Monthly Archives: October 2005
“The Great Debate” — Scott & Trefil vs. Sisson & Dembski
| October 31, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science |
“Should public schools teach Intelligent Design along with Evolution?” http://www.bu.edu/com/greatdebate Wednesday, November 2, 2005, 6:30-8:30 p.m. Tsai Performance Center, Boston University 685 Commonwealth Avenue Visit this page to view a live webcast of the debate: http://realserver.bu.edu:8080/ramgen/encoder/greatdebate.rm The Debate Participants: Affirmative Edward H. Sisson, Esq. Partner, Arnold and Porter, Washington, D.C. Mr. Sisson advised witnesses at… more
Deteriorata vs. Designorama
| October 31, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Evolution, Intelligent Design |
Deteriorata (old National Lampoon song) http://www.nationallampoon.com/flashbacks/deteriorata/default2.asp You are a fluke of the universe You have no right to be here And whether you can hear it or not The universe is laughing behind your back GIVE UP! Designorama You are the product of design Every hair on your head is numbered You are irreplacable and… more
“Retrospective Fallacy”?
| October 31, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Evolution, Intelligent Design |
In the July 9th, 2005 issue of The New Scientist, there appears the following passage quoting Brown University’s Ken Miller: more
The Edge of Peer Review
| October 30, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Evolution, Intelligent Design |
Robert Pennock’s Nature article with Richard Lenski on the evolutionary program AVIDA does not mention Michael Behe, irreducible complexity, or intelligent design (for a critique of that article, go here). And yet, when Pennock criticizes ID, the first thing he does is point to that article as a refutation of ID and, in particular, Michael… more
Fitness among Competitive Agents
| October 28, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Biology, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
Fitness among Competitive Agents: A Brief Note By William A. Dembski The upshot of the No Free Lunch theorems is that averaged over all fitness functions, evolutionary computation does no better than blind search (see Dembski 2002, ch 4 as well as Dembski 2005 for an overview). But this raises a question: How does evolutionary… more
The Five Ds of Dodgeball Darwinism
| October 28, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism |
Dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge deny. http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/d/dodgeball-script-transcript-ben-stiller.htm more
Design Inferences — Keeping Science Honest
| October 28, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
“Michael Borowitz, at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, says: ‘The shapes of the major clusters are often similar but in any system there is noise, and those noisy dots are in the same place too. That’s hard to explain by biology. It is very difficult for me to believe that… more
Design Detection — It’s Everywhere!
| October 28, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
The “TurnItIn.com” website allows teachers quickly and easily to identify plagiarism in student papers: http://turnitin.com/static/products_services/plagiarism_prevention.html. more
Do 70,000 Australian scientists really oppose ID?
| October 28, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
Yes, we’ve read it. But the claim that 70,000 Australian scientists oppose ID is comparable to saying that hundreds of thousands of U.S. scientists oppose ID because the AAAS has formally denounced it. Here’s something just in from an Australian colleague: One issue which has really been irritating is the ‘error’ which appeared in the… more
Casey Luskin to debate Nick Matzke on Ron Insana Show this Saturday
| October 27, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Evolution, Intelligent Design |
This Saturday Casey Luskin is scheduled to debate Nick Matzke of the NCSE at 10 am (pacific time) on the Ron Insana show (http://www.westwoodone.com/talk_ron_insana_bios.htm). The debate topic? ID of course. more
NABT trolling for controversy
| October 27, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Education, Evolution |
Dear Colleagues: NABT has recently received several requests from the media (including CNN television and the Baltimore Sun newspaper) to interview teachers who have been pressured by parents, principals, school boards, etc. either to soften or eliminate the teaching of evolution or to include intelligent design into their curricula. If you have had this experience… more
“The Compulsory Evolutionists”
| October 27, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Evolution |
Fred Plans To Devolve — Bacteria More Respectable by Fred Reed http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=113836 I read with what would be despair if I cared enough that the courts, this time in Pennsylvania, are again getting their knickers in a knot over Evolution. Oh help. There must be another planet somewhere upon which to hide. more
Favorable Court Ruling in California Lawsuit re Evolution Debate
| October 26, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Education, Evolution |
For IMMEDIATE RELEASE on October 26, 2005 Citizens Have Right to Present Proposed Evolution Policy at School Board Meetings School Officials Must Answer in Court for Alleged Religious Discrimination Sacramento, CA In an important legal victory for citizens seeking to improve how evolution is taught in public schools, a federal judge has ruled that California… more
“Not just an American phenomenon” — The recent Prague ID conference
| October 26, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
Here’s a report on the recent Prague ID conference by someone on the ground from our side — quite a different perspective from the AP report that appeared in the NYTimes and elsewhere. On Saturday, October 22, 2005, almost 700 people from 18 nations gathered in Prague (Czech Republic) for a conference on “Darwin and… more
More “Even-Handed” Treatment of ID at Cornell
| October 26, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
Provine Talks on Intelligent Design Debate Defends theory of evolution October 26, 2005 by Brian Kaviar Sun Staff Writer From http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/10/26/435f266296320 William Provine, the C.A. Alexander Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, gave a lecture entitled “Evolution and Intelligent Design†at Alpha Delta Phi fraternity last night. The lecture came on the heels of Interim… more
Stephen Jay Gould — Master of Equivocation
| October 26, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Evolution |
Denyse O’Leary on her blog is arguing that Stephen Jay Gould would never have signed on with the National Center for Science Education’s Selling Evolution’s Project Steve, whose signatories agree that “there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence” (go here for the… more
Prague Conference on ID
| October 26, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
October 24, 2005 ‘Intelligent Design’ Supporters Gather By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 4:23 p.m. ET PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) — Hundreds of supporters of ”intelligent design” theory gathered in Prague in the first such conference in eastern Europe, but Czech scholars boycotted the event insisting it had no scientific credence. About 700 scientists from… more
ID breaking into the music industry
| October 26, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
[Note: Even though I own the domain name overwhelmingevidence.com, I cannot take credit for these songs -- I wish I could, but I can't.] OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE (to the tune of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”) more
[Off Topic:] Total Fertility Rate (TFR)
| October 26, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Biology, Religion |
The single most important factor in determining future population is the total fertility rate (TFR). The TFR is defined as the average number of babies born to women during their reproductive years. A TFR of 2.1 is considered the replacement rate; once a TFR of a population reaches 2.1 the population will remain stable assuming… more
“Monkey Claims Copyright on Hamlet: Film at 11.”
| October 25, 2005 | Posted by William Dembski under Evolution |
Here’s a fun piece about monkeys typing Shakespeare. It’s been out for a decade but it’s worth worth looking at in case you haven’t seen it (and worth taking a second look at even if you have): http://www.nutters.org/docs/monkeys. more