Uncommon Descent

Archive for March, 2006

31 March 2006

Darwinian Mechanisms Explain Everything — Even Laughter!

GilDodgen

I got a chuckle (make that a bellylaugh) out of this article: http://foxnews.webmd.com/content/article/120/113762
Get out your notepad and check off the evolutionary presuppositions, like the notion that laughter predates speech. Make special note of speculation presented as fact.
Be aware that the Provine mentioned in this article is not William, but Robert. Here are some excerpts:

31 March 2006

Good Democracy, Bad Democracy, and No Democracy

DaveScot

Henry Neufeld is entitled to an opinion. So are all these people:
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=581
Only 12% of the adults in the U.S. think Darwinian evolution should be taught in a vacuum. Biblical creationism is out on establishment clause grounds but ID is neutral on the nature of the intelligence and widely supported as contrast […]

31 March 2006

Origin-of-life problem just went from bad to worse

scordova

(University of Bath)
Scientists discovered the minimal genome size needed for the first life increased by a factor of 2. That may seem like a modest rise in complexity, but consider that a target of just 10 bits growing in specificity to 20 bits (a factor of 2) implies that the target is now […]

30 March 2006

No More Establishment Clause for PZ Myers

DaveScot

Myers whines about Witt’s rhetoric comparing evolution, Castro, and popularism. Meanwhile, Myers is perfectly happy to defend evolution via judicial fiat. When a scientist needs to play the constitution card to censor criticism of his pet theory you can rest assured the theory is one that’s in crisis.

30 March 2006

Survival of the Fittest Golfer

BarryA

This just in. My morning paper reports that LPGA pro Natalie Gulbis has an extra vertebra in her back that enables her to bring her club so far around she has her back to the target. The random mutation that led to Ms. Galbis’ extra vertebra apparently confers a golfing advantage on her, […]

30 March 2006

ID vs. evolution debate enters beer market

scordova

Is this a kind of Darwinalia, or should I say, Darwin Ale Ia?
Evolution Amber Ale
(Hat Tip: David Coppedge, Creation Safaris)

30 March 2006

Evolution in free-fall

William Dembski

Does Lynn Margulis’s endosymbiosis story resolve evolution’s deep problems? Apparently its resolution of the prokaryote-eukaryote transition is far from secure. The paper below notes that with advances in research “the evolutionary gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes is now deeper.”
Eukaryotic evolution, changes and challenges
T. Martin Embley and William Martin
Nature 440, 623-630 (30 March 2006) | […]

30 March 2006

Finally, Nick Matzke Finds An Opponent That Makes Him Look Smart

DaveScot

I’d like to be the first to congratulate Nick Matzke on finding an adversary that makes Nick look well versed in science by comparison. It’s about time. Maybe if Nick starting fisking nursery rhymes for bad science he could appear even smarter than he does now.

29 March 2006

Flew wins Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth — Who said ID doesn’t pay?!

William Dembski

Press release issued today from Biola University:
Former Atheist Receives Award From Intelligent Design Community
29 March 2006
La Mirada, Calif. — British philosopher Antony Flew, once considered the most prominent defender of atheism in the English-speaking world, will accept the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth on May 11 from Biola University, a Christian university […]

29 March 2006

www.4truth.net

William Dembski

About a year ago I was asked to commission and collect 30 or so articles on science for an apologetics website run by my denomination, the SBC. The URL for this apologetics website as a whole is www.4truth.net and for the science section is www.4truth.net/site/c.hiKXLbPNLrF/b.786349/k.CAAC/Science.htm.
I want to call your attention to two particularly insightful articles, […]

29 March 2006

Junk DNA — is it really?

William Dembski

Junk DNA May Not Be So Junky After All
3/23/2006
Researchers at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins have invented a cost-effective and highly efficient way of analyzing what many have termed “junk” DNA and identified regions critical for controlling gene function. And they have found that these control regions from different species don’t […]

28 March 2006

Yet another feather in natural selection’s cap — now Boolean logic! What hasn’t NS accomplished?

William Dembski

Mutations Change the Boolean Logic of Gene Regulation
Richard Robinson
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040064
Published: March 28, 2006
It is easy to think of a gene acting like a light bulb, switching either on or off, remaining silent, or being transcribed by the RNA-making machinery. The region of DNA that controls the gene’s output is called its regulatory region, and in […]

28 March 2006

A Reply to Robert T. Miller

BarryA

This is a letter I sent to First Things today.
Dear Editors of First Things:
Robert T. Miller argues that Judge Jones’ decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District was correct even though Miller admits that Intelligent Design (ID) is not religion (Darwin in Dover, PA, April 2006). Miller’s conclusion is plainly a non sequitur. […]

28 March 2006

It’s Only Fundamentalist Christians They Hate

DaveScot

Arden Chatfield explains that the Darwinian narrative apologists don’t hate all Christians. That would be wrong says he. They only hate fundamentalist Christians and that’s okay because the fundamentalists, he explains, desire to enslave and dominate others.

28 March 2006

Baylor shafts Beckwith

William Dembski

March 27, 2006
First Things
Joseph Bottum
Down in Waco, Texas, there is a Baptist school called Baylor University. It was never a major player in American academics, and with the strained situation in which American colleges found themselves at the end of the baby boom, Baylor had problems figuring out what it should do.
Certainly, the school played […]

28 March 2006

Darwin Worship Adopted by the Church of Anything Goes

DaveScot

Jack Krebs is crowing about a class on Darwinian dogma put on in conjunction with the Unitarian Universalist “Church”. He plans on preaching to the choir.

