Archive for July, 2007
31 July 2007
O'Leary
As the Darwin bicentennial looms (2009) and the flapdoodle flaps, we are treated to ridiculous hagiography and soothing, reassuring spin on how Darwinism can live harmoniously with the non-materialist beliefs of the peoples of Earth.
Meanwhile, a friend draws my attention to Taner Edis.
Posted in Intelligent Design | 23 Comments »
31 July 2007
BarryA
Long time followers of this site will remember that my grandfather used to collect small stones he called “arrowheads.â€Â He had the misguided notion that these small pieces of flint had complex and specific chip patterns that he attributed to intelligent agency, i.e., Indians making tips for their arrows. Later in life I learned that […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 67 Comments »
31 July 2007
William Dembski
The Chicago Reader, a publication I used to read when living in Chicago, reports on my recent blog post at UD about Jerry Coyne, comparing him to Herman Munster (for the comparison, go here):
Meanwhile, in what seems like an odd move, creationists have chosen to play on Coyne’s home court by claiming to be scientists […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 10 Comments »
31 July 2007
Granville Sewell
In his new book, “The Edge of Evolution,” (another masterpiece) Michael Behe looks in considerable detail at the struggle for survival between humans and the malaria parasite where, in the last 100 years, the evolution of more organisms and generations can be studied than were involved in the entire natural history of mammals. He […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 10 Comments »
30 July 2007
O'Leary
A friend draws my attention to a recent squawk in TRENDS in Biochemical Sciences Vol.32 No.7 (July 2007) by Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross, who - so far as I can tell - make a career out of opposing the intelligent design theorists.
Squawks about the alleged threat posed by the ID theorists are nothing new […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 9 Comments »
30 July 2007
O'Leary
At a blog called “biologists helping bookstores,” a Pasadena-based woman whose handle is Shandon explains how she deliberately misshelved Mike Behe’s Edge of Evolution, and a number of other books - distributing them around the store according to her private tastes.
Now, you might think that Shandon (hereafter Misshelver) is restricting the right of others to […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 26 Comments »
29 July 2007
O'Leary
I’ve just read a most interesting book by Oxford historian Alister McGrath, arguing that we are currently looking at the twilight of atheism.
That’s certainly my impression, judging from the remarkably ill-advised antics of the recent anti-God campaign. One thing the campaign made quite clear is that materialism is not some neutral middle ground on which […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 11 Comments »
28 July 2007
O'Leary
In a beautifully written article in the New Yorker, Ian Parker describes how he shared the hot, damp work of studying the elusive bonobo (lesser chimpanzee) - long lauded as sexy and peaceful - with one of the only people in the world who actually knows much about them in the wilds.
Well, people who actually […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 2 Comments »
28 July 2007
O'Leary
When I asked a gifted Canadian physicist what he thought of Frank Tipler’s The Physics of Christianity, he said, “in one word: wacky”.
But readers will expect more than one word from me, and I think there is more than that to be said for Tipler’s book.
Frank Tipler is in an unusual position. He is a […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 26 Comments »
28 July 2007
O'Leary
I first determined to make a point of reading historian Richard Weikart’s meticulously researched book, From Darwin to Hitler because Darwinists were very clearly upset by the implications of his work.
Some seemed obsessed with proving Weikart, who teaches at California State University (Stanislaus) not only wrong but dishonest and irresponsible - which he certainly isn’t.
I […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 6 Comments »
27 July 2007
William Dembski
Here’s a book that came out last month that readers of this blog should be aware of:
Science’s Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism (Paperback)
by Cornelius G. Hunter (Author)
Book Description
Had evolutionists been in charge, they wouldn’t have made the mosquito, planetary orbits would align perfectly, and the human eye would be better designed. But […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 3 Comments »
27 July 2007
O'Leary
The recent North American polls I’ve seen recently show several key trends:
1. Both evolution and creation are widely accepted, and the distribution of numbers is roughly stable over the years. No dramatic proof or disproof of Darwin’s theory that would change many minds has occurred. That said, it is quite likely that many people believe […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 1 Comment »
26 July 2007
johnnyb
I’ve been reading a lot of the classic literature lately on mutation and selection from the 20s, 30s, and 40s. It’s interesting to read old science material with the advantage of hindsight. It’s like watching a movie — you might know what’s going to happen next, but the characters don’t. And so, reading […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 7 Comments »
26 July 2007
O'Leary
I hope I am not interrupting a heated exchange over pepperology* but I thought I’d share this:
A reader of the Post-Darwinist wrote me to ask, how it could a plant evolve by Darwinian means to look like a wasp - as we are meant to believe.
