Monthly Archives: October 2006
ID on South Park?
| October 31, 2006 | Posted by crandaddy under Culture |
South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone–two guys who are not exactly known for refraining from pushing buttons–have made an episode of the show which addresses the topic of opposition to evolution in public schools. It airs tomorrow night at 10:00 EST (9:00 PST) on Comedy Central. Go here for a synopsis and a… more
Turkish Education Minister Supports ID
| October 31, 2006 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
Mustafa Akyol is some one you should know. Check out his blog, where he describes this latest development in Turkey: http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2006/10/turkish_minister_supports_intelligent_design.php. more
P. Z. Myers — does he have a clue how bad this looks?
| October 30, 2006 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
It’s hard to find a Darwinist more extreme than P. Z. Myers (though they do exist). Darwinian extremists like Myers are the reason these people are so hard to parody (see http://cedros.globat.com/~thebrites.org/index.htm, The Brites, which has temporarily closed its doors). Have a look at Myers’s most recent escapades: http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/MikeSAdams/2006/10/30/philippians_413. I want to encourage discussion not… more
William Dembski and 3 IDers cited in a significant OOL peer-reviewed article by Trevors and Abel
| October 30, 2006 | Posted by scordova under Comp. Sci. / Eng., Intelligent Design, Science, Self-Org. Theory |
Accepted July 2006 Physics of Life Reviews [Update: thanks to Todd for a link to the full paper:] Self-organization vs. self-ordering events in life-origin models [Update: IDers Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, and R.L. Olsen were cited as well!! They wrote the book in 1984 which is considered the beginning of the modern ID movement. Also,… more
Harvard’s origin of life project: Taking intelligent design seriously – sure, but what follows?
| October 29, 2006 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Gareth Cook’s article on the new Harvard origin of life project in the Boston Globe, reads like a press release (except for the very end where he actually quotes Michael Behe). Bill blogged on it, wondering how seriously they would take any evidence of intelligent design. Starting with $1 million a year, we are told,… more
Harvard’s “Origin of Life in the Universe Initiative”
| October 29, 2006 | Posted by William Dembski under Evolution, Intelligent Design |
How much play do you think ID is going to get in Harvard’s new origin of life initiative: President Bush recently said intelligent design should be discussed in schools, along with evolution. Like intelligent design, the Harvard project begins with awe at the nature of life, and with an admission that, almost 150 years after… more
Intelligent design requires evidence: Ah, but what can be considered evidence?
| October 28, 2006 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Recently, an ID-friendly scientist assured me that intelligent design would easily be accepted if only the ID guys would come up with evidence. To my mind, that shows the difficulty people have in understanding what is at stake: the very question of what may count as evidence. Here is how I replied:   Bench science, like… more
[Request:] Need to quote-mine Gould
| October 27, 2006 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism |
I seem to recall that Stephen Jay Gould, when pressed about his views on evolution before his death, remarked that he was a “Darwinian” or “Darwinist.” Can someone provide me with the exact quote as well as with the exact reference? (The context: I’m writing about punctuated equilibrium being at best a slight variant of… more
Transcript of David Quinn’s shredding of Dawkins
| October 27, 2006 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Evolution |
Earlier a link to the mp3 audio file of the Quinn v. Dawkins radio debate was posted on this blog. The following link has the transcript. Quinn provides an object lesson in how to take apart village atheists. http://catholiceducation.org/articles/science/sc0086.htm more
In evolutionary terms, is religion so bad?
| October 27, 2006 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Evolution |
The Dawkins rampage against religion raises the question why religion in the first place? On strict evolutionary grounds, isn’t religion an adaptation that offers humans survival and reproductive advantages? It’s is not at all clear that atheism offers similar benefits (how many Dawkins-style village atheists were there among our hunter-gatherer ancestors?). Consider, for instance, the… more
The Root of All Evil?
| October 26, 2006 | Posted by GilDodgen under Intelligent Design, Religion |
I am Richard Dawkins’ worst nightmare — a former militant atheist and Darwinist, who finally realized that everything he believed about everything that mattered was wrong. My conversion came from many sources, too numerous to outline in a brief post, but one of them was reason and examination of the evidence. Since my conversion I… more
Dawkins’ “God Delusion” considers ID science – false science, Dawkins also pronounces on free will and child sex abuse
| October 26, 2006 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
At Vere loqui, Martin Cothran notes that Richard Dawkins’The God Delusion, provides ammunition to ID advocates. ID theorists are familiar with the accusation that ID is both unfalsifiable and anyway, already falsified. (The fact that the two claims can be maintained comfortably at once illustrates the extent to which materialism and Darwinism function as ideologies.… more
WIRED MAGAZINE: “The Church of the Non-Believers” by Gary Wolf
| October 24, 2006 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Religion, Science |
Interesting article in WIRED on the unholy trinity Dawkins-Dennett-Harris. Their atheist extremism may be selling books but is it winning converts? . . . The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion… more
[anecdote 2004] Nobel Laureate given standing ovation after slamming Darwinism during a graduation ceremony
| October 24, 2006 | Posted by scordova under Creationism, Education |
In preparing a letter to the editor of UVa magazine, I was researching the case of 1996 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Richard Smalley. I was astonished to discover that he delivered an anti-Darwinian speech during a graduation ceremony and apparently received a standing ovation. I also thought it an appropriate time to remember this extraordinary… more
Legacy mainstream media: The ID guys’ best friends?
| October 24, 2006 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Courtesy of the McLaurin Institute, I gave a talk last Thursday night at the Murphy Building of the University of Minnesota’s journalism school, on how North American media cover the intelligent design controversy and why the media are really the ID guys’ most useful unintentional ally – second only to Richard Dawkins, in my view.… more
What’s Wrong With Gap Arguments, Anyway?
| October 23, 2006 | Posted by GilDodgen under Intelligent Design |
ID proponents are often accused of using “God-of-the-gaps†arguments. Of course, there are positive arguments for inferences to design in the natural world, but Del Ratzsch makes an interesting point about gap arguments in this interview. He comments: …the SETI program is a gap-searching project — trying to find signals which nature alone couldn’t or… more
The British Centre for Science Education unmasked
| October 23, 2006 | Posted by William Dembski under Education, Science |
Blogger David Anderson, who has a first-class degree in Mathematics from Oxford University, is putting a bit of pressure on the British Centre for Science Education, quite successfully, it seems. He has uncovered good evidence that they have been less than forthright in the course of some recent parliamentary lobbying: http://bcse-revealed.blogspot.com more
Someone finally said it: “Dawkins’s hysterical scientism”
| October 23, 2006 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead, which won both the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and 2005 National Book Critics Circle award, says what needs to be said, and no more, about Oxford Professor of the Public Understanding of Science Richard Dawkins’ inane crusade against religion And she says it brilliantly in “Hysterical scientism: The ecstasy… more
The future of human evolution
| October 22, 2006 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Evolution |
In reading the following, keep in mind that evolutionists who put out this drivel are themselves evolutionary dead ends, destined for the dustbin of history: Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge. The human race would peak in the year 3000,… more
Dawkins on free will
| October 20, 2006 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
The first paragraph of the following quote appeared in a comment to Gil Dodgen’s post on the Quinn v. Dawkins debate on Irish radio. The succeeding paragraph is quite illuminating and included here. Question: What evidence (since Dawkins is so big on evidence) would help us to decide whether attributing responsibility to others for their… more