In “The Neural Buddhists” (New York Times, May 13, 2008), David Brooks (yes, he of the BoBos, the bohemian bourgeois*) references Tom Wolfe’s dramatic 1996 article “Sorry, but your soul just died,”
.. in which he captured the militant materialism of some modern scientists.To these self-confident researchers, the idea that the spirit might exist apart from […]
Flagella-like Propulsion for Microrobots Using a Nanocoil and a Rotating Electromagnetic Field
Bell, D.J. Leutenegger, S. Hammar, K.M. Dong, L.X. Nelson, B.J.
Inst. of Robotics & Intelligent Syst., ETH Zurich
Abstract
A propulsion system similar in size and motion to the helical bacterial flagella motor is presented. The system consists of a magnetic nanocoil as a propeller (27 nm […]
What difference would a real live ET make to your faith (whatever it is?)
Ted Peters, a researcher in the field of science and religion and author of SCIENCE, THEOLOGY, AND ETHICS (Ashgate 2003), is conducting a survey. The central question is this: Would contact with extraterrestrial intelligent life affect religion on earth? Would you be […]
Recently, Mark Bergin of World Magazine tried a novel approach to the Baylor tenure controversy:
Employing Google’s scholar-specific search engine, which limits results to academic journals, WORLD performed controlled searches for the names of each of this year’s 30 tenure candidates. In general, those faculty members receiving tenure have published with greater frequency since arriving at […]
Was one woman who lived 150,000 to 200,000 years ago the ancestress of all of us? Science may not be sure, but pop culture is.
Part One: Our Mitochondria: A piece in the puzzle of our origins?
Part Two: What Does Our Mitochondrial DNA Say About Human Ancestry?
Part Three: African Eve - when pop culture falls in […]
Richard Pearcey traces how a Darwinian worldview leads to “delegated fascism”. These are critical issues in debating the societal CONSEQUENCES of Evolution vs Intelligent Design, (as distinct from the scientific origin theories themselves.) ———————————
Abortofascism and Free-Market Homicide
By Rick Pearcey, Pro-Existance, May 12, 2008
In a column titled “Atheism and Child Murder,” Dinesh D’Souza comments on his recent […]
From Darwin and design: historical essay:
“The only distinct meaning of the word ‘natural’ is stated , fixed or settled ; since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so, i.e. to effect it continually or at stated times, as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it […]
Journalist Susan Mazur continues her series of remarkable articles about dissenters from neo-Darwinism with a compelling interview of Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, professor of cognitive science at the University of Arizona, and co-author (with Jerry Fodor) of the forthcoming book What Darwin Got Wrong.
In the interview, Piattelli-Palmarini points out that many academic biologists muffle their unhappiness with […]
The essay by Jeffrey Schloss - excerpted in considerable part here - worriting about the “walls” the Expelled documentary is creating is a classic.
Real Christians, presumably, wouldn’t demand an accounting about the rapidly growing evidence against Darwinism and other materialist isms. And real Christians wouldn’t make a film about the people who get Expelled for doing so.
(Of course, […]
In an essay that is ten times the length of the following extracts, Jeff Schloss, a Christian College professor, weighs in on Expelled. He says Expelled misses the central issues. Unfortunately his essay also missed the central issue. His own personal religious views have led him to write the way he does.
Last week the Wall Street Journal published a brief list of the scientific problems with evolution, supplied by John West of the Discovery Institute. Scientists are well aware of these problems but it is probably worthwhile to spell them out occasionally in a major newspaper. Even more worthwhile were the responses supplied by evolutionist Dr. […]
From NOAA here
These are annual average temperature (top) and precipitation (bottom) in the United States from 1895 through 2007.
The magnitude of change in the trend lines, +1 degree in temperature, +2 inches annual rainfall, is interesting but not nearly as interesting as the slopes being almost identical and straight as an arrow. That’s an […]
Alex Harris and Brett Harris are challenging the status quo with: Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations, garnering a Foreward by Chuck Norris, 2008, Multnomah Books ISBN-10: 1601421125. What might the prospects be for a hard cover manifesto challenging teenagers to work hard by two 18 year olds? Astonishingly it […]
Prof sues disbelieving students. Apparently, they disputed her theories about science … No, in the famous words of Rush Limbaugh, I am not making this up. If I had that kind of imagination, I would be right up there with J.K. Rowlings (rowling in dough, right?)
