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ID culture a part of Starbuck’s coffee culture?

wesley smith

In response to Bill’s earlier thread Who said evolution wasn’t progressive, to say nothing of warm and fuzzy?, Rob Crowther posted a followup here: Beasts in the Forest.

Crowther points out Discovery Institute CSC Fellow Wesley Smith has a quote appearing on Starbuck’s coffee cups. Read More ›

A. N. Wilson skewered — it couldn’t happen to a nicer credulous moron!

A. N. Wilson, the epitomy of English snootiness, recently fell for an elaborate prank that he could have avoided if he had drawn a design inference. Note that “Eve de Harben” doesn’t exist either, and the letters in “her” name are an anagram for “Ever been had?”

Why am I being so hard on Wilson? Here’s what he wrote back in 1999 about the good people of Kansas: “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.” (go here and scroll down) What goes around comes around.

The Sunday Times August 27, 2006

Betjeman love letter is horrid hoax
Richard Brooks, Arts Editor

HIS one regret, Sir John Betjeman once said, was that he had not had enough sex. So the late poet laureate’s biographer could be forgiven the thrill of discovery he felt when someone sent him a passionate love letter supposedly written by Betjeman to a mistress.

Now, however, it turns out that the poet, born 100 years ago tomorrow, never wrote the letter. Instead, AN Wilson, the biographer, admitted this weekend he had fallen victim to an elaborate hoax.

The trick was so successful that the letter has been published in Wilson’s new book Betjeman as evidence of the poet’s previously unknown “fling”.

The giveaway — and a clue that a bitter rival of Wilson’s may be behind the trick — is that the capital letters at the beginning of the sentences in the letter spell out a vivid personal insult to the biographer. Read More ›

[quote mine] if truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits

….if truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say. Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably. But hasn’t evolution helped guide animal and plant breeding? Not very much. Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of ‘like begets like’. Even now, as its practitioners admit, the field of quantitative genetics has been of little value in helping improve varieties. Future advances will almost certainly come from transgenics, which is not based on evolution at all.

Jerry Coyne

This quote appeared in this article : Jerry Coyne Attacks Evolution-Skeptic With Namecalling in Nature by Casey Luskin. Luskin was writing in response to Jerry Coyne’s article in Nature Selling Darwin.

Coyne is also quoted as saying:

After lecturing this spring to the Alaska Bar Association on the debate over intelligent design and evolution, I was approached at the podium by a young lawyer. The tight-lipped smile, close-cropped hair and maniacal gleam in his eyes told me that he was probably a creationist out for blood. I was not wrong.

Incidentally, a creationist lawyer does not necessarily look like that. As proof of my assertion, here is a picture of a creationist lawyer and molecular biologist, Dr. Kelly Hollowell, PhD, JD:
Kelly Hollowell Read More ›

Is a materialistic approach to teaching the origin of life inherently atheistic and therefore religious?

[There’s] a new 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that approaches the issue of teaching origin-of-life theories in public schools from a new angle . . . Few are aware that the courts have ruled atheism is a religion for the purposes of the First Amendment in 2005 and thought about its implications on the teaching of origin-of-life theories in public schools. In brief, evolution becomes both a religious and scientifc theory (using the court’s definition of scientific theory), and abiogenesis becomes purely a religious theory. That being the case, these atheist origin-of-life theories should be treated the same as any other origin-of-life theory. Anything less is unconstitutional. Visit the website at http://originoflifefairness.org for much more information and the links/facts to back it Read More ›

What I would tell the Catholic Church: re intelligent design and evolution

Apparently, there is a big confab right now at the Vatican to decide what to say about intelligent design vs. evolution. A friend insisted, for some reason, that I offer an opinion. Heck, everyone is doing that, it seems. Ever since Pope Benedict XVI said, in his inaugural mass, that we are not “some casual and meaningless product of evolution,” the Catholic Church has found itself in the spotlight, asserting, against the adminbots and pundits of a materialist society, the we are purposeful and meaningful. The fact that I am a Catholic myself makes me less willing, not more willing, to butt in, but  how about this: Recover your heritage! Recover the traditional Catholic idea of evolution, which is not a Darwinian Read More ›

An Honest Presentation of the Evidence in our Public Schools

Let’s face it, the reason Darwinian evolution is so controversial, especially in the public schools, is that it has profound implications concerning who we are, where we came from, and whether or not our lives have ultimate meaning and purpose. This is not the case in chemistry, physics or mathematics. Schoolchildren are not as unperceptive as some people would like to believe, and they pick up on these implications immediately, as my daughter did in the seventh grade.

Darwinian theory has been singled out for special scrutiny in public education not only for this reason, which should be enough, but because the evidence is not nearly as solid as it is in the hard sciences such as those mentioned above.

In a previous thread (https://uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1514) I commented about the suppression of evidence and discussion concerning Darwinian theory in the public schools. I don’t advocate for the teaching of ID in the public schools, and I do agree that evolution has occurred. Things are not now as they once were, so “evolution” has taken place by definition — living things have changed over time. There is no substantive controversy here.

What I object to is an incomplete at best, and dishonest at worst, presentation of the evidence for Darwinian theory in public education. Here are some proposals for how the evidence could be more appropriately presented without “subverting science.” Perhaps commenters could add to the list, and I’d be curious as to why anyone would object to such an approach.

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Vatican to reassess its view of evolution and ID?

