Monthly Archives: July 2007
Just how much brain do you need? Could you use that space for something else?
| July 23, 2007 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
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.… more
Master of the Games: You vs. Richard Dawkins on human evolution
| July 22, 2007 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
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… more
Big science mags as mouthpieces for the materialist lobby
| July 21, 2007 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
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… more
Casey Luskin interviews Robert Marks concerning his new Evolutionary Informatics Lab
| July 20, 2007 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
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… more
Kevin Padian: The Archie Bunker Professor of Paleobiology at Cal Berkeley
| July 20, 2007 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
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… more
Dawkins to Wolpert: “Lewis, you are starting to sound like a creationist”
| July 19, 2007 | Posted by William Dembski under Creationism, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
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. It… more
My “Glorious Wild Things” essay on design and evil is now on line
| July 19, 2007 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
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… more
Intelligent design in Canada?: Canadians pretty evenly split
| July 18, 2007 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
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… more
Progress in legacy media? – but why does it MATTER?
| July 18, 2007 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
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… more
Prominent NAS member trashes neo-Darwinism
| July 18, 2007 | Posted by scordova under Darwinism, Science |
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… more
Progress in the Media?
| July 17, 2007 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
Sometimes one is tempted to despair that journalists will ever understand even the most basic principles of the philosophy of science. Then one reads a sentence like this one in a story on the Fox News web site: “Global warming can no more be “proven” than the theory of continental drift, the theory of evolution… more
“The New New Atheism” — by Peter Berkowitz
| July 16, 2007 | Posted by William Dembski under Religion, Science |
Berkowitz has an insightful piece on the new new atheists. Here is an excerpt: . . . But one stunning new development under the sun is that promulgating atheism has become a lucrative business. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, in less than 12 months atheism’s newest champions have sold close… more
Is It Possible to Intelligently Design and then Deny the Intelligent Designer?
| July 16, 2007 | Posted by PaV under Intelligent Design |
The tagline for the article from PhysOrg.com that I link to here, was “Nano propellers pump with proper chemistry.” Despite no mention being made of it, my immediate thought was: “Their design is based on what biological systems already do.” Then, perusing the article, after all the talk about what Petr Král is doing in… more
The folk over at Pharyngula seem to be freaking out over ..
| July 16, 2007 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Over what now, you wonder, could the Pharyngula – usually as placid as a sea of glass – be freaking? Actually over something kind of stale. Years ago, at the Post-Darwinist, I blogged on the fact that one of the late Stephen Jay Gould’s friends (yes, he of Wonderful Life AND The Simpsons) said that… more
Miller the Malignant
| July 16, 2007 | Posted by scordova under Intelligent Design |
Devoid of real arguments, Ken Miller has resorted to unsavory rhetoric and misrepresentations in his attempt to discredit the fine work of biochemist Michael Behe. Behe has finally responded to Miller’s antics at Amazon: Response to Miller Part I Response to Miller Part II Regrettably, that’s Miller’s own special style. He doesn’t just sneer and… more
Robert Marks’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab — better link
| July 15, 2007 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
The links to Robert Marks’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab have recently changed. To simplify linking to the lab, click on www.evolutionaryinformatics.org. more
Audiobooks: The intelligent design controversy comes to life!
| July 15, 2007 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Audiophiles, go here for Jason Rennie’s excellent Darwin or Design audiobook, which you can listen to on line or buy. Rennie, of Australia’s ScPhi show has done a marvellous job of assembling a cast of dozens of key contributors to the intelligent design controversy. He offers such point men as P.Z. Myers, Sean Carroll, and… more
Rainy Saturday morning?: Try out this new game …
| July 14, 2007 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Malcolm Chisholm tells me that he has worked the bugs out of a new game called the Richard Dawkins Mutation Challenge. I’m not much good with games, so I am hoping others will try it and tell me what they think. It is especially timely in light of this. more
Paper and Website: “The Jesus Tomb Math”
| July 12, 2007 | Posted by William Dembski under Informatics, Religion, Science |
As I announced a few weeks ago on this blog, Robert Marks and I have been collaborating on some papers on the mathematical foundations of ID at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab (these papers are currently under review with mainstream peer-reviewed journals): ecs.baylor.edu/…/Research/EILab. We have also just finished a paper debunking the statistics of James Cameron… more
Here is my review of intelligent design theorist Mike Behe’s The Edge of Evolution and the controversy surrounding it …
| July 12, 2007 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Behe’s Edge of Evolution: A turning point in the evolution vs. intelligent design controversy Before dealing with Edge of Evolution, which I see as a turning point in the debate between Darwinism and intelligent design, permit me to briefly sketch the cultural landscape in which it has just appeared: … , two factors have protected… more