Friday 18 July 2014

Evidence of Design In Nature: An Inter-Faith Centre Seminar, Suffolk, UK

On Wednesday 16 July I gave a talk at the Inter-faith Centre in Ipswich, Suffolk. The slides are available here. Due to the Google presentation viewer still having glitches, it is advisable to download the presentation.

There were a few noteworthy comments from the audience. The first was quite irrelevant to the subject matter. The computer science perspective, I was told, was not the only one possible (true) and perhaps not as interesting as the psychological or emotional aspect of meeting with God. I agree, that is important but this is beside my point. I have already been accused of 'mechanicism' but it is what seems specifically interesting to me given my professional background. The cybernetics of life vehemently testifying to intelligent agency, to me, deserves attention as a scientific case. 

The second comment was that my God is not the God of Spinoza. Thank you for recognizing that! 

Thirdly, somebody said that I had greatly underestimated the (creative?) power of selection. Prove it, show it to me on a concrete unambiguous example how selection creates novelty. Just a single yet demonstrable piece of strong evidence, not just the usual evolutionary story telling. In the 21st century this is not enough. 

Fourthly, according to an Anglican-Hindu priest (a very strange combination indeed), Dawkins is a saint. I am not commenting that. 

Thursday 17 July 2014

Michael Behe's edge of evolution prediction confirmed

Dr Michael Behe's prediction about the minimum number of simultaneous mutations needed to confer resistance to a drug in malaria parasites, is now confirmed.

Thursday 10 July 2014

How efficient is technology compared to biology?

Fig.1. Efficiency of modern technology and biology compared: the portion of resources of various kinds (color-coded) used in an artefact (left) or biosystem (right) is shown for various dimensions ranging from nanometers to kilometers. Courtesy of my colleagues, [1].