Pope may embrace intelligent design Pope Benedict XVI may reportedly embrace the theory of intelligent design, possibly heralding a fundamental shift in the Vatican’s view of evolution. Philosophers, scientists and other intellectuals are to meet with the pope this week at his summer palace near Rome to discuss the issue, The Guardian reported Monday. Advocates of the theory argue the universe and living things are so complex they must be a product of intelligent design rather than natural selection. Critics say the theory is a disguise for creationism. Vatican officials last week announced evolution and creation would be the topics for this year’s meeting of the pope’s Schulerkreis — a group consisting mainly of his former doctoral students that has Read More ›

Lee Smolin — next thing you know he’ll be making room for ID

Wired interview with Lee Smolin on his upcoming book: The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next From the interview: “Smolin says that string theory is unconvincing — maybe even nonscientific — and that physicists have embraced it at the expense of other promising research.” “… But string theorists say they could probably invent versions of the theory that work either way. We’d have to change our notion of what science is to accommodate this proposition. You just can’t do science on that basis.” “Science moves faster when there is plenty of debate and controversy.” “But the disagreement is not about whether string theory is worth pursuing. It’s about whether Read More ›

UVa faculty alarmed by ID’s presence on their campus

Is there another Guillermo Gonzalez in the making? Not quite, but there are some distressing signals coming out of UVa. This time the controversy surrounds the IDEA chapter and its faculty adviser, Bryce Paschal.

[For those who may not be aware, UVa is Paul Gross’s school. Gross was co-author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse with Barbara Forrest. ]
Read More ›

Evolutionary Manifesto by John Davison (part II-1,II-2,II-3)

This is the next installment in the series on John Davison’s An Evolutionary Manifesto: A New Hypothesis for Organic Change. In addition to being a professor of biology since 1954, John is one of the few elites with a published pro-ID peer-reviewed paper (see: Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis).

Dr. Davison’s work is relevant to the ideas of pro-ID evolutionists who explore the concept of front-loaded evolution as well as modern scientific creationists. I never thought that I (a creationist) would be so enthusiastic about a work promoting an evolutionary hypothesis. Dr. Davison’s work is gaining appreciation across the spectrum of views within ID’s big tent.

This installment will be part of Dr. Davison’s cogent refutation of the concluding remarks in Darwin’s Origin of Species.
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Darwinism: Why it is philosophy, not science

My most recent post talked about why Fr. George Coyne was asked to retire from the Vatican Observatory, after his vigorous campaign to oppose the Vatican’s efforts to distance itself from Darwinism (or “evolutionism,” as Cardinal Schoenborn likes to call it).

I shouldn’t have to point this out, but hey. Sidelining Fr. Coyne does not mean that the Vatican is weighing in on the interminable US school board wars.

Yes, the Pope used the term “progetto intelligente,” which is a functionally equivalent rendering of “intelligent design” in a homily. But only a naive person would imagine that the Catholic Church, which is thousands of years old, would stake all on current specific ideas of American biochemists, mathematicians, or astronomers.

Why? It need not. Philosopher David Stove has already demolished Darwinism by doing nothing more than unpacking what neo-Darwinists really expect us to believe, to help them preserve their theory.

And if you really believe all that the Darwinists wish, Read More ›

The Vatican and the Astronomer: Why George Coyne had to go

From what I can determine from recent pronouncements, the Vatican is not backing off the process of evicting Darwinism (“evolutionism”) as an innocuous belief system that a good Catholic can accept. Here’s Cardinal Schoenborn recently proposing an evolution debate:

Cardinal Schönborn, who sparked a worldwide debate in 2005 with an article in the New York Times on the subject, called for clarification of the difference between the “theory of evolution” and “evolutionism,” the latter understood as an ideology, based on scientific theory.

By way of example, the cardinal mentioned Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who saw in the publication of Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species,” “the scientific foundation for their Marxist materialist theory. This is evolutionism, not theory of evolution.”

The archbishop of Vienna warned against the application of this evolutionist ideology in fields such as economic neo-liberalism, or bioethical issues, where there is the risk of creating new eugenic theories.

[ … ]
Cardinal Schönborn explained that the phrase meant that “the theory, as scientific theory, has been expanded with new scientific data, but of course that phrase cannot be interpreted as an ‘Amen’ of the Catholic Church to ideological evolutionism.”

It should be obvious to any reasonable person that Schoenborn knows exactly what the issues around Darwinism (“evolutionism”) are and he is not backing down.

Early last week ,the news broke that, as of August 19, Fr. George Coyne, 73, director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory, had been replaced by Argentinian Jesuit Fr. José Gabriel Funes as the new director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory.

Coyne, who had been director since 1978, had become well known to the news media in recent months because of his opposition to Cardinal Schoenborn who, with the apparent blessing of the Pope, has been attempting to put some distance between the Catholic church and Darwinism since July 2005.

Maybe too well known.

The background to the issue is that John Paul II had said that evolution was “more than a hypothesis” but immediately went on to disclaim any materialist interpretation of it, which certainly includes Darwinism. However, the American pop sci media jumped on the first part of his statement like dogs on a rabbit, resulting in any number of essentially mistaken or misleading claims that the Catholic church “supports evolution.” These claims are, of course, used by those who would foist Darwinism on an unbelieving public.

In the sense in which the Catholic Church supports evolution, Michael Behe, the much reviled ID biochemist, also supports evolution. (Behe is a practicing Catholic, by the way.) That is, Behe and Schoenborn accept that evolution happens. But so? That doesn’t prove that Darwin was right about the power of natural selection or that today’s neo-Darwinists are right about anything at all. And those who revile Behe’s views would be unwise to hope for much better from the Vatican.

Apparently, Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education (called by some here the “National Center for Selling Evolution”) has attempted to spin Fr. Coyne’s departure as a normal retirement. He told Dick Fischer at the ASA discussion group that a media account that suggested otherwise was tendentious:

… after all, Coyne is 73 years old, and his retirement could have been predicted in any case. And there’s no reason to think that Coyne’s successor’s view differs from Coyne’s … “

Nice try, Glenn. But … Read More ›