponents logical and cogent. He also is more sanguine Read More ›

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post

Author
Stephen C. Meyer

Date
June 2, 2021

Categorized
Intelligent Design

Tagged
Allan Sandage, argument from ignorance, beginning of the universe, Biological Information, Brian Josephson, Brian Keating, causal adequacy, complex specified information, Cosmological Argument, Evolution, fine tuning, God, God hypothesis, God of the gaps argument, Henry Quastler, Inference to the Best Explanation, Intelligent Design, Isaac Newton, mind-brain, origin of life, Robert Jastrow, teleological argument, Thomas Aquinas}

Return of the God Hypothesis: Q&A with Stephen Meyer, Pt. 2

_{Stephen C. Meyer

June 2, 2021

Intelligent Design}

On today’s ID the Future Stephen Meyer continues fielding questions about his new book, Return of the God Hypothesis. The occasion was a live Zoom event for people who had pre-ordered the book. Daniel Reeves emceed, and here in the second part, Meyer rebuts the objection that intelligent design is an argument from ignorance. He also answers another objection, namely that our uniform experience with designing minds is that minds are embodied in material brains and yet Meyer seems to infer a non-embodied mind as the explanation for the design of life and the universe. Meyer also lists some prominent scientists who have either endorsed the book or championed key arguments in the book. Meyer is the Director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Stephen C. Meyer

Date
April 26, 2021

Categorized
Intelligent Design

Tagged
anthropocentrism, Big Bang, chance hypothesis, cosmology, design hypothesis, divine action, divine extravagance, divine profligacy, fine tuning, genetic code, genetic information, God, Henry Quastler, Inference to the Best Explanation, Intelligent Design, multiverse, Natural Theology, Occam’s Razor, origin of information, origin of life, panspermia, pontentia absoluta, potentia ordinata, Richard Dawkins, scientific revolution, Sean M. Carroll, specified information, teleology, Theism, theodicy, William Dembski}

Stephen Meyer Defends His New Book to Cosmologist Brian Keating, Pt. 3

_{Stephen C. Meyer

April 26, 2021

Intelligent Design}

Today’s ID the Future concludes the conversation between Stephen Meyer, author of the newly released USA Today bestseller Return of the God Hypothesis, and UC-San Diego physicist Brian Keating. In part three they discuss divine extravagance and the question of why, if the universe was made for humans, did it take so long before humans came onto the scene? From there Meyer turns to the evidence for intelligent design from the digital information embedded in DNA and RNA. Is this book just another intelligent design argument, similar to his previous two books? Meyer says it is that, but it goes further, combining an intelligent design argument with evidence from science outside the scope of ID science in order to draw some inferences about the nature of Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Stephen C. Meyer

Date
April 19, 2021

Categorized
Intelligent Design

Tagged
agnosticism, Atheism, Big Bang, Boltzmann brains, Brief History of Time, cosmological models, cosmology, fine-tuning, God, Hilbert Space, imaginary time, Inference to the Best Explanation, Intelligent Design, Lawrence Krauss, many worlds hypotheses, Materialism, multiverse, New Atheists, philosophy of science, quantum cosmology, quantum theory, Return of the God Hypothesis, Schrödinger equation, Science and faith, self-defeating arguments, singularity, Stephen C. Meyer, Stephen Hawking, Theism, universal wave function, Wheeler-DeWitt equation}

Stephen Meyer Defends His New Book to Cosmologist Brian Keating, Pt. 2

_{Stephen C. Meyer

April 19, 2021

Intelligent Design}

Today’s ID the Future continues (by permission) the long-form conversation between Stephen Meyer, author of the newly released USA Today bestseller Return of the God Hypothesis, and UC-San Diego physicist Brian Keating. Here in part two the conversation turns to quantum cosmology, multiverse hypotheses, Stephen Hawking, and Hawking’s now-you-see-it/now-you-don’t use of imaginary time to deny a cosmic beginning. Meyer argues that Hawking’s imaginary-time trick doesn’t wash, there remains powerful evidence for a cosmic beginning, and that this beginning is best explained as the creation act of an intelligent, immaterial being. Also, Keating and Meyer tackle the question: Did Isaac Newton really blunder by invoking a God of the gaps to periodically tweak the solar system to smooth out perturbations? That is, was Newton led Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Stephen C. Meyer