I replied:
Well, the Darwinian theory is that the wasp and […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 3 Comments »
26 July 2007
William Dembski
As Denyse pointed out (go here), Steven Pinker’s “dangerous questions” were really pretty mild stuff. I’d like to propose a Scoville scale for dangerous questions (based on the hotness of chili peppers). In the comments, please include what you regard as dangerous questions for materialism as well as a “hotness” measure for each question. Let […]
Posted in Just For Fun, Philosophy | 50 Comments »
25 July 2007
O'Leary
To: Dembski
From: O’Leary
Re: Compensation for Thumbsmen
July 25, 2007
Bill, pursuant to your recent comments on the guy in charge of promoting the ID biz conf over at the Thumb, how much ARE we paying our shills anyway? I have been trying to get figures for several months now, but accounting is backlogged due to the recent […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 15 Comments »
24 July 2007
idnet.com.au
Dr David Seargent from NSW Australia has just published
PLANET EARTH and the Design Hypothesis
In many respects, our planet is a cosmic anomaly. Moreover, it is anomalous in such a way as to provide an excellent environment for complex life in what appears to be a largely hostile universe. Is this simply a fortunate coincidence, or […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 19 Comments »
24 July 2007
William Dembski
Steve Reuland is all breathless over a conference I’m putting together on intelligent design in business (see his post at PT here). The upshot of his post is that it’s somehow illegitimate to bring ideas from ID into business practice. But of course it’s okay for Darwinists to push not just Darwinism but evolutionary psychology […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 10 Comments »
24 July 2007
O'Leary
Here are the new additions to the Evolution and Intelligent Design Encyclopedia, from British physicist David Tyler.
Read, for example, about adaptationist fantasies (how natural selection explains everything it doesn’t explain), why bipedalism (walking on two legs) is good for you (not like what you’ve been told), and what the fact that very old life forms […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | No Comments »
23 July 2007
PaV
I always find it interesting how Darwinists explain things. Here is a gene that, according to the author, exists in no known species, and simply shows up in this particular fly genome. The way Darwinists want to explain things–knowing that NDE is essentially ‘dead in the water’–is by talking about duplicated genes which […]
Posted in Darwinism, Biology | 17 Comments »
23 July 2007
O'Leary
At Mindful Hack I have put up some information from a neurosurgeon on why the mind obviously isn’t merely the brain. Amazing stuff, and certainly NOT what you would hear from materialist cognitive scientist Steven Pinker.
Pinker posed a whole bunch of “dangerous questions” in the Chicago Sun-Times. What strikes me as remarkable is how UNdangerous his […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 11 Comments »
23 July 2007
O'Leary
At Mindful Hack I have put up some information from a neurosurgeon on what the mind obviously isn’t - merely the brain.
Amazing stuff, and certainly stuff you won’t hear from materialist cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, who has discovered questions that he thinks are “dangerous”, but I have no idea why.
Today, non-materialism is dangerous. The rest […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 2 Comments »
22 July 2007
O'Leary
Who will it be? The Dawkins delusion or you?
Malcolm Chisholm, our Master of the Games, tells me, “We are up to 2170 simulations run so far. I have had no feedback, except about spelling, That is now corrected. And HERE is the link.
He also says, “I will have another game ready in a day or […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 6 Comments »
21 July 2007
O'Leary
A propos Bill Dembski having to defend himself against a silly attack in top science mag Nature, a lawyer friend suggests taking a look at Nature’s mission statement:
First, to serve scientists through prompt publication of significant advances in any branch of science, and to provide a forum for the reporting and discussion of news and […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 12 Comments »
20 July 2007
William Dembski
Here’s a fun interview with my friend and colleague Robert Marks. I hope you catch from the interview the ambitiousness of the lab and how it promises to put people like Christoph Adami and Rob Pennock out of business (compare www.evolutionaryinformatics.org with devolab.cse.msu.edu).
Well-Informed: Dr. Robert Marks and the Evolutionary Informatics Lab
July 20, 2007 10:40AM […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 15 Comments »
20 July 2007
William Dembski
Kevin Padian’s review in NATURE of several recent books on the Dover trial says more about Padian and NATURE than it does about the books under review. Indeed, the review and its inclusion in NATURE are emblematic of the new low to which the scientific community has sunk in discussing ID. Bigotry, cluelessness, and misrepresentation […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 387 Comments »
19 July 2007
William Dembski
Chuckie’s Ghost visits me regularly and let’s me know what’s happening inside the belly of the beast. Here’s the latest:
The 2007 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference in London included a “social” occasion in which Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones, and Lewis Wolpert all participated in a “debate” in the London Museum of Natural History. […]
Posted in Creationism, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Evolution | 19 Comments »
19 July 2007
O'Leary
My Touchstone piece “Glorious Wild Things”is here (scroll down):
We will never understand creation if we insist on separating glory and design from suffering, loss, and waste, because, bound in finite time and space, creation is full of suffering, loss, and waste as well. All must be taken together or put aside together, in a final […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 2 Comments »
18 July 2007
O'Leary
Recently, Decima polled Canadians on the origin of humans - God dunit? God neverdunit? Dunno?
Here are the Canadian responses to the 2007 question by percentage, along with the US figures to a similar series of questions in brackets:
ï¡ Less than one in three Canadians (29%) believe that God had no part in the
creation or development […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 11 Comments »
18 July 2007
O'Leary
Radio host and fellow UD blogger Barry Arrington notes that there may be progress in legacy media understanding of the intelligent design controversy.
Maybe, but an argument can be made for the fact that the slowness to “get” the possibility that Darwin could be wrong is part of a general trend toward decline, in favor of […]
Posted in Intelligent Design | 2 Comments »
18 July 2007
scordova
Natural selection …is not the fundamental cause of evolution.
Masatoshi Nei
Science continues to destroy Darwinism. A prominent member of the National Academy of Sciences, Masatoshi Nei, trashed neo-Darwinism in the recent peer-reviewed article: The new mutation theory of phenotypic evolution.
Haldane’s dilemma showed mathematically that natural selection could not be the major driving force of evolution. […]
Posted in Science, Darwinism | 197 Comments »