HoleyCarbonGrid

It's come up several times recently that the pharmaceutical industry is imperfect. That contention I do not dispute - however, I thought that, as someone with limited (but years-long) experience in contact with the pharmaceutical industry - I would share some not-so-inside knowledge, and talk about how a drug is made.

Credentials-wise, I’m a PhD student in Chemistry, who (as an undergraduate) worked in a pharmaceutical chemistry lab. Most recently, I took a mini-course related specifically ...

What Evidence Supports Intelligent Design?

2. Functionally Specified Complex Information
Functionally specified complex information (FSCI) comes from a term originally coined by a British chemist, Leslie Orgel, as “specified information,” – a characteristic of living organisms. William Dembski in the 1990’s began using the term and altering it to “functionally specified complex information,” as a way of distinguishing natural processes (i.e., process for which an intelligent agent ...

What Evidence Supports Intelligent Design?
Supporters of intelligent design often point to a number of published works by its advocates, including Michael Behe and William Dembski, amongst others. Although there are even peer-reviewed scientific publications supporting intelligent design, the bulk of the material which supports intelligent design is neither peer-reviewed nor found in scientific publications. Rather, the bulk of the work “supporting,” this hypothesis is found in published ...

What’s Wrong with Intelligent Design?
The concept of intelligent design has gained some ground in the past decade and a half or so in popular culture. The idea seems, on its face, to be entirely reasonable: that the creation and evolution of life were or are determined by an as-yet undetermined “intelligent agent.”

So, what is intelligent design? How do its advocates define it? What evidence do they use to support it? And what are the problems with that evidence?

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Evolution via natural selection is almost universally accepted amongst scientists as the explanation for the diversity of life on Earth. Evolution by natural selection, in the century and a half since it's introduction by Charles Darwin, has served as the foundation of our understanding of life and its processes. From modern medicine to molecular biology, evolution has been perhaps the most powerful tool of scientific understanding ever developed.

Defined by Charles Darwin as the "principle ...