Could Iowa State be Next? Read More

I’ll have plenty more to say on this very topic later (as I had intended to write about it), but – coming on the heels of the Guillermo Gonzalez case – here is a post I just received: Hi, some minutes ago I postet something on my blog that might interest you: We also made an english abstract as you can see: Here we present an investigative report about how the German branch of the so called „brights” movement tried intentionally (and partly successful) to stifle free speech on german universities. We had the luck to have access to websites where their concerted actions got prepared and afterwards commented. Their actions and comments show that they are not far from Read More ›

– According to World Magazine they have two professors at Iowa State on record saying they voted against tenure for Guillermo Gonzalez based partly upon his assocation with the Intelligent Design movement. – According to Federal Judge John Jones in the Dover case ID is religion not science and thus cannot be taught in a public school as doing so violates the first amendment establishment clause. – According to Guillermo Gonzalez he never taught ID in any Iowa State classroom. Thus he kept his religion apart from the school where he teaches. Indeed Guillermo has 68 papers on astronomy published in refereed journals, over 1500 citations to those papers, co-authored an article that made the cover of Scientific American, was Read More ›

Over at ARN, David Tyler has a blog post entitled We must “understand that there is no serious scientific challenge to evolution.” It references an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The article was authored by Eugenie Scott and Nicholas Matzke of the National Center for Science Education, an organization whose sole purpose appears to be the promotion of Darwinian orthodoxy in publicly funded education, and the suppression of any and all scientific dissent from any aspect of the “theory,” by any means available.

David Tyler:

Eugenie Scott and Nicholas Matzke, from the National Center for Science Education, offer their analysis of how ID is making “a serious challenge not in the world of science, but in the world of public educational policy.” It is a paper that reworks the NCSE position without contributing any new ideas to the debate.

These authors reveal an unqualified confidence that evolutionary theory has the answers. It is “replete with explanations for complex biological structures.” It “continues to make progress in explaining such fascinating structures”. They assert that there is “no serious scientific challenge to evolution.” Underpinning theory are “fertile and unifying evolutionary principles.”

Read More ›

Here, for example, from Science Question of the Week from the Goddard Space Flight Center, on the position of the North Star, ever the friend of mariners:

Polaris or the North Star is nearly directly above the North Pole (it’s actually about 1 degree away from the celestial pole). You might think that with all of the stars in the sky, it shouldn’t be that unusual for a given star to rest above the pole, but really, it’s an extremely unlikely occurrence. It’s even more unlikely that our pole star would be relatively bright – second order magnitude. If you divided the night sky into squares that are one degree latitude by one degree longitude in size, there would be 41,253 square degrees in our night sky. There are approximately 2,000 stars that we can see on the clearest night, and perhaps 6,000 different stars are visible to us throughout the year, but only 50 of these are as bright or brighter than Polaris. The chances of a star like Polaris occupying a place over the pole are about slim indeed – about 1 in 1,000. Nevertheless, Polaris defies the odds and has become our guiding light.

Anybody know the odds on that? Read More ›

What are the issues surrounding the Gonzalez tenure case? Dr. Moore discusses stategies for removing top researchers from research univeristies because they are openly Christian. The key, as Dr. Moore explains, is clever application of policies dealing with diversity, tolerance and academic freedom. Read More.

Wallace Arthur, head of the zoology department at the University of Ireland and evolutionary biology researcher, reviews in Nature (Vol 447|17 May 2007) the book From Embryology to Evo-Devo: A History of Developmental Evolution. There were some breaths of fresh air in the review [my emphasis]: Third, and most important in my view, the origin of novelty is becoming one of the major themes of evo-devo. Attention is shifting from the retention of the old (as in recapitulation) to the creation of the new (be it an eye, a leg, a feather or even a whole body plan). Both the historical and the current importance of novelty emerge repeatedly in the book. How do novelties arise? We can’t yet agree Read More ›

You can’t make this stuff up. Here’s what some Japanese scientists have done with bacteria. I think we’ve officially reached the “information age” of evolutionary biology.

A team of neurobiologists led by Bjorn Brembs of Free University Berlin have found experimental evidence in fruit fly behavior indicating that these much-abused bugs may have an element of free will. A report on the study in LiveScience notes that:

For centuries, the question of whether or not humans possess free will — and thus control their own actions — has been a source of hot debate.
“Free will is essentially an oxymoron — we would not consider it ‘will’ if it were completely random and we would not consider it ‘free’ if it were entirely determined,” Brembs said. In other words, nobody would ascribe responsibility to one’s actions if they were entirely the result of random coincidence. On the other hand, if one’s actions were completely determined by outside factors such that no alternative existed, no one would hold that person responsible for them.

Read More ›

Charles Townes was the co-inventor of the laser and winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in physics. Jason Rennie of the SciPhi Show had an absolutely marvelous interview with Townes recently. This interview had many quotable gems from Townes.

Here is the link:

Charles Townes

Do you have CD player or other optical device which uses a laser? You can credit Townes for that!
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Stephen Webb has an excellent review of David Sloan Wilson’s Evolution for Everyone here.  It opens as follows:  The dirty Darwinian secret is now out of the closet: If evolution is true, then it must be true about everything. Most Darwinians used to be very restrained about the relevance of their theory for cultural and moral issues, for obvious reasons. If evolution is true about everything, then randomness and competition are the foundations for the highest human ideals as well as the lowest organic life forms. Scientists have trouble enough restricting Darwinism to biology. What if that restriction is unscientific? What parents would want their children being taught that Darwinism explains not only speciation but also altruism? Some Darwinians take Read More ›

Refuges for life in a hostile universe
G. Gonzales, D. Brownlee and P.D. Ward
Scientific American, October 2001, p.60-6

Et tu, Brute? Read More ›

I have posted much more information about the denial of tenure to ID-friendly astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez here. For example, If you are a Christian or theist or anyone who thinks that the universe shows evidence of meaning, purpose, or design, listen carefully to what I am about to tell you: You need to think carefully about wasting time, energy, and money in the Western academic system IF, by chance, whatever you are doing undermines materialism. and Come to think of it, here’s a business op for Gonzalez’s U: Just think what your official astronomers could charge for naming a planet after some airhead! [or blockhead]

The letter here will be sent to the ISU President (in about 10 days), with cc to the Ames Tribune and possibly other media outlets. For further background, see the May 12 story at www.evolutionnews.org and the links from this story. If you are a university engineering or science professor and would like to co-sign the letter, please e-mail me at sewell@math.utep.edu.