Dave Springer noted recently at Uncommon Descent that after 40 years, Analog Magazine had finally tackled intelligent design:What I found really amazing about this was that this is the first time, to the best of my knowledge, that Analog has published any fact OR fiction article which explicitly uses the phrase “Intelligent Design” (capitalized no less). What a delightful breath of fresh air. The editor must have felt like he was letting Pandora out of her box. Let’s hope there’s much more to come.
I bet they chicken out. Plenty of time to prove me wrong though.
Springer has also expressed doubts about string theory as the saviour of the no-design universe: Apparently, a physicist has estimated that there are now 10^500 possible solutions to a popular version of string theory.
Springer has also expressed doubts about string theory as the saviour of the no-design universe: Apparently, a physicist has estimated that there are now 10^500 possible solutions to a popular version of string theory.
A few years ago, there were only a few and none produced a universe like ours. If any of the rest do, how would we know?
10^500 is a, like, big number to hunt through.
Cue space aliens: You guys are up next, just after Richard Dawkins. Relax, fellas, he believes in you now.
Cue space aliens: You guys are up next, just after Richard Dawkins. Relax, fellas, he believes in you now.
This just in: A kind reader (wrf3) [?] has just written to say:
It has been a long time since I've read an SF mag so I'm not as up on the genre as I used to be, but I do read the Years Best SF anthology edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. In the twelfth of the series, published in 2007, there is the short story Applied Mathematical Theology by the respected author and scientist Gregory Benford, who is professor emeritus of physics at UC Irvine. The very short story was first published in Nature and tells of finding a non-random pattern buried in the cosmic microwave background. It's ID through and through, even though the term doesn't appear in the story.Ah well, we are all volunteers, and sneak the time to do this, so we can not troll the Net as we might. Now back to work.
I would have thought that the publication of this, especially in Nature, would have been picked up at Uncommon Descent, Colliding Universes, or The ID Update, but I never saw it and 30 seconds with Google didn't turn up much.
