What is intelligent design? Dr. Stephen C. Meyer explains the theory

A MUST-SEE lecture based on Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s book “Signature in the Cell“.

You can get an MP3 of the lecture here. (30 MB)

I highly recommend watching the lecture, and looking at the slides. The quality of the video and the content is first class. There is some Q&A (9 minutes) at the end of the lecture.

Topics:

• intelligent design is concerned with measuring the information-creating capabilities of natural forces like mutation and selection
• Darwinists think that random mutations and natural selection can explain the origin and diversification of living systems
• Darwinian mechanisms are capable of explaining small-scale adaptive changes within types of organisms
• but there is skepticism, even among naturalists, that Darwinian mechanisms can explain the origin of animal designs
• even if you concede that Darwinism can account for all of the basic animal body plans, there is still the problem of life’s origin
• can Darwinian mechanisms explain the origin of the first life? Is there a good naturalistic hypothesis to explain it?
• there are at least two places in the history of life where new information is needed: origin of life, and Cambrian explosion
• overview of the structure of DNA and protein synthesis (he has helpful pictures and he uses the snap lock blocks, too)
• the DNA molecule is composed of a sequence of proteins, and the sequence is carefully selected to have biological function
• meaningful sequences of things like computer code, English sentences, etc. require an adequate cause
• it is very hard to arrive at a meaningful sequence of a non-trivial length by randomly picking symbols/letters
• although any random sequence of letters is improbable, the vast majority of sequences are gibberish/non-compiling code
• similarly, most random sequences of amino acids are lab-proven (Doug Axe’s work) to be non-functional gibberish
• the research showing this was conducted at Cambridge University and published in the Journal of Molecular Biology
• so, random mutation cannot explain the origin of the first living cell
• however, even natural selection coupled with random mutation cannot explain the first living cell
• there must already be replication in order for mutation and selection to work, so they can’t explain the first replicator
• but the origin of life is the origin of the first replicator – there is no replication prior to the first replicator
• the information in the first replicator cannot be explained by law, such as by chemical bonding affinities
• the amino acids are attached like magnetic letters on a refrigerator
• the magnetic force sticks the letters ON the fridge, but they don’t determine the specific sequence of the letters
• if laws did determine the sequence of letters, then the sequences would be repetitive
• the three materialist explanations – chance alone, chance and law, law alone – are not adequate to explain the effect
• the best explanation is that an intelligent cause is responsible for the biological explanation in the first replicator
• we know that intelligent causes can produce functional sequences of information, e.g. – English, Java code
• the structure and design of DNA matches up nicely with the design patterns used by software engineers (like WK!)

There are some very good tips in this lecture so that you will be able to explain intelligent design to others in simple ways, using everyday household items and children’s toys to symbolize the amino acids, proteins, sugar phosphate backbones, etc.

Proteins are constructed from a sequence of amino acids:

A sequence of amino acids forming a protein

Proteins sticking onto the double helix structure of DNA:

Some proteins sticking onto the sugar phosphate backbone

I highly, highly recommend this lecture. You will be delighted and you will learn something.

Here is an article that gives a general overview of how intelligent design challenges. If you want to read something more detailed about the material that he is covering in the lecture above related to the origin of life, there is a pretty good article here.

Related posts

• The kalam cosmological argument and the Big Bang theory
• The fine-tuning argument from cosmological constants and quantities
• The origin of life, part 1 of 2: the building blocks of life
• The origin of life, part 2 of 2: biological information
• The sudden origin of phyla in the Cambrian explosion
• Galactic habitable zones and circumstellar habitable zones
• Irreducible complexity in molecular machines
• The creative limits of natural selection and random mutation

Filed under: Videos, Amino Acid, Assembly, Bonding, Cell, Chance, Darwinism, Design Patterns, DNA, Doug Axe, Evidence, Evolution, Faith, Gene, Information, Intelligent Design, Law, Life, Materialism, Message, Messenger RNA, Naturalism, Necessity, OOL, Origin, Polymerase, Protein, Protein Folding, Protein Synthesis, Replicator, Ribosome, RNA, Science, Self-Organization, Sequence, Side Chains, Software Engineering, Specificity, Specified Complexity, Stephen C. Meyer, The DNA Enigma, William Dembski

Should government get out of the marriage business?

Dina sent me three articles by Jennifer Roback Morse, post on The Public Discourse. The articles answer the charge from social liberals and libertarians that we should “get the government out of marriage”.

Here’s the first article which talks about how government will still be involved in marriage, even if we get rid of the traditional definition of marriage, because of the need for dispute resolution in private marriage contracts. She uses no-fault divorce as an example showing how it was sold as a way to get government out of the divorce business. But by making divorce easier by making it require no reason, it increased the number of disputes and the need for more government to resolve these disputes.

