Tag: Natural Selection | Page 3

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Author
Eric Cassell

Date
April 18, 2022

Tagged
aircraft navigation, altruism, Animal Algorithms, animal navigation, ant colonies, army ants, Artificial Intelligence, biomimetics, Boeing 737, Charles Darwin, complex systems, constrained optimization, Convergent evolution, design trade-offs, eusocial behavior, evo-dev, Evolution, evolutionary developmental biology, eye evolution, eyes, Hank Hanegraaff, insect architecture, integrated systems, methodological materialism, Natural Selection, navigation systems, orphan genes, purpose, selection pressure, social insects, spider silk, spiderwebs, suboptimal design, teleology, teleophobia, termite altruism, termite mounds, termites, top-down engineering, wasps}

Hank Hanegraaff and Animal Algorithms Author Eric Cassell, Pt. 2

_{Eric Cassell

April 18, 2022

Uncategorized}

On today’s ID the Future, radio host Hank Hanegraaff continues his conversation with Animal Algorithms author Eric Cassell. Here they look at more insects with strikingly sophisticated innate behavior, suggesting intricate algorithms encoded into their brains from birth, all of which cannot be effectively explained by reference to Darwinian evolution. Cassell and Hanegraaff touch on wasp martial arts; termite altruism and termite architectural skills, including a cooling system that has inspired a human design; interdependent social caste systems that enhance fitness; and spiderweb architecture and the extraordinary properties of spider silk, including the different kinds of silk and the spider’s ability to employ different types precisely tailored for different needs. Cassell looks at evolutionary explanations for these innate abilities that appeal to the ideas of convergent evolution and selection pressure, and he shows why these don’t get us very far. He suggests the path forward is to set aside the dogmatic insistence on restricting ourselves to only naturalistic explanations and instead to consider the possibility of intelligent design. Hanegraaff and Cassell wrap up their discussion by taking on some common objections against the theory of intelligent design. The interview is presented here by permission of Hank Hanegraaff. Find the original at Hank Unplugged. Pick up your copy of Cassell’s book here.

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Author
Eric Cassell

Date
April 13, 2022

Tagged
aircraft navigation, altruism, Animal Algorithms, animal navigation, ant colonies, army ants, Artificial Intelligence, biomimetics, Boeing 737, Charles Darwin, complex systems, constrained optimization, Convergent evolution, design trade-offs, eusocial behavior, evo-dev, Evolution, evolutionary developmental biology, eye evolution, eyes, Hank Hanegraaff, insect architecture, integrated systems, methodological materialism, Natural Selection, navigation systems, orphan genes, purpose, selection pressure, social insects, spider silk, spiderwebs, suboptimal design, teleology, teleophobia, termite altruism, termite mounds, termites, top-down engineering}

Hank Hanegraaff Interviews Animal Algorithms Author Eric Cassell, Pt. 1

_{Eric Cassell

April 13, 2022

Uncategorized}

On this ID the Future radio host Hank Hanegraaff interviews Animal Algorithms author Eric Cassell about insects and other small-brained animals with innate behaviors of astonishing sophistication — desert ants, leafcutter ants, honey bees, spiders, monarch butterflies, and many more. These appear to be hard-wired from birth with complex algorithms coded into their neural networks, and some of the algorithms seem to involve complex mathematics. Also mysterious: many of these innate abilities are do or die. So how could they have blindly evolved one small Darwinian step at a time? Also, how would genetic mutations generate the ability to make navigational calculations (as in the case of some birds) that for humans require spherical geometry? Listen in to learn more about this and other wonders of the animal world. Pick up your copy of Cassell’s book here. (The interview is presented here by permission of Hank Hanegraaff.)

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Author
Casey Luskin

Date
April 6, 2022

Tagged
Adam Shapiro, adaptation, argument from ignorance, Casey Luskin, Charles Darwin, civil rights, Constitutional rights, Covid, Darwinian Evolution, Darwinism, DNA, Dover v. Kitzmiller trial, Erasmus Darwin, Establishment clause, Evolution, Free Exercise clause, genetic information, God, God of the gaps, Günter Bechly, ID 3.0, Intelligent Design, intelligent design research, Journal of Molecular Biology, nanomachines, natural laws, Natural Selection, Natural Theology, Nature Nanotechnology, Ola Hössjer, Ola Hossjer, overlapping genes, problem of pain, reading frames, religious establishment, religious freedom, the journal Nature, The Origin of Species, The Waiting Times Project, Theism, waiting time problem, William Paley}