27 March 2006

Richard Dawkins — ID’s best friend and benefactor

William Dembski

Why the intelligent design lobby thanks God for Richard Dawkins
Anti-religious Darwinists are promulgating a false dichotomy between faith and science that gives succour to creationists
Madeleine Bunting
Monday March 27, 2006
The Guardian
On Wednesday evening, at a debate in Oxford, Richard Dawkins will be gathering the plaudits for his long and productive intellectual career. It is […]

27 March 2006

Another Boner from the Church Burners

DaveScot

Last month the big joke was three college kids torching 9 churches in Alabama. This month it’s making a mockery of the religion of 8 of 10 Americans. The bungling political ineptitude of the Darwin worshippers is just incredible. They’re their own worst enemy.

27 March 2006

New Brochure on Kansas Science Standards Sets the Record Straight

crandaddy

Tom Magnuson at ARN “In the News” and Robert Crowther at Evolution News & Views have both reported on a new brochure published by Kansas Science Standards 2005. It’s clear and concise and should really help to dispell any misinformation that has been circulating about.

26 March 2006

Could Ethiopian skull be missing link?

Scottus

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Scientists in northeastern Ethiopia said Saturday that they have discovered the skull of a small human ancestor that could be a missing link between the extinct Homo erectus and modern man.

Article at CNN.com

26 March 2006

Lecture at the College of New Jersey on ID

William Dembski

Lecture at TCNJ on intelligent design
Saturday, March 25, 2006
EWING — Dr. William Dembski, a mathematician and philosopher, will lecture on “Understanding Intelligent Design” 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in Kendall Hall at The College of New Jersey. A question-and-answer session will follow.
Dembski is the Carl F.H. Henry Professor of Science and Theology at Southern Seminary in […]

26 March 2006

Hope, not Proof

BarryA

In my prior post I said (actually, as one commenter pointed out, I meant to say), ID gives us reason to hope for freedom from Darwinism and its implications with respect to objective morality. One commenter asked what ID has to do with establishing an objective basis for morality. The answer, of course, […]

25 March 2006

Say it this time with feeling: “Isn’t natural selection amazing!”

William Dembski

What is the survival and reproductive value of a perfect memory? Let me guess: the woman “AJ” described in the article below also has an uncanny ability to attract mates and has given birth to numerous offspring — all on account of her prodigious memory!
Woman With Perfect Memory Baffles Scientists
Updated 11:50 PM ET March […]

25 March 2006

Darwin’s Path of the Law

BarryA

My name is Barry Arrington. I am an attorney in Denver, Colorado specializing in complex litigation and constitutional law. My passion is defending constitutional liberties, especially those guaranteed by the First Amendment.
I am also very interested in Darwinism’s connection to the law. How, you might ask, is a theory of […]

25 March 2006

The ID perspective on viruses?

William Dembski

Do viruses exploit cells or do cells also exploit viruses? Viruses may have varying roles that we have hardly begun to discover. This conviction is likely to grow stronger as the evidence for the ubiquity and density of viruses in nature accumulates.
‘Coinage’ of plankton — viruses
BOSTON, March 24 (UPI) — Sea experiments show there’s […]

25 March 2006

[quote mine] Mark Perakh on the supernatural and science

scordova

there still remain unanswered many fundamental questions about nature….nothing should be prohibited as a legitimate subject of science, and excluding the supernatural out of hand serves no useful purpose.

25 March 2006

100 More Heretics in 30 Days

DaveScot

Thanks to MatS for bringing this to my attention in a comment here. I thought it deserved more exposure so here it is.
For your convenience here’s a sample letter from one of the newest heretics:

25 March 2006

“Why intelligent design will change everything”

Douglas Moran

Lynn Barton, college educated home-schooling ex-stock broker mother of two tells it like it is:
Like a fierce game of whack-a-mole, wherever I.D.’s politically incorrect head pops up, its opponents rush to smack it back down.
I am enjoying all this tremendously. What makes it so much fun to watch is that so far not one […]

24 March 2006

Traipsing into Evolution

William Dembski

LEGAL EXPERTS ANALYZE THE IMPACT OF THE DOVER INTELLIGENT DESIGN TRIAL DECISION IN THE NEW BOOK, “TRAIPSING INTO EVOLUTION”
Traipsing Into Evolution is the first published critique of federal Judge John E. Jones’s decision in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, the foremeost trial to attempt to address the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design. In this concise […]

24 March 2006

On Threatening Judge Jones

Douglas Moran

Look at this.
I suggest in no uncertain terms that threatening anyone or anything because of their political, religious, scientific, or any other belief is NOT acceptable behavior and should not be tolerated by anyone, especially on this blog. Origins, Darwinism, ID, etc. are all complex, highly scientific topics with implications beyond science that are […]

24 March 2006

The Social Dynamics of the Scientific Community

Patrick

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0600591103v1
“We analyzed a very large set of molecular interactions that had been derived automatically from biological texts. We found that published statements, regardless of their verity, tend to interfere with interpretation of the subsequent experiments and, therefore, can act as scientific “microparadigms,” similar to dominant scientific theories.