Here’s the second article which talks about how the government will have to expand to resolve conflicts over decisions about who counts as a parent and who gets parental rights. With traditional marriage, identifying who the parents are is easy. But with private marriage contracts where the parties are not the biological parents, there is a need for the state to step in and assign parental rights.

Here’s the third article which talks about how marriage is necessary in order to defend the needs and rights of the child at a time when they cannot enter into contracts and be parties to legal disputes.

The third article was my favorite, so here is an excerpt from it:

The fact of childhood dependence raises a whole series of questions. How do we get from a position of helpless dependence and complete self-centeredness, to a position of independence and respect for others? Are our views of the child somehow related to the foundations of a free society? And, to ask a question that may sound like heresy to libertarian ears: Do the needs of children place legitimate demands and limitations on the behavior of adults?

I came to the conclusion that a free society needs adults who can control themselves, and who have consciences. A free society needs people who can use their freedom, without bothering other people too much. We need to respect the rights of others, keep our promises, and restrain ourselves from taking advantage of others.

We learn to do these things inside the family, by being in a relationship with our parents. We can see this by looking at attachment- disordered children and failure-to-thrive children from orphanages and foster care. These children have their material needs met, for food, clothing, and medical care. But they are not held, or loved, or looked at. They simply do not develop properly, without mothers and fathers taking personal care of them. Some of them never develop consciences. But a child without a conscience becomes a real problem: this is exactly the type of child who does whatever he can get away with. A free society can’t handle very many people like that, and still function.

In other words I asked, “Do the needs of society place constraints on how we treat children?” But even this analysis still views the child from society’s perspective. It is about time we look at it from the child’s point of view, and ask a different kind of question. What is owed to the child?

Children are entitled to a relationship with both of their parents. They are entitled to know who they are and where they came from. Therefore children have a legitimate interest in the stability of their parents’ union, since that is ordinarily how kids have relationships with both parents. If Mom and Dad are quarreling, or if they live on opposite sides of the country, the child’s connection with one or both of them is seriously impaired.

But children cannot defend their rights themselves. Nor is it adequate to intervene after the fact, after harm already has been done. Children’s relational and identity rights must be protected proactively.

Marriage is society’s institutional structure for protecting these legitimate rights and interests of children.

I recommend taking a look at all three articles and becoming familiar with the arguments in case you have to explain why marriage matters and why we should not change it. I think it is important to read these articles and to be clear that to be a libertarian doctrine does not protect the right of a child to have a relationship with both his or her parents.  Nor does libertarianism promote the idea that parents ought to stick together for their children.

The purpose of marriage is to make adults make careful commitments, and restrain their desires and feelings, so that children will have a stable environment with their biological parents. We do make exceptions, but we should not celebrate exceptions and we should not subsidize exceptions. It’s not fair to children to have to grow up without a mother or father just so that they adults can make poor, emotional decisions and have fun.

Filed under: Polemics, Adult, Adults, Child, Children, Court, Divorce, Father, Freedom, Gay Marriage, Government, Judge, Law, Libertarian, Liberty, Marriage, Mother, Parent, Parenthood, Role, Ron Paul, Same-Sex Marriage, Society, State

Is it good enough to quote the Bible when discussing public policy issues?

In a recent post, I stated my view that holding up signs with Bible verses on street corners was a foolish way to argue against homosexuality and legalizing same-sex marriage.

Marshal Art wrote this in response:

It might be much better to have scholarly spokesmen, but can we wait about until they show up, are sought out by the media and left-wing enablers or can command the same level of attention as the activists? I don’t think so. The fact is that we need everyone who opposes the sanctioning of this attraction as normal and the attendant behavior as morally benign to speak out often and loudly. The problem with the goofs, like Fred Phelps for example, is that they are among the few who are vocal about their position, without more rational people risking blowback by being outspoken opponents themselves.

And then Lindsay Harold replied to me, and this is the one you need to read closely:

Exactly. People who make a public case against same-sex marriage (or abortion, etc.) solely on religious grounds are basically painting a big target on everyone who holds the same position. They make it easy for people to ridicule them and ignore the facts by saying that the only opposition to these things is religious in nature – that conservatives just want to “force their religion” on others. That’s a difficult charge to overcome precisely because, in many cases, there is a lot of truth to it. Too many people only want to stop same-sex marriage and abortion because they believe they are wrong according to the Bible.

The problem is, that’s not sufficient reason to make something illegal. There are plenty of things that are wrong (coveting, lust, not remembering the Sabbath, etc) that are not and should not be illegal. Thus, if you are going to make a case for why something should or should not be legal, you must have more than religious reasons. Making only a religious case in such a situation is indeed attempting to force religion on others. And it hampers the real work of using evidence and logic to make the proper legal case by painting all the others defending marriage or fighting abortion with the label of “religious fanatic.”