Casey Luskin and Adam Shapiro Debate Intelligent Design, Pt. 2

_{Casey Luskin

April 6, 2022

Uncategorized}

This ID the Future continues the debate between design theorist Casey Luskin, an editor of The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, and science historian Adam Shapiro, co-author of Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction. Justin Brierley, of the popular British debate program Unbelievable?, hosts. In this second half of the conversation, Shapiro argues that intelligent design’s popularity seems to have waned. Casey Luskin counters, arguing that the number and frequency of New York Times articles on ID is a superficial metric and that the ID research program is exploding, with the number of peer-reviewed ID papers growing every year, and the number of interested graduate students, ID hubs, and conferences expanding around the world, including ID conferences attended by high-level scientists, including Nobel Laureates. Luskin and Shapiro also discuss religious and academic freedom as it relates to the teaching of evolution and intelligent design in the classroom. Shapiro is actually more sanguine than Luskin about the freedom of high school biology teachers to teach intelligent design. Luskin, who has both a PhD in geology and a law degree, strongly advises high school biology teachers in public schools against teaching ID in the classroom. Instead, he says, the better and legally safer approach is to teach evolutionary theory comprehensively, covering both the evidence for it but also some of the evidence in the peer-reviewed literature against it. Luskin and Shapiro also part company on the nature of the intelligent design argument, with Shapiro suggesting that in practice it often amounts to a presenter highlighting some amazing feature in biology and then giving glory to God. Luskin pushes back, reiterating that intelligent design is an argument based on positive evidence, and is an argument to the best explanation–intelligent design–one that employs standard methods of scientific reasoning. This program is presented here with permission of Justin Brierley. To see this and other Unbelievable? episodes, go here. The first half of this conversation can be found here.

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Author
David Berlinski

Date
March 30, 2022

Tagged
agnosticism, Atheism, Darwinism, David Berlinski, emotivism, Evolution, God, human exceptionalism, human rights, Humanize podcast, Intelligent Design, irreducible complexity, Jewish Holocaust, Marcel Schützenberger, Materialism, metaphysics, methodological materialism, Michael Behe, Natural Selection, nature rights movement, Nazis, Nazism, nihilism, Notre Dame, Peter Abelard, philosophy of science, random mutations, self-referential fallacies, The SS State, Theism, Wesley J. Smith}

David Berlinski on Nazism, Darwinism, Emotivism, and Nature Rights

_{David Berlinski

March 30, 2022

Uncategorized}

On today’s ID the Future, Human Nature author David Berlinski continues his conversation with host Wesley J. Smith. Here Berlinski reflects on the Jewish Holocaust, the destructive nihilism of the Nazis and the SS, and the shortcomings of Neo-Darwinism as an explanation for the diversity of life. Berlinski and Smith also discuss the increasingly widespread attacks on human exceptionalism, the growth of emotivism and why it’s a problem, and the bizarre nature rights movement. This is the second and concluding part of a conversation borrowed, with permission, from Wesley J. Smith’s Humanize podcast.

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Author
Richard Weikart

Date
March 21, 2022

Tagged
Adolf Hitler, anti-Semitism, assisted suicide, biological determinism, biological evolution, Charles Darwin, Columbine shooting, Darwinian Racism, Darwinism, environmental determinism, Eric Harris, Eric Metaxas, Ernst Haeckel, Eugenics, Euthanasia, Evolutionary Ethics, fatalism, Free Will, Friedrich Nietzsche, From Darwin to Hitler, genetic determinism, Gilroy Garlic Festival, Gypsies, Holocaust, human evolution, imago dei, Marxism, Materialism, Mein Kampf, Might is Right, moral relativism, Natural Selection, Nazis, Nazism, Peter Singer, postmodernism, racism, Ragnar Redbeard, Richard Weikart, scientific racism, Slavs, Social Darwinism, struggle for existence, struggle for living space, white nationalism}

Eric Metaxas and Richard Weikart Spotlight Darwinian Racism

_{Richard Weikart

March 21, 2022

Uncategorized}

Today’s ID the Future brings listeners a lively conversation between radio host and bestselling author Eric Metaxas and historian Richard Weikart about Weikart’s new book, Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism. Weikart provides a quick flyover of the evidence that the outlook of Hitler, the Nazis, and contemporary white nationalists is significantly shaped by Darwinism and the arguments of early Darwinists. Metaxas and Weikart then contrast the Darwinian foundation for morality with the Judeo-Christian foundation, which holds that all humans are made in the image of God and therefore possess inherent worth, regardless of race and regardless of one’s “fitness.” This episode is reposted here, with permission, from The Eric Metaxas Show. Check out Weikart’s new book here.

