It has sadly reached the point that my ancient 'pooter and cranky dial-up connection simply cannot load the On Holocaust Memorial Day thread anymore. I've had to follow comments from the admin board, and I can't post from there.

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Here is an interesting article:

From these two facts it follows that the evolutionary path to life-forms capable of space colonization leads through a "Great Filter," which can be thought of as a probability barrier. (I borrow this term from Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University.) The filter consists of one or more evolutionary transitions or steps that must be traversed at great odds in order for an Earth-like planet to produce a civilization capable of exploring distant solar systems. You start with billions and billions of potential germination points for life, and you end up with a sum total of zero extraterrestrial civilizations that we can observe. The Great Filter must therefore be sufficiently powerful–which is to say, passing the critical points must be sufficiently improbable–that even with many billions of rolls of the dice, one ends up with nothing: no aliens, no spacecraft, no signals. At least, none that we can detect in our neck of the woods.

Now, just where might this Great Filter be located? There are two possibilities: It might be behind us, somewhere in our distant past. Or it might be ahead of us, somewhere in the decades, centuries, or millennia to come. Let us ponder these possibilities in turn.

Where Are They?
Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing.

A major short-coming of Intelligent Design Theory has been its reluctance to identify the designer. This study addresses this problem and firmly establishes the reality of Intelligent Design.

Most design theorists are uncomfortable talking about the designer. Wedgocentric analysis has demonstrated this reluctance to be part of a sinister plot to foist a theocracy on an unsuspecting, scientifically-illiterate, Bush-electing public. If intelligent design is to be recognized for the science that it is, it must eschew this deception and show the scientific community the designer.

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Mike has highlighted the importance of proteins. Proteins are involved in all sorts of cellular functions including their own synthesis. Each step in the pathway to protein synthesis involves proteins. That includes the regulation of genes (whether or not a gene coding protein will be expressed), the transcription process and translation. It takes proteins to generate proteins. The proteins involved in the synthesis of other proteins are synthesized by the same cellular mechanisms they become part of.

There are two ways of analyzing the role of proteins. Proteins illustrate the interdependence of cellular functions and the dependence of cells on the proper coordination of its separate parts. That in turn is evidence of downward causation- a paradigm favorable to ID.

But we could continue to approach the matter of life's origin solely from a reductionist perspective. After all reductionism has led to success in other fields and provides an inductive argument for its continued utilization in origin of life research. Spinning wheels can keep an occupant in the same place but rabbits have another means of advancing.

Here. Since there is very little evidence the blind watchmaker can do that much without help from proteins, the next question to ask is: why are proteins so incredibly helpful to the blind watchmaker?

Guts posted this video before, but I thought I would repost it. I especially enjoyed the comments from Sean Carroll (according to Michael Ruse, "Of all the scientists in the world today, there is no one with whom Charles Darwin would rather spend an evening than Sean Carroll."):

So what this means is in some ways, some sense, evolution is a simpler process than we first thought. When you think about all of the diversity of forms out there, we first believed this would involve all sorts of novel creations, starting from scratch, again and again and again. We now understand that, no, that evolution works with packets of information and uses them in a new and different ways, and new and different combinations, without necessarily having to invent anything fundamentally new, but new combinations.

My, that's a pretty radical change in the way we view evolution. The old way was far more friendly to non-teleology and also failed to prepare scientists for the more accurate understanding of evolution, an understanding that is now much more friendly to teleology.

I am truly and seriously curious about how other people define "˜Intelligent Design,' since it appears there are as many definitions as there are people who argue about the subject. So I would like to request that folks from both sides of the aisle provide their own definitions of Intelligent Design. There doesn't have to be a correct answer, as people can simply provide their own definitions. Furthermore, I am not trying to start an argument or lay any trap. I'm just interested in surveying public perception.

So, how do you define Intelligent Design?

I've started a new category to document the manner in which some critics attempt to smear me. I think some of you might enjoy this one.

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An article in The Daily Gazette entitled Lee Ross's Lecture on Barriers to Conflict Resolution, is authored by Elizabeth Hipple. It discusses a concept called naive realism. From the article:

Naïve realism is the conviction that one sees the world as it is and that when people don't see it in a similar way, it is they that do not see the world for what it is. Ross characterized naïve realism as "a dangerous but unavoidable conviction about perception and reality". The danger of naïve realism is that while humans are good in recognizing that other people and their opinions have been shaped and influenced by their life experiences and particular dogmas, we are far less adept at recognizing the influence our own experiences and dogmas have on ourselves and opinions. We fail to recognize the bias in ourselves that we are so good in picking out in others.

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