Probably the hardest part of defending traditional marriage or arguing against abortion is convincing the other side to listen to the facts and logic rather than dismissing you as religiously-motivated. The reason for this is that there are too many well-intentioned, but ignorant and misguided, people out there making things harder for their own side with their faulty arguments.

She actually wrote a similar post on her blog, “Lindsay’s Logic”, but on the abortion issue on her blog recently, and here’s a snippet:

You see, laws in this country are not based on religion. In fact, our Founding Fathers specifically planned to create a nation where religious freedom was protected. In order to do that, one must have a secular country based on logical principles, not a theocracy. History has shown that government based upon religion inevitably persecutes those who disagree with the religion in power. Many, if not most, of those who came to America and founded this nation came to escape religious persecution. They knew firsthand the dangers of living in a church state. They wanted to ensure freedom for all, so they set up a secular government and laid out basic principles to limit the government’s power and prevent oppression of the people. Their principles were based on the concept of inalienable rights – rights that are innate in every human being and which government cannot grant or take away. These rights include the right to life, liberty, ownership of property, religion, a fair trial, and many others – all developed from basic logical principles. And, in this country, laws are to be made by the people, but only in accordance with these principles so that no one’s rights will be violated.

Of course, these logical principles are quite consistent with a Biblical worldview – and not by accident. The concept of inalienable rights, for example, comes from the view that mankind is the product of a Creator who has endowed them with these rights. Religious freedom is also consistent with the Bible. After all, even God Himself does not force Himself upon anyone, but gives all people the free choice to choose Him or not. But one cannot enforce every doctrine from the Bible in a secular society. There are things that are wrong, according to the Bible, which cannot be made law. How would one, for example, make lust or coveting illegal? And while the Bible commands us to remember the Sabbath day, one cannot enforce this on all people within a society without violating their freedom of religion. Thus, not everything that is wrong should be illegal.

It looks to me like Lindsay’s logic is pretty sound. My own view is that I get my moral views from the Bible, and then when talking about those views with people in the the public square, I use secular arguments (unless they happen to be evangelical Protestants like me – but then they probably would not need convincing?!)

What do you think? Is Marshal Art right or is Lindsay right? Although both of them are good people and mean well, which approach do you think will actually solve the problem?

Filed under: News, Abortion, Argument, Bible, Christianity, Debate, Gay Marriage, Government, Human Rights, Law, Logic, Marriage, Moral Issues, Morality, Natural Rights, Policy, Politics, Public Policy, Public Square, Religion, Rights, Same-Sex Marriage, Secularism

Marriage was weakened in countries that legalized same-sex marriage

A sociologist summarizes what can be known about the effects of gay marriage on society by appealing to evidence from other countries. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt:

Gay marriage will further destabilise marriage and family life in Britain, a leading sociologist has warned Parliament.

Dr Patricia Morgan told the House of Commons that same-sex marriage reinforced the idea that marriage is irrelevant to parenthood.

This was the principle factor, she said, that has caused the collapse in marriage rates between heterosexuals in countries where gay marriage had been introduced – as well as a sharp rise in cohabitation and the numbers of children born out of wedlock.

She said there was no evidence whatsoever to prove the Coalition Government’s assertions that gay marriage would bolster the institution.

She made her claims in a 22-page paper submitted at the Committee Stage of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill.

It contained a detailed analysis of marriage trends in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Canada and some U.S. states were gay marriage has been legalised.

[...]Spain in particular, she said, saw a “precipitous” downward acceleration in the numbers of all marriages by a 15,000 a year in first three years that followed the legalisation of same-sex marriage by the Socialist government in 2005.

The rate of decline later more than doubled to 34,000 fewer marriages a year in between 2008 and 2010.

Dr Morgan also produced evidence to show that heterosexual marriages were less stable in those countries where same-sex marriage had been introduced because they were expected to conform to the values of gay couples whose unions were often open, rather than exclusive, and far more likely to break down.

Cohabiting gay couples were 12 times more likely to separate that married heterosexual couples, she said.

Dr Morgan also predicted the widespread victimisation of individuals and institutions who dared to resist the redefinition of marriage.

“Some clearly hope that compulsion to perform same sex weddings will sever Church and state and further push Christianity out of the public arena and, therefore, consciousness,” she said.

“Undermined and stigmatised for their unreasonableness and prejudice, the moral authority of religious institutions will further retreat in favour of a narrow secular ideology, particularly as sexual behaviour at odds with traditional norms is further encouraged and advanced.”

Why can’t we stop talking about abstract concepts like “tolerance” and “homophobia” and just look at the results of legalizing same-sex marriage? We want to strengthen marriage, because marriage is better for children emotionally and financially. If we look at the results of legalizing same-sex marriage in other countries, we can know for certain whether it strengthened marriage, and therefore helped children. Rhetoric and insults doesn’t tell us anything. We need to look at the data that we have from other countries.

