The Baylor administration, in attempting to justify its censorship of Prof. Robert Marks and his Evolutionary Informatics Lab, is now raising procedural concerns about the proper deployment of labs and groups on the Baylor server as well as doubts about Prof. Marks’s job performance. This is unconscionable. As I have pointed out here at UD, Prof. Marks and others continue to have labs and groups at Baylor that have never received the Baylor administration’s official blessing. Moreover, the idea that “Bob needs to get back to his proper work” is ludicrous given that he keeps scoring major research grants (just one the other day from the NSF) and given that the people faulting him have never been awarded any research Read More ›

PZ Myers of Pharyngula has stood up on the side of academic freedom at Baylor University for Robert Marks, II. Baylor episode is getting wider circulation Posted on: September 4, 2007 3:07 PM, by PZ Myer “The story of the Robert Marks debacle has now made the pages of The Chronicle of Higher Education. If the account is accurate, I’m going to do something you’ll only rarely see: I’ll take the side of the creationist. . . . The problem is that Baylor was more than a little ham-fisted in intruding on Marks’ academic freedom. I categorically reject Marks’ whole philosophy and I’d probably call him delusional, but … it is the professor’s job to talk freely about wacky ideas Read More ›

The story of Prof. Robert Marks’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab and its removal from Baylor has finally made it into the local paper: Web site sparks new intelligent design battle at BU | By Tim Woods www.wacotrib.com/…/09092007wacintelligentdesign.html Waco Tribune-Herald | Sunday, September 09, 2007 A Baylor University professor is fighting university officials to have the school restore his personal Web site in a battle some link to academic freedom and intelligent design. About a week after informing distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering Robert Marks that his Evolutionary Informatics Lab site would need to be taken down, Benjamin Kelley, Baylor’s dean of engineering, ordered the site be removed without Marks’ permission, according to Marks’ attorney, St. Paul, Minn.-based John Gilmore. Read More ›

1: Cell Cycle. 2007 Jun;6(15):1873-7. Epub 2007 Jun 6. Links Universal genome in the origin of metazoa: thoughts about evolution. Sherman M. Department of Biochemistry; Boston University Medical School, 715 Albany St., Boston, Massachusetts 02118, USA. sherma1@bu.edu Recent advances in paleontology, genome analysis, genetics and embryology raise a number of questions about the origin of Animal Kingdom. These questions include:(1) seemingly simultaneous appearance of diverse Metazoan phyla in Cambrian period, (2) similarities of genomes among Metazoan phyla of diverse complexity, (3) seemingly excessive complexity of genomes of lower taxons and (4) similar genetic switches of functionally similar but non-homologous developmental programs. Here I propose an experimentally testable hypothesis of Universal Genome that addresses these questions. According to this model, (a) Read More ›

Michael Behe’s The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism, was released this June 2007. Most scientific establishment reviews have been negative. e.g. See Wikipedia. However, now that schools and universities have awakened from summer, Edge of Evolution is running at Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,778 in Books. Popular in these categories: #3 in Books > Professional & Technical > Engineering > Bioenginering > Biochemistry #4 in Books > Science > Evolution > Organic #9 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Science & Religion Behe’s revised edition of Darwin’s Black Box, 2nd Rev. edition 2006, is also doing well: Amazon.com Sales Rank: #5,452 in Books. Popular in these categories: #2 in Books > Science Read More ›

You might wonder whether Prof. Robert Marks is the only faculty member at Baylor who has a “group” or a “lab” not blessed by the Baylor administration. The other day I mined a bunch of cases here at UD where the terms “group” and “lab” are used at Baylor, almost certainly without the Baylor administration’s blessing or knowledge. Here’s what I wrote: (1) Robert Marks has another research entity on the Baylor server: “The Baylor University Time Scales Group” (note the Baylor URL: web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/marks/Research/TimeScales). This research group (a collaboration between engineering and mathematics) has been allowed to proceed unimpeded by Baylor, using its name and absent any disclaimer. Is Baylor now, to maintain a foolish consistency, going to take down Read More ›

What does Bob Marks want? He wants the right to run computer simulations at Baylor that might (possibly) reduce confidence in Darwinian evolution.

That is, the simulations might show that Darwinian evolution is not nearly as probable as professional Darwinists claim.

Actually, the Wistar meetings showed that way back in the 1960s, but Darwinism is just too good a creation story for materialism to pass up. So otherwise respectable scientists have been lying for Darwin ever since, and snuffing out the careers of anyone who breaks rank.

Contrary to popular belief, you need NOT be a creationist or an ID guy. All you have to do is stop believing in magic – Darwinian magic – and ask for evidence.

That’s a Big Sin because the evidence does not support Darwinism.

Well, that explains the role of the Darwinist, who can hardly help suppressing evidence, but what about Baylor, the alleged Christian university? Elsewhere, I have pointed out that institutions like Baylor essentially protect Christians from a world that favours materialism. The justification for their existence would be revolutionized if word got out that materialism is largely disconfirmed over a broad area. As I said there,

In a trice, the harsh reality from which the institution protects its dumb sheeplike students is – a harsh UNreality. The students are not meat puppets who foolishly imagine that they have immortal souls and must therefore be humoured by their silly little campus groups. They are people who actually do have immortal souls who are being trained by the institution to accept a culture that lies to them that they are meat puppets. And the institution essentially brokers the lies in the interests of the materialist culture – and to its own prestige.
Now do you see the threat posed by an intellectually rigorous inquiry into intelligent design?

Last night, my mom and I were watching a video of one of my favourite movies – The Great Escape. Suddenly, some of the dialogue seemed startlingly relevant to the struggle of scientists like Marks.

