Monthly Archives: December 2008
On false knowledge …
| December 21, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Bruce S. Thornton of the Classics department at Fresno State University in California , author of Plagues of the Mind: The New Epidemic of False Knowledge (ISI Books, 1999), certainly spoke for me when he said, What makes us recognizably human, then, is not what is natural about us but what is unnatural: reason and… more
David Berlinksi on Physics and Metaphysics
| December 21, 2008 | Posted by Granville Sewell under Intelligent Design |
The discussions on multiverses and string theory bring to mind the following comments of David Berlinski (in “Was There a Big Bang?”): “Standing at the gate of modern time, Isaac Newton forged the curious social pact by which rational men and women have lived ever since. The description of the physical world would be vouchsafed… more
A wad of fraud, falsified data, and other award-winning tenure strategies …
| December 20, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
I just got my e-mail notice of the December edition of the “Outside the Cover” of The Scientist, and it made for a curious reading experience: Bad news at Cell Improper citation, disregard for antecedent research, and shoddy experimentation – those are just a few of the allegations levied against a recent Cell paper. Is… more
Conversations: A defense of amateur science
| December 20, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Friend Forrest Mims, recently targeted as one of Discover Magazine’s “50 best brains in science, fielded a complaint from a mutual acquaintance about the fact that I routinely call myself a “hack.” (The complainer probably hoped Forrest would ask me to stop because it sounded like a self-putdown.) I defended myself, pointing out that “Among… more
Finally – Proof of Evolution
| December 20, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design |
It’s all over now. Evolution has been proven. I’ll get me coat… Earth’s Original Ancestor Was ‘LUCA’ ScienceDaily (Dec. 19, 2008) — An evolutionary geneticist from the Université de Montréal, together with researchers from the French cities of Lyon and Montpellier, have published a ground-breaking study that characterizes the common ancestor of all life on… more
Compatible? Not Really.
| December 20, 2008 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
One of our commenters says he has solved the determinism problem by becoming a “compatibilist.” Briefly, a compatibilist is someone who tries to avoid the logic of his premises by resorting to semantic dodges about the meaning of free will. The compatibilist says that free will is compatible with determinism (thus the name). Isn’t that… more
Neuroscience in the News: Here comes the ambiguously described Decade of the Mind
| December 19, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
We are told that Recent advances in brain research, in combination with the scientific consensus that mind emerges as a result of the activities of brains, has led to the notion of a new “Decade” project — one dedicated to understanding the phenomenon of mind within the context of neuroscience. That’s actually a rather ambiguous… more
The (non)Heuristic Value of Evolution
| December 19, 2008 | Posted by DonaldM under Biology, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science |
Theodosius Dobzhansky once famously said that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” Except, of course, when biology doesn’t need to even consider evolution, which for practicle purposes is most of the time. Today, I had the privilege to have lunch with a research scientist who works in the area of… more
Arrington, O’Leary on KRKS
| December 19, 2008 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
Today beginning at 4:00 PM Mountain Time. The show streams live at KRKS.com. more
I get mail: More on the awesome, totally world-famous mind reading machine …
| December 19, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Recently, I have been reading Plagues of the Mind by Bruce Thornton, about which I will say more shortly, on the epidemic of false knowledge that surrounds us these days. False knowledge is what we know that ain’t really so. And often common sense will help us see why it can’t be so. Here’s one… more
Ideas have consequences: Jesse Kilgore
| December 18, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Atheism, Darwinism |
Here’s a podcast with the father of 22-year-old Jesse Kilgore, who killed himself after reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Too bad young Jesse did not give himself a chance to read Alister McGrath’s The Dawkins Delusion. My thoughts and prayers are with all who knew him. No doubt there was more going on… more
Life From Chiral Crystals . . . Really?
| December 18, 2008 | Posted by Patrick under Biology, Chemistry, Origin Of Life, Self-Org. Theory |
The other day I made an offhand comment that the chirality problem was nowhere being solved. Yellow Shark was nice enough to provide a link to new research published in November, 2008. Now I was referring to scenarios which could occur in nature, not in lab conditions, and so I contacted some friends to see… more
Humanist control of education
| December 18, 2008 | Posted by Steno under Intelligent Design |
Modern American State education is based on the Prussian Education System – influence for this system came from the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who wrote, “The schools must fashion the person, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will.” Frederick II began… more
Mind reading technology: In your face and in your mind – or not
| December 17, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Here is a Fox News interview with Japanese physicist, Michio Kaku, who is quite convinced that in the near future we will be able to read people’s minds – high tech phrenology, really. (= Bumps on the brain explain your mind.) You know, I heard all this a zillion years ago when video killed the… more
When reporters write what they “know” …
| December 17, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Last night, the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C. offered a panel discussion on the theme of the book, edited by an old friend Paul Marshall, Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion. By the by, in Chapter 8, “Getting Religion in the News Room,” Terry Mattingly discusses a recent “dropped ball”… more
Materialist Hypocrisy
| December 17, 2008 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
Many materialists argue out of both sides of their mouth when it comes to consciousness. On the one hand, they argue that consciousness is the key to dignity and the right to life. See, for example, the arguments of Peter Singer, who argues specifically that there is no ethical problem in killing an unborn… more
Coffee break: Zipf’s law and the patterns that underlie our lives
| December 17, 2008 | Posted by O'Leary under Just For Fun |
A friend alerts me to this PhysOrg article about Zipf’s law, according to which, … the same patterns emerge in a wide variety of situations. The linguist George Kingsley Zipf first proposed the law in 1949, when he noticed that the distribution of words in a newspaper, book, or other literary article always followed the… more
Scientific American – who’s telling the porkies?
| December 17, 2008 | Posted by Steno under Intelligent Design |
The December issue of Scientific American has an article by Eugenie C. Scott and Glenn Branch entitled ‘The Latest Face of Creationism in the Classroom’ Not being an American citizen it is perhaps not for me to comment on American education policy, but the article provides some humorous circular reasoning. At one point it says… more
“Scientific” vs “Supernatural”
| December 15, 2008 | Posted by DonaldM under Intelligent Design |
An invitation to provide initial posts for discussion here at UD was recently extended to me. My name is Donald M and for those who have posted here for a while, I’m probably not a stranger. I’m a strong proponent of ID and I have serious doubts and reservations about several aspects of Darwinian evolution. … more
“Unpredictable” Does Not Equal “Contingent”
| December 15, 2008 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
In a previous post JT believes he has crushed the entire ID project by pointing out that: “A process determined entire[ly] by law can have EXTREMELY complex behavior and extremely difficult to predict behavior.” No one disputes JT’s point, but it is beside the point as far as ID is concerned. JT is making a… more