I’ve decided to put Uncommon Descent into mothballs indefinitely. Although I’ve enjoyed blogging, I find it distracts from more pressing work that I need to get done. On those few occasions when I will need to blog, I’ll probably do it at www.idthefuture.com. If you want to keep track of my work, consult www.designinference.com, which […]
My book The Design Inference is now out in paperback (I just received 6 copies via FedEx from Cambridge University Press). It might interest readers of this blog to see the difference in the back covers between the paperback edition and the original hardcover edition (after the first two printings, Cambridge omitted the jacket cover […]
Fuz Rana and Hugh Ross, who head up Reasons to Believe (RTB), have issued a press release in which they extol Judge Jone’s decision in the Dover case in coming down against ID: go here for the press release. I’ve already commented on RTB’s distancing itself from ID before on this blog (go here).
Rana […]
Case in point — Michael Ruse for his anti-ID article in Playboy:
Ken Miller and I had a brief five minute radio debate on the BBC on Friday, December 16th. He made two point which I could not address because the BBC host did not give me the opportunity, but which I wish to address briefly now: (1) The main weakness of evolution is that it is […]
The problem with this headline is that it’s dated not 1859 but 2005:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10361302
In what other science do its scientists have to do so much cheerleading for their theory?
Question: When Venter and Co. create the first synthetic life form, will it have been by intelligent design? Follow-up question: Will they do it from scratch, i.e., from non-biosynthesized materials as had to have happened when life originated, or by generously helping themselves to enzymes and a host of other biosynthesized materials?
Creating first synthetic […]
A creationist on one of the listserves to which I subscribe wrote:
Ken Miller and Rick Wood (skeptic and host of the radio program audiomartini) claim to have more respect for young earth creationists than ID proponents because “at least they are upfront about what they believe.” According to them, everyone knows what the real […]
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2005/12/judge_jones_follows_aclu_ignor.html
http://www.metanexus.net/metanexus_online/show_article.asp?9385
[From an acquaintance:] “Sci-Fi authors have no problem pushing the envelope on physics, chemistry, astrophysics, cosmology, planetology, genetics, nanotech, biotech, neurotechnology, information technology, longevity, robotics, xenology etc. They regularly eat Einstein, or the speed-of-light barrier, for breakfast. But one staple of modern science is consistently taken for granted, never questioned, never paradigm shifted, pushed beyond […]
[Excerpt:] In nature, shape is cheaper than material. This has been shown a number of times and is manifested in the remarkably high performance, both absolute and specific, of biological materials (wood is one of the most efficient of materials; antler bone is tougher than any man-made ceramic composite) which is achieved not by the […]
I reported on this fascinating bit of nanotechnology earlier (go here). Here’s another article on it.
High-Speed Microscopic Engine Found
By Ker Than
LiveScience
In 1702, the famous Dutch scientist Anton van Leeuwenhoek made an interesting discovery while gazing at some pond water through a hand-made microscope: He observed a bell-shaped organism that used a long, rapidly contracting […]
The court offers convincing evidence that some members the Dover school board would have been delighted to promote their old time religion in the classroom. These board members apparently accepted intelligent design as a compromise, the nearest they could come to their objective within the law. Does that make any mention of […]
[From a colleague who is a trial lawyer:] One thing I know from picking juries for 18 years is that in a courtroom what matters most is the bias of the decision-maker. If his biases favor your position, you have a very good chance of having him rule in your favor on the […]
The same day that Judge Jones ruled it unconsitutional to teach about intelligent design in public school science curricula, the National Forensic League (i.e. the national high school debate organization) released the following 2006 January Public Forum Topic:
Resolved: In the United States, public high school science curriculum should include the study of the Theory of […]
Judge Jones rendered his verdict in the Dover case today. On September 30th I blogged what I thought would be ultimate significance of Dover — go here. Even though media and bloggers are now analyzing the decision in depth (for the full decision, go here or here), I have little to add to what I […]
I reported earlier on this blog that I was to be the only gentile speaker at an Orthodox Jewish (Lubavitcher) conference on Torah and science (go here, here, and here). That conference took place in Miami last week, and I gave a talk there on ID (December 14th). The talk was very well attended […]
[Update: I’ve just learned — see comment below — that a new and improved version of this Danish blog is now available at www.intelligentdesign.dk.]
http://intelligentdesign.blogsome.com
Here’s an excerpt from Lisa Anderson’s piece today in the Chicago Tribune about ID at Baylor. Notice that Baylor’s main concern in shutting down my Polanyi Center (for the full story, go here) was not the truth of ID but that “it made Baylor look like it could be stereotyped and placed in a particular […]
Who made the following predition: “Like the Marxists, the Darwinists are going to wind up as a cult in which few believe this side of Berkeley and Harvard Square.” Phil Johnson did over a decade ago. But these actual words are Pat Buchanan’s and were published today.
Tom Bethell Puts Darwinism on Defense
by Patrick J. […]
ID appearing in Doonesbury indicates how far this topic has risen in the public debate.
The well-known Colombian journalist Daniel Samper wrote an article about ID for the most important Colombian newspaper a few weeks back. According to Daniel Andrés, the article says the usual things against ID and it’s clear that the journalist has not read anything about it except what other newspapers say. Daniel Andrés responded in his […]
The latest edition of Jeffrey Bennett et al’s astronomy textbook The Cosmic Perspective (4th edition) is now out. Sure enough, “intelligent design” is in the index. Indeed, it gets a full page treatment (p. 714). Below is the scan of that page. Does this text provides a fair representation of ID? Hardly. It […]
As you read the extract below, ask yourself the following: (1) Why does biology hand us technical devices that human design engineers drool over? (2) Why don’t we ever see natural selection or any other unintelligent evolutionary mechanisms produce such systems? (3) Why don’t we have any plausible detailed step-by-step models for how such evolutionary […]
Science 2 December 2005:
Vol. 310. no. 5753, p. 1421
DOI: 10.1126/science.310.5753.1421b
Founder’s Message
Combing through cosmic radiation could reveal a message from the universe’s creator, if it has one, say two physicists.
According to theory, anyone could make a universe by squashing a lump of matter violently enough to replicate the big bang. And by tweaking something called […]
Note the following concession at the end of this New Scientist interview: “If, for some unforeseen reason, the landscape turns out to be inconsistent - maybe for mathematical reasons, or because it disagrees with observation - I am pretty sure that physicists will go on searching for natural explanations of the world. But I have […]
[From a colleague:] There is a wonderful critique of Darwinism by the French zoologist Remy Chauvin. It is called Le darwinisme, ou La fin d’un mythe [Darwinism, or The end of a myth] (Editions du Rocher, 1997). It is even better, especially for polemical purposes, than the book by Chandebois, previously discussed on this blog. […]
Patricia Princehouse — the philosophy professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, who has vilified ID and its supporters for years — has published a letter to the editor of USA Today (see below) in which she replies to Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel. The two journalists, one conservative and the other […]
With questions so basic as these, why is evolutionary theory taught with such confidence in our textbooks?
THE QUESTIONS
The Top 25
Essays by our news staff on 25 big questions facing science over the next quarter-century.
http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/125th
> What Is the Universe Made Of?
> What is the Biological Basis of Consciousness?
> Why Do Humans Have So Few Genes?
> To […]
It will be interesting to see the anti-ID faculty flop around as they witness the rebellion.