Tag: whales

^{Type
post

Author
Stuart Burgess

Date
July 12, 2023

Tagged
beaked whale, CELS conference, common descent, common design, Conference on Engineering in Living Systems, constrained optimization, engineering trade-offs, flipper, flipper anatomy, Homology, humpback whale, marsupial rats, pentadactyl design, pentadactyl limb, placental rats, protein structures, systems biology, vestigial body parts, whale fin, whale pelvic bones, whales}

The Pentadactyl Whale Flipper: An Engineering Masterstroke

_{Stuart Burgess

July 12, 2023

Uncategorized}

Does the five-digit design of the whale flipper, curiously akin to the five-digit design of so many different kinds of animal limbs, point to evolutionary common descent? That was Charles Darwin’s argument, and the argument is a staple of high school and college biology textbooks. But no, says distinguished British engineer Stuart Burgess on today’s ID the Future in his conversation with host Eric Anderson. The repeated recurrence of the pentadactyl form is better explained by reference to the idea of common design. That is, a master designer reused the pentadactyl design theme because it achieves an optimal trade-off between strength on the one hand (no pun intended) and suppleness or dexterity on the other. And yes, Burgess says, the giant flipper on a whale needs to be not just incredibly strong but also supple to allow the whale to maneuver adroitly through the water. This reuse of a good design concept shouldn’t surprise us, Burgess says. Just as human engineers reuse the concepts of the wheel, axle, nut and bolt, or pulley, so too the designer of life reuses shrewd engineering solutions in widely different applications, in each case adapting the design concept for the particular use. Burgess also rebuts the claim that whales have vestigial pelvic bones from a land-dwelling ancestor. He then moves from the big to the small, pointing to more positive evidence in favor of common design (over Darwinian common descent) in marsupial and placental rats and in a protein machine best known for one job but that has been found to “moonlight” doing a very different job in a very different biological context. Tune in to hear Burgess unpack the full argument. The conversation took place at the 2023 Conference on Engineering in Living Systems (CELS) in Denton, Texas. Read More ›

3d rendered medically accurate illustration of a sprinter

^{Type
post

Author
Howard Glicksman

Date
July 5, 2023

Tagged
abiogenesis, amoebas, bad design, bad-design arguments, body plan, cancer, cancer research, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, cardiovascular system, cellular life cycle, choking, coherence, complex interdependencies, constrained optimization, Darwinian Evolution, degradation, design evaluation, design optimization, dysteleology, engineering trade-offs, Evolution, fertilization, Howard Glicksman, human exceptionalism, Intelligent Design, irreducible complexity, life from life, Louis Pasteur, pharynx, physiological fine tuning, respiratory system, sexual reproduction, sodium pumps, spontaneous generation, Steve Laufmann, systems biology, theory of biological design, throat, whales, windpipe, Your Designed Body, zygote}

Engineering, not Evolution, Explains the Body

_{Howard Glicksman

July 5, 2023

Uncategorized}

The groundbreaking recent book Your Designed Body is the focus of today’s ID the Future. Here in Part 2 of a two-part conversation with host Wesley J. Smith, the two authors, systems engineer Steve Laufmann and physician Howard Glicksman, delve deeper into the exquisite, multi-layered fine tuning of the human body. They point to essential systems within systems within systems—irreducible complexity cubed, if you will. They also respond to the charge that aspects of the human body are poorly designed and, therefore, are supposedly better explained by the blind process of Darwinian evolution. Laufmann identifies five common errors that Darwinists make when pushing this bad-design argument. All of the errors involve an ignorance of key engineering principles, he says, one of them being a failure to consider the principle of constrained optimization. This episode is reposted at ID the Future by permission of Wesley J. Smith and the Humanize podcast. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Brian Miller

Date
August 8, 2022

Tagged
ankles, apostle Paul, Aristotle, atomism, backward wiring of the eye, Brian Miller, Charles Darwin, Conference on Engineering in Living Systems, Darwinism, Demiurge, Democritus, designer substitute, ENCODE project, Epicureans, Evolution, Frances Ayala, Intelligent Design, Jerry Coyne, Junk DNA, Living with Darwin, Materialism, Michael Behe, Nathan Lents, Natural Selection, optimality, Panda’s thumb, Philip Kitcher, photosynthesis, Plato, pseudogenes, purpose, Rube Goldberg machine, Stephen Jay Gould, stoics, suboptimal design, systems biology, systems modeling, teleology, transcendent mind, watch argument for design, whales, William Paley, wrists}

Brian Miller: The Surprising Relevance of Engineering in Biology

_{Brian Miller

August 8, 2022

Uncategorized}

Today’s ID the Future brings listeners physicist and engineer Brian Miller’s recent lecture at the Dallas Conference on Science and Faith, “The Surprising Relevance of Engineering in Biology.” Miller rebuts several popular arguments for evolution based on claims of poor design in living systems, everything from the “backward wiring” of the vertebrate eye to whales, wrists, ankles, and “junk DNA.” But the main emphasis of this discussion is the exciting sea change in biology in which numerous breakthroughs are occurring by scientists who are treating living systems and subsystems as if they are optimally engineered systems. Some in this movement reject intelligent design for ideological reasons. Others embrace it. But all systems biologists treat these systems as if they are masterfully engineered systems, and that perspective is rapidly accelerating progress in experimental biology. At the forefront of this work is the Conference on Engineering in Living Systems (CELS). Miller provides an exciting sneak peek at some of the cutting edge research from members of this group.

^{Type
post

Author
Casey Luskin

Date
December 2, 2011

Tagged
__edited, fossil, mathematics, whales}

Whales: New “Icon of Evolution” or a Challenge to Darwinian Theory?

_{Casey Luskin

December 2, 2011

Uncategorized}

On this episode of ID The Future, Casey Luskin discusses a recent fossil discovery that puts a kink in the evolutionary explanation of whales. Evolutionists claim that whales evolved from fully terrestrial mammals to fully aquatic ones in 5-10 million years. The new fossil find of a whale jaw bone shrinks that number considerably, making a shaky theory even shakier. Luskin explains that it’s highly unlikely that the number of changes needed for such a transformation could occur in such a small time period. “Mathematically speaking, it is not possible that an unguided Darwinian process could take a land mammal to a whale in such a short period of time.”