Date
April 12, 2021

Categorized
Intelligent Design

Tagged
agnosticism, Big Bang, Biological Information, circumstantial evidence, cosmological models, cosmology, ensemble of clues, epistemic support, fine-tuning, general revelation, God, Inference to the Best Explanation, Intelligent Design, Lawrence Krauss, Materialism, multiverse, New Atheists, NOMA, Non-overlapping magisteria, philosophy of science, purpose, quantum theory, Richard Dawkins, Roger Penrose, Science and faith, singularity, special revelation, Stephen C. Meyer, teleology, Theism, universal wave function, Wheeler-DeWitt equation}

Stephen Meyer Defends His New Book to Cosmologist Brian Keating, Pt. 1

_{Stephen C. Meyer

April 12, 2021

Intelligent Design}

Today’s ID the Future features, by permission, the first part of a long-form conversation between Stephen Meyer, author of the newly released Return of the God Hypothesis, and Brian Keating, the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at the Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. Do the laws of cosmology, physics, and biology exhibit dispositive evidence of a cosmic designer? Do the Big Bang and fine tuning suggest a “Mind” behind it all? In the book and in this conversation Meyer argues yes. Keating tells what he likes about the new book and draws on his deep knowledge of cosmology to press Meyer with some great followup questions. Check out Keating’s website here, and Read More ›

Hybrid Biotechnology - Biomimicry - Abstract Illustration

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post

Author
James Tour

Date
September 16, 2020

Categorized
Human Origins, Science

Tagged
__edited, abduction, abiogenesis, Brian Miller, causal adequacy, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, complex specified information, dissipation theorems, Inference to the Best Explanation, intelligent agency, intelligent causes, Intelligent Design, Jeremy England, origin of life, second law of thermodynamics}

James Tour and Stephen Meyer on the Origin of Life, Pt. 2

_{James Tour

September 16, 2020

Human Origins, Science}

On this episode of ID the Future, James M. Tour and Stephen C. Meyer begin a discussion about the hard problems facing researchers trying to discover how the first life could have come about naturalistically. Meyer is the director of the Center for Science and Culture; Tour is a world-renowned synthetic organic chemist with over 700 research publications and multiple major recognitions, including TheBestSchools.org naming him one of the 50 most influential scientists in the world today. Though he doesn’t sign on to ID theory, he says he’s sympathetic with the idea, and certainly not impressed with any naturalistic explanations for the origin of life. In this first of a three-part series, they explore problems ranging from the extreme improbabilities associated with protein assembly, Read More ›

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post

Author
Daniel Reeves

Date
June 3, 2020

Categorized
Science

Tagged
__edited, abduction, causal adequacy, Creationism, Dallas Conference on Science and Faith 2020, Daniel Reeves, detective reasoning, forensics, Inference to the Best Explanation, Intelligent Design, philosophy of science, pseudoscience, straw man fallacy, Wikipedia}

What Is Life? Getting ID Wrong, Getting it Right

_{Daniel Reeves

June 3, 2020

Science}

On this episode of ID the Future, Discovery Institute education outreach specialist Daniel Reeves illustrates how ID opponents commonly erect mindless straw men versions of the theory of intelligent design, as if by refuting a false version they’ve done any damage to the real thing. Then, in this middle portion of a talk he gave to students at the 2020 Dallas Science and Faith Conference, he explains what ID really is, and the central question ID seeks to answer.

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post

Author
Kirk Durston

Date
March 19, 2020

Tagged
__edited, abduction, Atheism, Big Bang, creative story-telling, experimental science, fantastical science, fantasy science, historical science, Inference to the Best Explanation, inferential science, information density, Materialism, multiverse, origin of the universe, philosophy of science, Proteins, science fiction, Scientism}

Kirk Durston on Fantasy Science and Scientism — Pt. 3 of 3

_{Kirk Durston

March 19, 2020}

On this episode of ID the Future, Kirk Durston, a biophysicist focused on identifying high-information-density parts of proteins, completes a three-part series on three categories of science: experimental, inferential, and fantasy science. Fantasy science makes inferential leaps so huge that virtually none of it is testable, either by the standards of experimental science or by those of the historical sciences, which reason to the best explanation by process of elimination. One example of fantasy science, according to Durston, is the multiverse. As he insists, an imaginative story largely untethered from evidence and testing but told using math instead of literary devices is still an imaginative story untethered from evidence and testing. Scientism, “atheism dressed up in a lab coat,” can lead Read More ›