Filed under: News, Belgium, Canada, Children, Definition of Marriage, Denmark, Equality, Gay Activism, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Homosexuality, Law, Legal, Marriage, Natural Marriage, Norway, Patricia Morgan, Redefinition of Marriage, Same-Sex Marriage, Sociology, Spain, Sweden, Traditional Marriage, World

What is intelligent design? Dr. Stephen C. Meyer explains the theory

A MUST-SEE lecture based on Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s book “Signature in the Cell“. (H/T Chris S.)

You can get an MP3 of the lecture here. (30 MB)

I highly recommend watching the lecture, and looking at the slides. The quality of the video and the content is first class. There is some Q&A (9 minutes) at the end of the lecture.

Topics:

• intelligent design is concerned with measuring the information-creating capabilities of natural forces like mutation and selection
• Darwinists think that random mutations and natural selection can explain the origin and diversification of living systems
• Darwinian mechanisms are capable of explaining small-scale adaptive changes within types of organisms
• but there is skepticism, even among naturalists, that Darwinian mechanisms can explain the origin of animal designs
• even if you concede that Darwinism can account for all of the basic animal body plans, there is still the problem of life’s origin
• can Darwinian mechanisms explain the origin of the first life? Is there a good naturalistic hypothesis to explain it?
• there are at least two places in the history of life where new information is needed: origin of life, and Cambrian explosion
• overview of the structure of DNA and protein synthesis (he has helpful pictures and he uses the snap lock blocks, too)
• the DNA molecule is composed of a sequence of proteins, and the sequence is carefully selected to have biological function
• meaningful sequences of things like computer code, English sentences, etc. require an adequate cause
• it is very hard to arrive at a meaningful sequence of a non-trivial length by randomly picking symbols/letters
• although any random sequence of letters is improbable, the vast majority of sequences are gibberish/non-compiling code
• similarly, most random sequences of amino acids are lab-proven (Doug Axe’s work) to be non-functional gibberish
• the research showing this was conducted at Cambridge University and published in the Journal of Molecular Biology
• so, random mutation cannot explain the origin of the first living cell
• however, even natural selection coupled with random mutation cannot explain the first living cell
• there must already be replication in order for mutation and selection to work, so they can’t explain the first replicator
• but the origin of life is the origin of the first replicator – there is no replication prior to the first replicator
• the information in the first replicator cannot be explained by law, such as by chemical bonding affinities
• the amino acids are attached like magnetic letters on a refrigerator
• the magnetic force sticks the letters ON the fridge, but they don’t determine the specific sequence of the letters
• if laws did determine the sequence of letters, then the sequences would be repetitive
• the three materialist explanations – chance alone, chance and law, law alone – are not adequate to explain the effect
• the best explanation is that an intelligent cause is responsible for the biological explanation in the first replicator
• we know that intelligent causes can produce functional sequences of information, e.g. – English, Java code
• the structure and design of DNA matches up nicely with the design patterns used by software engineers (like WK!)

There are some very good tips in this lecture so that you will be able to explain intelligent design to others in simple ways, using everyday household items and children’s toys to symbolize the amino acids, proteins, sugar phosphate backbones, etc.

Proteins are constructed from a sequence of amino acids:

A sequence of amino acids forming a protein

Proteins sticking onto the double helix structure of DNA:

Some proteins sticking onto the sugar phosphate backbone

I highly, highly recommend this lecture. You will be delighted and you will learn something.

Here is an article that gives a general overview of how intelligent design challenges. If you want to read something more detailed about the material that he is covering in the lecture above related to the origin of life, there is a pretty good article here.

Related posts

• The kalam cosmological argument and the Big Bang theory
• The fine-tuning argument from cosmological constants and quantities
• The origin of life, part 1 of 2: the building blocks of life
• The origin of life, part 2 of 2: biological information
• The sudden origin of phyla in the Cambrian explosion
• Galactic habitable zones and circumstellar habitable zones
• Irreducible complexity in molecular machines
• The creative limits of natural selection and random mutation

Filed under: Videos, Amino Acid, Assembly, Bonding, Cell, Chance, Darwinism, Design Patterns, DNA, Doug Axe, Evidence, Evolution, Faith, Gene, Information, Intelligent Design, Law, Life, Materialism, Message, Messenger RNA, Naturalism, Necessity, OOL, Origin, Polymerase, Protein, Protein Folding, Protein Synthesis, Replicator, Ribosome, RNA, Science, Self-Organization, Sequence, Side Chains, Software Engineering, Specificity, Specified Complexity, Stephen C. Meyer, The DNA Enigma, William Dembski