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.

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? […]

The interesting thing about abiogenesis is that there’s no empirical evidence at all to support it yet it’s taught in a vacuum absent any other explanations of how life may have first appeared on this planet.

….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? […]

Pearl Jam - Do The Evolution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Sm3trB1fe4.
Contrast this with the following music video. You think evolution might be less of a force in this singer’s life?

Five For Fighting - The Riddle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE9KjXGVl3c.

[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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

When we visited the zoo the other day, my wife snapped this photo just outside of the Panda play area. I guess when they put together the verbage for the sign, they neglected to consult Gould because I didn’t read “looks jury-rigged” anywhere on there.

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Edward Blyth (1810-1873)

Of course today, for biologists, Darwin is second only to God, and for many he may rank still higher.
— Michael White, 2002

God and science: You just can’t please everyone
A Review of Francis Collins’s The Language of God
By Steve Fuller
From NewScientist 26 August 2006, p. 48.
Denying the real conflict between religion and science is a sure formula for
confusion, finds STEVE FULLER.
————–
Let me start by declaring an interest: I am that Steve Fuller who gave
evidence for the defence […]

Once the discussion of biological origins opens up in the way the good Cardinal proposes (see below), it’s over for standard evolutionary theory. To be sure, the distinction between “evolutionism” as philosophy and “evolution” as science is valid and at first blush may seem like a way to keep evolution safe. But this distinction is […]

[From a colleague who sometimes posts here in the comments:] Like fresh meat tossed into a pit of jackels, Jonathan Wells’ newest book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design has sent the Panda’s Thumb crowd into a feeding frenzy. Right now there are at least 4 opening posts devoted to taking […]

I can’t begin to describe the amount of mileage I’ve gotten out of Mt. Rushmore for the cause of Intelligent Design. It appears that this well is about to run dry (taken from thebrites.org):

The most well-known recorded clash between non-biologists and biologists over evolutionary theory was at Wistar 1966 :

a handful of mathematicians and biologists were chattering over a picnic lunch organized by the physicist, Victor Weisskopf, who is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

I was going to post this as a comment in Salvador’s thread (http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1481) but it became too long, so I’m posting it as a new topic.
On the subject of computer checkers I have some observations. I hate to brag (okay, I lied!) but I am one of the world’s leading authorities on this subject.
I know […]

Dr. Davison has been a professor of biology for over 45 years. He is among the few elite who have managed to get a pro-ID paper published in a peer-reviewed journal. I very much enjoyed reading An Evolutionary Manifesto.

The existence of information is a fundamental refutation of materialism.
Information has no mass. It has no physical dimensions. And it can exist in multiple places at the same time. It has no physical or materialistic properties whatsoever. Put a gigabyte of information on your computer’s blank hard disk, and check out how much more the […]

Right now this is how Darwinists are selling their product:
Watch this video:
http://www.accolo.com/Accolo-Rethink-Recruiting.wmv

This is how they need to sell their product:
Go here: http://www.spicyparis.com/index.html.
Here’s what recruiting the right people means to an ad campaign (which is what Darwinism has become):

Vatican Astronomer Replaced by Bruce Chapman

Chapman writes:
Pope Benedict XVI has replaced an evangelizing Darwinist, Dr. George Coyne, as director the Vatican Observatory, according to Zenit News. A Jesuit with a doctorate in astronomy, Dr. Coyne in recent years made himself the public scourge of Darwin critics and scientific proponents of intelligent design. Increasingly his theology […]

On Panda’s Thumb Pim Van Meurs preaches confidently to the choir that we are all biased in that we see faces in natural objects created by chance.  Evidently the take-home point Pim wishes to make is that this is equivalent to seeing machinery in natural objects created by chance.  So I guess for Pim a cloud that […]

Dave has proven beyond a doubt that intelligent agents can construct useful trial and error algorithms.  As long as the way the trials are conducted and the way the results are judged is well specified then trial and error algorithms work!  Of course we all learn to search for solutions using trial and error as children.  […]

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Excerpt from Current biology
Volume 16, Issue 16, 22 August 2006, Pages R619-R620
doi:10.1016/j.cub.2006.07.041
Copyright © 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Q & A: Roger Hendrix
Pittsburgh Bacteriophage Institute and Department of Biological Sciences,
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA
Available online 21 August 2006.
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….
Q: Given the prominence of the evolutionary perspective in your work, can
you comment on the current […]