The Kansas State Board of Education will hear from scientists and scholars next week about how best to present evolution in the classroom. If you are not testifying to the board, there is still a significant role for you to play in the wider debate. Namely, write supportive letters to the editor to […]

ID gets prime time in Brazil

I’ve always been troubled by the claim that Mt. Rushmore was carved by sculptors. After all, where did the sculptors come from?

Scientists know that natural selection can explain the awe-inspiring complexities of organisms, and should be prepared to explain how. But attacking or dismissing intelligent design is likely to aggravate the rift between science and faith that causes students to become interested in intelligent design in the first place.

From a colleague:
A 3-member Committee of The Kansas State School Board will conduct hearings in Topeka next week, and possibly the week after, to evaluate proposed changes to the state science standards. Thursday through Saturday next week, May 5-7, the Committee will hear testimony from scientists, philosophers and educators who think the standards should […]

…the very foundation of science in the United States is at risk…

Their simple, idiotic credulity as a populace would have been the envy of Lenin. That is the tragic paradox. The Land of the Free, telly and burgerfed, has become the Land of the Credulous Moron.

Word of advice: if you are an evolutionist and don’t want to be quoted by evolution critics for being critical of evolution, resist the urge — don’t criticize it.

One of my favorite over-the-top quotes about the power of natural selection comes from novelist Barbara Kingsolver. According to her, natural selection is “the greatest, simplest, most elegant logical construct ever to dawn across our curiosity about the workings of natural life. It is inarguable, and it explains everything.” (Small Wonder, 2002). Another Kingsolver, however, […]

We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.

Although the phrase ‘creation science’ carries disreputable connotations because of its frequent use by some religious fundamentalists, we truly need some ‘creation science’ (in the other sense of that phrase) as a major component of evolutionary theory.

What follows is a story from Science on the controversy in Kansas over the teaching of evolution. Notice how the story is framed in terms of “Science” versus “Intelligent Design.” One thing it might interest you to know is that the meeting in question took place at a church (it was held at the Plymouth […]

Interesting paper on randomness and information theory:
Using Information Theory Approach to Randomness Testing
http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.IT/0504006.
B. Ya. Ryabko and V.A. Monarev

Hubert Yockey attended the 1996 Mere Creation conference at Biola University. At that conference he and I discussed his role in the ID movement. He described himself as an outsider who could do more good for ID by maintaining his intellectual independence and directing his energies at refuting the evolutionary reductionists than by explicitly making […]

Yesterday’s Nature has, on page 24 of the advertisement section, an announcement requesting grant proposals for the John Templeton Foundation’s “Purpose in the living world” research programme, titled “The Emergence of Biological Complexity” (for more go here and here). Purpose? Biological complexity? Evidence of fine-tuning in biological complexity? All in one breath? This may not […]

“You know, you are going to have to get past those reservations if you want to pursue a career in this field. It just isn’t possible to succeed in Marine Science if you do not accept the theory of evolution.”

While this subject is in the public’s eye, no Wedge member should be able to speak in public without a strong challenge to their claim that Intelligent Design creationism is scientific and not religiously motivated. –S.T.Smith

In a previous post, I remarked that John Paul II “seemed to sign off on conventional evolutionary theory save for the divine infusion of souls at the origin of humanity.” This is not quite accurate. As a friend and colleague who knows the Catholic world much better than I do noted to me by email:

The National Center for Selling Evolution (NCSE) has a widely publicized, in their words, “tongue-in-cheek parody of a long-standing creationist tradition of amassing lists of ‘scientists who doubt evolution’ or ‘scientists who dissent from Darwinism’.” They call it “Project Steve.” (Go here for a description of the project and here for the list; go here […]

Here are three letters from the New Scientist, the first and the last tacitly supporting ID. The last letter raises the interesting question to what degree throwing time at a problem can make up for deficiencies in intelligence. There is a research question here that needs cashing out.

Prediction: Bush and Benedict XVI will do to evolution what Reagan and John Paul II did to communism

I started blogging end of March 2005, beginning at www.idthefuture.com and now with my blog, Uncommon Descent (I intend to do a lot of cross-posting). Since I’d like Uncommon Descent to provide a complete record of my blogging activity, I include here my prior posts at IDthefuture that have thus far not been cited here:

It’s always amazed me that people are so willing to abandon the hard work and intuition that leads to intelligence, upon which rests the entire edifice of science, and resort to little more than gambling in an attempt to create innovation. I have another word for it–laziness.

In a previous post I indicated that the American Society of Agronomy, at the behest of its president James G. Coors, conducted an online poll regarding the teaching of alternatives to evolution in grades K-12 and then, presumably at his behest as well, removed the poll once it became clear that the poll did not […]

The cardinal rule: I make up the rules as I go along.

I made three posts at IDthefuture concerning Robert Laughlin, the Nobel laureate physicists who in his most recent book had some unkind words about evolution by natural selection:
“Much of present-day biological knowledge is ideological. A key symptom of ideological thinking is the explanation that has no implications and cannot be tested. I call such logical […]

Denunciations of Intelligent Design by professional societies are now common coin: the American Association for the Advancement of Science (see here), the American Institute of Physics (see here and here), and the Society for Neuroscience (see here) are cases in point. But what happens when a professional society gears up to denounce ID and its […]

“Please leave debating ID advocates to the professionals. Or if you are determined to do so anyway, ask for assistance before the debate.” … “With friends like Dr. Silver, I don’t need enemies.”

Mike Gene is the pseudonym of one of the most insightful individuals in the ID/evolution debate. He remains critical of various aspects of ID, but he is far more critical of conventional evolutionary theory. For his views, have a look at his website. To get a flavor of his thinking, here is a recent […]