Listen, as the German Colonel Von Luger explains to the Allied prisoners of war: Read More ›

[[Derbyshire continues to embarrass himself regarding ID — see his most recent remarks in The Spectator — so I thought I would remind readers of UD of a past post regarding his criticisms of ID. –WmAD]]

John Derbyshire has written some respectable books on the history of mathematics (e.g., his biography of Riemann). He has also been a snooty critic of ID. Given his snootiness, one might think that he could identify and speak intelligently on substantive problems with ID. But in fact, his knowledge of ID is shallow, as is his knowledge of the history of science and Darwin’s writings. This was brought home to me at a recent American Enterprise Institute symposium. On May 2, 2007, Derbyshire and Larry Arnhart faced off with ID proponents John West and George Gilder. The symposium was titled “Darwinism and Conservatism: Friends or Foes.” The audio and video of the conference can be found here: www.aei.org/…/event. Read More ›

The Baylor President, Provost, Dean of Engineering, and Baylor legal counsel need to get their story straight:

Not so fast: Baylor’s treatment of an ID-advancing research lab has shifted from friendly to fire | Mark Bergin
WORLD Magazine, September 15, 2007, Vol. 22, No. 33
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/13312

Last month, as John Gilmore flew home from Waco, Texas, after apparently resolving a dispute at Baylor University over a faculty member’s website supporting intelligent design, the Minnesota attorney sipped a glass of wine, looked out the window, and wondered to himself, “Was this too easy?” Read More ›

For Immediate Release Sept. 6 Press Contact: Anika Smith (206) 292-0401 x155 asmith@discovery.org Baylor University Denies Research Scientists’ Academic Freedom “Baylor University has proven yet again that academic freedom has been thrown off campus and academic persecution is now the norm,” said Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin in reaction to Baylor University’s deletion of a professor’s research website that focused on evolutionary systems and informatics. “It is simply unconscionable that a major university would so trample a scientist’s right to freedom of scientific inquiry,” Baylor University has taken offline the Evolutionary Informatics Laboratory website that had been administered by Robert Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor, because the administration claimed there were anonymous complaints linking the lab Read More ›

Edward Rubin again finds hard evidence supporting a front loaded evolution. Front loading is a design engineering term generally used to describe design elements inserted for possible use in the future (contingency) as opposed to immediate use. The mechanism of random mutation and natural selection is incapable of contingency planning. RM+NS can build based on experience but can’t build based on an abstract future. It is reactive not proactive. The front loading hypothesis in essence says the complex specified information necessary to construct the more complex machinery of life has been around since life appeared on the earth but much of it was preserved for expression in the far distant future. Natural selection cannot preserve unexpressed information for long against Read More ›

Oxford historian Alister McGrath, author of Twilight of Atheism and formerly an atheist himself, reflects on his debates with Richard Dawkins, who seems to have retired from his science career to bash religion. Simpleminded? I am disappointed. I would have expected an Oxford professor to use a much more careful, scholarly approach, always trying to see an opponent at his best, and not using simplistic generalizations. I can entirely understand why Michael Ruse and many other atheists are embarrassed by The God Delusion. What concerns me most, however, is what this book shows us about today’s atheism. I think this book is being read primarily by atheists who want to bolster their faith, when all around them God is being Read More ›

Three cheers for an editor with courage: “Editor: Lebanon Daily News In the words of the brilliant investigative-journalist and four-time Gold Medallion winner, Lee Strobel, “My road to atheism was paved by science … but, ironically science became my later journey to God.” The public needs enlightenment on the truth of intelligent design as increasing numbers of the world’s greatest scientists are yielding to the compelling and mounting evidence of this burgeoning movement. In recent years the erroneous teaching of Darwinism and life by random chance is becoming unraveled and exposing itself for what it really is: a bankrupt philosophy masquerading as a science with the aid of fake fossil mills loose in the world. . . . Full article Read More ›

In her remarks to the Baptist Press, Lori Fogleman (well beloved Baylor sports personality who regularly comments on “Inside Baylor Sports” for the Lady Bears) offers the following argument against allowing Robert Marks’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab to continue at Baylor: Lori Fogleman, director of media communications at Baylor, told Baptist Press Sept. 5 that the school’s objection to the website involves standards by which something can or cannot attach its name to Baylor. “This isn’t about the content of the website. Really the issue is related to Baylor’s policies and procedures of approving centers, institutes, products using the university’s name,” Fogleman said. “Baylor reserves the exclusive right to the use of its own name, and we’re pretty jealous in the Read More ›

I.D. rift hits Baylor again
http://www.bpnews.org/BPnews.asp?ID=26372

Posted on Sep 5, 2007 | by Erin Roach

WACO, Texas (BP)–Baylor University officials ordered the shutdown of a personal website of one of a handful of the school’s distinguished professors because of anonymous concerns that the site, hosted on the university’s server, supported Intelligent Design.

Robert Marks, distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at Baylor, launched a website called the Evolutionary Informatics Lab in June to examine whether Darwinian processes like random mutation and natural selection can generate new information.

Marks’ conclusions, as explained on the website, placed limits on the scope of Darwinism and offered scientific support for Intelligent Design.

In July, a podcast interview with Marks appeared on a website run by the pro-ID Discovery Institute, and a week later Benjamin Kelley, dean of engineering at Baylor, told Marks to remove the Evolutionary Informatics website immediately.

“This is a big story, perhaps the biggest story yet of academic suppression relating to ID,” William Dembski, a research professor in philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, told Baptist Press. Read More ›