Professor of Biochemistry James Tour (Rice University) on the current understanding of the origin of life

Professor James Tour (Rice University)

The first slide

The first slide of the presentation is worth having a look at. Professor Tour acknowledges the awkward truth that the strongest evidence against the current understanding of abiogenesis is the very data the research purports to explain.

A counter-junk-DNA summary

A list of bullet-points with very high-level argumentation against the junk DNA can be found in comment 30 by JoeCoder here.

There is also a very good book on it by Jonathan Wells entitled "The Myth of Junk DNA". This book is highly recommendable to laymen in biology like myself who have a scientific background though. 

The teaching of St Maximus and design detection

St Maximus the Confessor († AD 662)

The teaching of St Maximus the Confessor about the divine logoi of creation (for a summary in Russian, see here) can serve as a philosophical foundation for Intelligent Design. In short, according to St Maximus, each created thing, alive or not, has the corresponding divine idea (logos) of its existence. Each divine idea is then realized in a certain way called a tropos (plural — tropoi) of the respective created thing. The tropos of a thing is the mode of its existence. For example, the Fall of Man resulted in the change of the tropos of the existence of humans.

"Primordial Prescription": a new book by David Abel

The book "Primordial Prescription: The most plaguing problem of Life Origin science" is free to access and download from here.

Subject matter: life origin, cybernetics and biosemiotics. Highly recommendable.

The future of biology: the emphasis on semiotics

Here is a very interesting book devoted to viewing living organisms as semiotic state systems.

Semiotics is central to understanding life

The problem of sign and sign systems (semiotic systems, symbol systems) is key to understanding what is life from a scientific point of view.

A set theoretic interpretation of design detection

A configuration of elements in a given system is its spatial-functional structure, i.e. an arrangement of its elements one relative to another that also reflects connections between the elements. E.g. molecules of water can take different configurations depending on the ambient conditions; in particular, at temperatures below 0 ^oC molecules are arranged in crystal lattice. Below I do not consider variability of configurations over time and I assume they are static.

Software design patterns and design pattern recognition

As far as I am aware, design pattern recognition (aka Intelligent Design) has two large veins of thought. One deals with pattern recognition and inferring design as abductively the best available explanation given specific patterns. The other reasons based on the order vs. organization dichotomy.

A post on UD: order vs. organization

I recommend reading an excellent original post published at uncommondescent.com on 27 November 2014. The post discusses the differences between order and origanization. What is also worth reading is the insightful comments by the author (niwrad) and Upright Biped.

On the source of biological information

Эукариотическая клетка. Источник: dic.academic.ru

Selection can only reduce the amount of genetic information as it only passively filters out unfit organisms. Where then does genetic information come from?! How can randomness be responsible for the generation of statistically significant amounts of biological information?! Where is the genuine source of it?

A brain has its own inner GPS

For the discovery of the function of special brain cells that constitute an analog of the Global Positioning System, European scientists have been awarded a Nobel prize in medicine this year. The winners are John O'Keefe (University College London), May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser (The centre of memory biology, Norway).

Self-assembling robots: yet another counter-argument against ID is debunked

Here is an interesting note about another refuted counter-argument against intelligent origins of life. This flawed argument states that biological life cannot be likened to human artifacts because humans cannot create autonomous self-replicating, self-deploying systems. In this video quoted in the note this argument is dismissed by demonstrating a self-folding autonomous walking robot. According to the inventors, the self-assembly is inspired by biological systems and origami.

Biomimicry: Artificial Photosynthesis - Mission Accomplished

Fig.1. Artificial leaves

Another proof of concept for Intelligent Design, artificial photosynthesis has now been achieved as part of the Silk Leaf project by a Royal College of Art graduate Julian Melchiorri.

Decision making in biosystems

What is decision making and why do they say sometimes that biosystems make decisions? 

The most energy efficient memory

My translation into English from here.

Human proteome more complex than previously thought

Human proteome is more complex than was previously thought.

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. 

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.

Jon Cohen on human and chimp genomes: "Relative Differences: the Myth of 1%"

• Jon Cohen, "Relative Differences: the Myth of 1%", Science, vol. 326 (29 June 2007), p. 1836.

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].