Also just up at the Overwhelming Evidence blog
The math prof […]
Barry poses the debate topic:
A soldier amuses himself by ripping a baby from his mother’s arms and tossing it in the air and catching it on a bayonet.
Resolved, it is self-evident that the soldier’s action is wrong in all places and at all times.
However, Barry restricts the range of answers by not allowing anyone to […]
At the Beyond Expelled worldview conference, Nancy Pearcey explored the impact of evolution vs ID. She describes skeptic Michael Shermer’s conversion to evolution & Scarlett Johansson’s acting on belief in evolution.
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The intelligent design of life
Nancy Pearcey tells crowd that Darwinism has evolved into more than just a theory (with VIDEO)
Rachel Kyler, Thursday May 8th, 2008
NICEVILLE […]
Tim Woods of the Waco Herald Tribune dropped another bombshell when he revealed yesterday,
Baylor University’s faculty senate Tuesday passed a “failure of shared governance” resolution sharply critical of the administrative style of President John Lilley.
The action came during a meeting lasting three hours and 45 minutes, after which senate chairman Matt Cordon said faculty morale […]
The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) has a new set of entries as a result of Ben Stein’s EXPELLED. And then there are some, like Richard Dawkins, who have a long history in the IMDb:
ID is merely a politically motivated agenda that is meant to further the cause of the far right Republicans.
One common objection against ID is that it is merely a tool of the scary Right Wing political party. As the theory goes, the Religious Right is attempting to get ID snuck into classrooms in order to […]
Over at Panda’s Thumb, they are taking issue with the values for selection probabilities of neutral and advantageous mutations that Sal has taken from Kimura and Ohta’s “Theoretical Aspects of Population Genetics”. Since there was a link that provided a ‘look-see’ inside the book, I did so. Well, what I found was very […]
Many scholars believe Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is the greatest novel ever written. I don’t know if that is true. I am not qualified to judge, but I do know the novel moved me as no other ever has. So I was intrigued when SteveB referred to a passage from the novel in a comment to my […]
This is cross posted from my own site, The Christian Watershed. To read the rest, please follow the link at the bottom.
Let me preface this by saying that even though I show how Christianity fits the criteria for warrant, I believe any theistic belief can fit this criteria. In other words, Christianity does not […]
As the prior article here talks about some moonbats in the Swiss government have concocted a set of rights for living things that even includes plants’ rights.
This appears to be relevant to some other hot-button topics here in recent days.
First of all it occurs to me that for the holocaust to happen it was a […]
In “The Silent Scream of the Apsparagus,” old-fashioned liberal and publisher Wesley J. Smith charts the course of “rights” to its inevitable conclusion: plant rights, at least in Switzerland:
A few years ago the Swiss added to their national constitution a provision requiring “account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants […]
Cross posted over at “The Christian Watershed.”
A few years ago I was an assistant coach to a high school debate class. One common thing that must be drilled into the heads of high school debaters is to do their best to avoid insulting the other team. I didn’t always follow this advice in high school […]
Robert Meyer provides thought provoking insight into the major issues surrounding Expelled.
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Ben Stein’s Dangerous Idea
Robert Meyer, May 6, 2008, New Media Alliance - Robert E. Meyer
Ben Stein has a dangerous idea. His idea is that professors and teachers who express skepticism about Darwinism are likely to find themselves not granted tenure, castigated and ridiculed, and […]
In Bass Ackwards Darwinism (below) my friend DaveScott writes:
”Good people do good things. Evil people do evil things. Knowledge (like Darwinian evolution and the recipe for dynamite) is inanimate and can be employed by good people for good things and evil people for evil things.”
The issue is not whether “good” people do good things. Of […]
Critics of the ID movement often complain that we’re fabulously well funded by right-wing extremists and in it for our own aggrandizement. Fortunately, money leaves a trail. When one follows it, Darwinists seem to be doing much better financially than ID theorists (perhaps an indication that they are serving Mammon more faithfully). Let’s consider a […]
Another fascinating book I’m finding hard to put down is David Sedley’s masterful treatment of ancient Greek debates about intelligent design, Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity (University of California Press, 2008). What Sedley means by “creationism” is not the Henry Morris / ICR / […]
Let’s say that Darwin’s theory of evolution was a necessary factor for the holocaust.
Now class, what science journal should we try to publish this in? Anyone? Anyone?