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Author
Michael Behe

Date
March 16, 2022

Tagged
bacteriophage, Casey Luskin, cells, Charles Darwin, Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, cryo-electron spectroscopy, Darwinism, DNA, double helix, Escherichia virus T4, Evolution, genetic code, genetic information, Intelligent Design, irreducible complexity, irreducibly complex, Lyle Jensen, Michael Behe, Molecular Machines, mousetrap, myoglobin, Natural Selection, Neo-Darwinian synthesis, Neo-Darwinism, Proteins, protoplasm, purposeful arrangement of parts, Ronald Fisher, viruses, x-ray crystallography}

Behe: Bacteriophage—The New Poster Child for Darwin’s Doom

_{Michael Behe

March 16, 2022

Uncategorized}

On today’s ID the Future, Lehigh University biologist Michael Behe argues that Darwinism was built on a foundation of ignorance. Through no fault of Darwin’s, neither he nor anyone else in his day had a clue about the nature of cellular life and biological information, says Behe. Even the biologists of the Neo-Darwinian synthesis in the first half of the twentieth century were fairly clueless about the foundation of life, Behe says. When researchers did finally begin to unravel the sophisticated foundations of life, earlier notions of how evolutionary processes might have invented the great diversity of life forms on earth were exposed as causally inadequate. Behe says that in fact all the attempts to rescue the idea of mindless macroevolution have been exposed as inadequate by our growing understanding of molecular biology, but evolutionary theory blithely sails along anyway, thanks to institutional inertia. A key defeater of the theory, Behe says, is captured by his concept of irreducible complexity. He explains the idea with a simple illustration, a mousetrap, and then applies it to a marvelous molecular machine that researchers have only recently come to appreciate, the Escherichia virus T4 bacteriophage. As he argues, this bacteriophage powerfully bespeaks the purposeful arrangement of parts, rather than mindless evolutionary processes. The occasion for his conversation with host Casey Luskin is his contribution to the recent Harvest House anthology, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith. Image Credit: Dr. Victor Padilla-Sanchez: Atomic structural model of bacteriophage T4 in UCSF Chimera software using pdbs of the individual proteins.

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Author
Richard Weikart

Date
February 16, 2022

Tagged
Adolf Hitler, Alt Right, biological evolution, Bronx Zoo, Charles Darwin, Darwinian biologists, Darwinism, David Livingstone, E.O. Wilson, Ernst Haeckel, Eugenics, Euthanasia, Evolution, evolutionary psychology, genocide, Herbert Spencer, human zoos, immigration policy, John G. West, living space, Natural Selection, Nazi Germany, Nazi physicians, Nazis, Nazism, Ota Benga, racial struggle, racism, Richard Weikart, scientific racism, Scopes Trial, Social Darwinism, Stephen Pinker, sterilization, struggle for existence, survival of the fittest, The Descent of Man, The Origin of Species, transhumanism, white nationalism, white nationalists, Whoopi Goldberg}

Darwinian Racism Webinar, Pt. 2

_{Richard Weikart

February 16, 2022

Uncategorized}

Today’s ID the Future features the second half of a recent webinar spotlighting historian Richard Weikart and his new book, Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism. Here Weikart fields questions from the webinar audience. Along the way Weikart touches on the connection between Darwinism and scientific racism, the objection that Darwinism, properly understood, doesn’t support scientific racism (much less Nazi racism), the racism inherent in Darwin’s own writings and those of prominent early Darwinists such as Ernst Haeckel, and more recent manifestations of Darwinian-inspired scientific racism both academic and populist. This and much more is explored in Weikart’s new book, available here. And for scientific reasons to reject Darwinism along with its racists implications, jump over to Evolution News and Science Today.

