Undeniable

Douglas Axe

Ch 1 The Big Question

Ch 2 The Conflict Within

Ch 3 Science in the Real World

Ch 4 Outside the Box

p41 Worked at Centre for Protein Engineering under Alan Fersht.. Colleague got engineered enzyme to work, but turned out it was contamination of natural enzyme that worked. Doug offered leadership of group -- Britain polarized by criticism of ID on BBC - describes his interaction with Fersht.

p48 Comments on differences between ID and creationism. "Creationism starts with a commitment to a particular understanding of the biblical text of Genesis and aims to reconcile scientific data with that understanding. ID, on the other hand, starts with a commitment to the essential principles of science and shows how those principles ultimately compel us to attribute life to a purposeful inventor - an intelligent designer. ID authors settle for this vague description not because they want to smuggle God into science but because the jump from "intelligent designer" to "God" requires something beyond the essential principles of science."

p49 Criticism of scientism. depicting ID as taking a minimalist view --accept that objective truths exist about physical world and some can be discovered through human observation and reasoning. Calls stances beyond this "embellishments" -- which can pressure scientists to accept wrong answers because they are ruled "unscientific"
"As odd as this situation may seem, it's not hypothetical. The scientistic view introduced in the first chapter - scientism- is the most striking example of an embellished version of science that has risen to prominence. the reason adherents to this version hold science to be the only legitimate source of truth is that they also hold to materialism. This commits them to the idea that there isn't anything but physical stuff, and because science is the only way to know the truth about physical stuff, this leads them to conclude that science is the only source of truth. The materialist commitment itself, though, is completely unnecessary to science and therefore a harmful embellishment."

p51 New Scientist called Axe's Biologic Institute "The God Lab", intended in a pejorative sense, and revealed that one at CPE had pressed Fersht to dismiss Axe.

p53 Discusses Newsday series Creation vs Evolution

p54 Had article accepted by Journal of Molecular Biology Aug 04

p54 "scientistic interpretation of this tension" "According to this now-familiar view, people of faith who challenge Darwinism are really pushing religion, even if their challenge has a scientific look to it."

p55 Outrageous quote of Barash, Axe gets passionate in response. Quote of Barash of statement to all his students, like 200 a year in animal behavior course "The more we know of evolution, the more unavoidable is the conclusion that living things, including human beings, are produced by a natural, totally amoral process, with no indication of a benevolent, controlling creator." A segment of Axe's response "Contemplate for just a moment the dystopian vision of a generation of human beings believing in their hearts that they are nothing more than bestial accidents fending for themselves in a world where morality is a fiction, and you begin to grasp the true stakes." He continues with "Heroes are badly needed here..." "If you think these heroes need to have PhDs, I hope to convince you otherwise..." as the leadup to his promotion of "common science".

p56 Letter from Barry Palevitz and reply. Palevitz's sneaky letter presumes that every reputable scientist knows that ID is anathema.

Ch 5 A Dose of Common Sense

p57 Cites Michael Denton

p58 After 20 years of research, need for a non-technical argument.

p60 Introduces "common science"

Ch 6 Life Is Good

p65-66 Discussion of purpose and intent

p68 Idea of "special wholes" - things that "look as though they are trying to accomplish something". Also uses "busy wholes" and "whole project" as part of this picture.

p69 This "wholes" picture implies one or more "knowers".

p70 Uses a pool robot as example of a "whole" with the obvious implication of a designer and engineer. "But we don't for a moment think the busy whole that did the work - the pool robot - knows anything. Instead, we recognize that the robot is the successful outcome of a much more impressive whole project, namely the design and manufacture of a working pool robot. The scores of busy wholes who contributed to that project were human beings; inventors, engineers, designers, machinists, assembly-line workers, project managers, and so on. So the knowledge and intent we perceive when we observe the pool robot in operation is ultimately traceable to human knowledge and intent, though the perception occurs whether or not we do the tracing."

p70-71 Tennis player - busy wholes within a busy whole.

p72 His reverie about salmon and orca - both elegant and dedicated to being purposeful wholes.

p74 Life a la Darwin "If there's anything compelling about Darwin's view of life, its the simplicity of his core idea." "Few theorized explanations are so disarmingly direct. The perpetual improvement of reproducers seems to require only (1) that they carry out their reproduction imperfectly - with small errors (mutations) being introduced occasionally - and (2) that at lease some of these errors enhance reproduction, if only slightly."

p74-75 Parallel between geology and Darwin view of life - current life like a frame in a video.

p77 Darwinist objection to design:

disease, cancer, birth defects
design faults - Panda's thumb

p79 Darwin quote along the lines of the "incessant fiddler" suggests that evolution never reaches a compelling end: "It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life."

p79 In response to the above quote, Axe does point to one of his findings about enzymes reaching a point of such perfection at their task that natural selection can't change them. Still sounding the theme of living things as "affirmation of completion".

p80 Discussion of sponge as prototype for animal life and the two scenarios for getting to us:

Conditions of life
Natural selection

p81 Why proteins don't evolve. Describes research of himself and Ann Gauger and Mariclair Reeves. Concluded that evolving of current complex proteins isn't feasible. Sounds like pretty solid research.

p84 I was impressed that Axe is straightforward about presenting the counter-views like Marshall, critic of Darwin's Doubt who says the earlier evolutionary environment was different, not requiring the new proteins but "rewiring" the gene regulatory networks (GRNs). Currently such rewiring kills the embryos, but may have been effective at earlier stages.

p84-85 Marshall "today's GRNs have been overlain with half a billion years of evolutionary innovation (which accounts for their resistance to modification), whereas GRNs at the time of emergence of the phyla [the basic animal forms] were not so encumbered."

p85 Dan Tawfik "broad specificity enzymes served as progenitors for today's specialist enzymes." Responses to Axe and team's finding that present enzymes don't evolve. Tawfik recognizes difficulties of producing those broad specificity enzymes. "Evolution has this catch-22: nothing evolves unless it already exists."

p86 Axe "What's left of a theory or origins once it has been conceded that it doesn't explain how things originate?"

Ch 7 Waiting for Wonders

p87 "Common science" approach to the "design intuition"

p87-88 Well written reflection on full materialist view of development of life contrasted with design intuition.

p88-92 Big excursion on "robotic football fan" - could it find a football stadium by homing on the noise? a model for criticizing chance in achieving any purpose.

p92- connecting the robotic model to genetic

Ch 8 Lost in Space

Ch 9 The Art of Making Sense

Ch 10 Coming Alive

Ch 11 Seeing and Believing

Ch 12 Last Throes

Ch 13 First World

Ch 14 The New School

R Nave