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Author
Andrew McDiarmid

Date
February 2, 2022

Tagged
Adolf Hitler, Adrian Desmond, Aryan race, Charles Darwin, colonial slavery, Columbine High School, Columbine shooting, compulsory sterilization, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, Darwinian Racism, Darwinism, Dylan Klebold, Eric Harris, Ernst Haeckel, Eugenics, Evolution, genocide, human evolution, James F. Moore, Natural Selection, Nazi Ministry of Education, Nazi SS, Nazis, Nazism, neo-Nazis, Nordic race, racial extermination, racism, Richard Weikart, scientific racism, struggle for existence, The Descent of Man, Third Reich, white nationalism}

New Book on How Darwinism Fueled Nazi Racism, White Nationalism

_{Andrew McDiarmid

February 2, 2022

Uncategorized}

Today’s ID the Future features the newly released Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism by distinguished historian Richard Weikart. Here Andrew McDiarmid reads from the introduction and chapter one. Weikart begins his book by revisiting the harrowing Columbine High School mass shooting and underscoring the curious fact that one of the mass shooters, a white nationalist, claimed inspiration from not just Adolf Hitler but also Charles Darwin. Since Darwin was a peaceable Victorian English gentleman and naturalist, what possible connection could there be between Darwin on the one hand and Hitler and contemporary white nationalism on the other? Weikart shows that the connection is in fact quite clear from the writings of Hitler, Darwin himself, and early Darwinists, and that the connection has continued to fuel scientific racism down to the present, despite the fact that the racist notions that Darwin and Germany’s Ernst Haeckel used to support the case for apelike-primate-to-human evolution have long since been debunked. Weikart’s revelatory new book is now available for purchase.

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Author
Neil Thomas

Date
January 28, 2022

Tagged
Albert Einstein, Aristotle, Atheism, atomism, automatism, Bertrand Russell, chance, Darwinism, empirical evidence, Epicurus, Erasmus Darwin, European Enlightenment, Evolution, experimental science, fine tuning, Galen, Hank Hanegraaff, Intelligent Design, James Le Fanu, John Lennox, logical positivism, Lucretius, Materialism, Michael Denton, Natural Selection, Neil Thomas, nihilism, Plato, Privileged Planet, rationalism, Richard Dawkins, Richard Spilsbury, Thomas Huxley}

Neil Thomas Takes on Epicurus and the Logical Positivists

_{Neil Thomas

January 28, 2022

Uncategorized}

Today’s ID the Future concludes a three-part series featuring author Neil Thomas in a free-ranging conversation with radio show host Hank Hanegraaff. The focus is Thomas’s recent book, Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design. Here Thomas and Hanegraaff discuss the logical positivists and what Thomas sees as their failure to consistently apply their evidential standards to Darwinism. Thomas also contrasts the cosmic nihilism of Richard Dawkins with the mounting evidence of fine tuning for life, and calls out what Thomas describes as the magical thinking at the heart of Darwinism. Hanegraaff and Thomas also explore how Darwin’s theory of evolution has roots in an ancient philosophical system that was long regarded as resting on such flimsy speculative foundations that it wasn’t taken seriously for long centuries. In Thomas’s opinion, that philosophical system shouldn’t have been taken seriously then, and still shouldn’t be. In the wrap up, Hanegraaff and Thomas provide a model of how two men with differing positions on Christianity can converse and even challenge each other while remaining cordial. Hanegraaff, an Orthodox Christian, urges Thomas, a longtime agnostic rationalist who has recently become open to theism, to take his journey into theism further by considering the historical claims specific to Christianity. Does Thomas bridle? Not all. Listen in to hear how the conversation plays out, and find Thomas’s book, which Hanegraaff highly recommends, here. This three-part series is posted here by permission of Hank Hanegraaff. For more Hank Hanegraaff, check out his podcast, Hank Unplugged.

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Author
Brian Miller

Date
January 10, 2022

Tagged
Brian Miller, Casey Luskin, CELS conference, cichlid fish, Conference on Engineering in Living Systems, Darwinism, design logic, engineering, Evolution, finch beak, finches, fitness landscape, four-bar linkage, fruit flies, gravity well model for adaptation, Intelligent Design, intelligent design predictions, labrid fish, Mark W. Westneat, mutational hotspots, Natural Selection, Neo-Darwinism, phenotypic plasticity, population genetics, random variation, stickleback fish, Systematic Biology, systems biology, tracking model for adaptation}

Engineers Crash the Evolution Party, Rethink Biological Variation

_{Brian Miller

January 10, 2022

Uncategorized}

On today’s ID the Future, physicist and engineer Brian Miller sits down with host Casey Luskin to survey exciting developments in intelligent design research that are driven by an engineering model for understanding and studying variations in species. ID researchers are pushing this work, but so too are systems biology researchers outside the intelligent design community. Tune in to hear Miller and Luskin discuss everything from fruit flies, finch beaks, and stickleback fish to mutational hotspots, phenotypic plasticity, and the gravity well model of biological adaptation.