Monthly Archives: November 2009
Ed Begley Jr. Interviewed By Stuart Varney on Fox News
| November 29, 2009 | Posted by Clive Hayden under Culture, Education, Global Warming, Science |
Here is actor Ed Begley Jr. being interviewed by Stuart Varney on Fox News: Ed Begley Jr. remarks “I don’t think geologists should write papers about being an actor or newscaster…nor should uh…Don’t get your information from me folks or any newscaster, get it from people with PhD after their name.” So, if geologists cannot… more
What is Intelligence?
| November 29, 2009 | Posted by niwrad under Informatics, Intelligent Design, Philosophy |
In a previous UD discussion I started about incompleteness I made the following affirmation: intelligence and life are not computable. A commenter kindly asked me to provide justifications for my claim. Since at UD usually I try to separate different topics in different discussions, to be more focused and reader-friendly as possible, so here is… more
William Dembski’s Interview on New Book “The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World”
| November 28, 2009 | Posted by Clive Hayden under Culture, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Religion, Science |
William Dembski was interviewed recently by the Evangelical Philosophical Society, which can be read at their blog, about his new book The End of Christianity, Finding a Good God in an Evil World. This book is the long anticipated refutation of the “new atheists” position, such as that of the Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens… more
The Climate Audit Paradigm
| November 28, 2009 | Posted by Alfred Russel under Intelligent Design |
One of the interesting aspects of Climategate is that the website Climate Audit (www.climateaudit.org) has become a lot more prominent. For instance, here is a excerpt from an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. “This September, Mr. Mann told a New York Times reporter in one of the leaked emails that: “Those such as… more
Reflections on the Manhattan Declaration and intelligent design
| November 28, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Recently, Bill Dembski noted the Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience, aimed at Christians who take their faith seriously. It points out that the direction of public policy (= what Top People want) in the United States is in stark contrast to the beliefs of most of the people. It has been signed by many key leaders.… more
A Non Genetic Protein Translation Mechanism Adds More Complexity to Cellular Adaptation
| November 28, 2009 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
Biology’s sophisticated adaptation machine has now been discovered to be even more sophisticated. In recent years the types of adaptation often claimed to be examples of evolution in action have been found to be driven by complex mechanisms that respond to environmental pressures. It was yet another falsification of evolutionary expectations. Organisms responded far more… more
Climategate: Money laundering?
| November 27, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Climate change |
I make no accusation, I am simply asking a question passed on to me by a reader. The reader copied this divulged e-mail on to me. Also, it is important for us if you can transfer the ADVANCE money on the personal accounts which we gave you earlier and the sum for one occasion transfer… more
Speciation: Or maybe not?
| November 27, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under speciation |
At Wired Science, we are informed “Birth of New Species Witnessed by Scientists” (November 16, 2009): On one of the Galapagos islands whose finches shaped the theories of a young Charles Darwin, biologists have witnessed that elusive moment when a single species splits in two. In many ways, the split followed predictable patterns, requiring a… more
Podcasts in the intelligent design controversy, with brief comments
| November 27, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism, Podcasts, Podcastss |
1. The Positive Case for Intelligent Design Listen here. What exactly is the positive argument for intelligent design? This episode of ID the Future is taken from a recent lecture on intelligent design given by Casey Luskin. Because of the way the media misrepresents the issue, even those who may be predisposed to support ID don’t… more
Climategate: And finally, the source codes!
| November 27, 2009 | Posted by William Dembski under Global Warming |
[Adapted from a close colleague's email:] This article by Marc Sheppard contains a technical discussion of details of some of the source codes uncovered by the recent hack of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit e-mail servers. These computer codes are the ones used to create the global climate forecasts predicting a warming… more
Shallit’s Chronic Foot-in-Mouth Disease
| November 27, 2009 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
| | I knew Jeffrey Shallit as a reasonable computational number theorist at the University of Chicago in the 1980s. When it comes to ID, however, he simply can’t think straight. Repulsed by Thomas Nagel’s high praise of Stephen Meyer’s SIGNATURE IN THE CELL (noted here at UD), Shallit calls Nagel a fool and then… more
IVP launch website to plug anti-evolution book
| November 27, 2009 | Posted by David Anderson under Biology, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Religion, Science |
When I posted before to mention IVP’s new anti-Darwin book, I had no idea they’d launched a website: www.shouldchristiansembraceevolution.com It’s very comprehensive, and very impressive. IVP (UK) are obviously taking this particular publication very seriously. more
Coffee! The “climategate” reporters only picked out the most damning e-mails? How unethical of them!
| November 27, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Poe's Law |
Googling “climategate + Dembski” (as a simple way to retrieve a file from our site that I wanted to link to), I came across this” comment at Open Parachute, which makes excuses for the ‘gates: Predictably only the most apparently damning emails have been quoted in the media. Sure, it is pretty predictable that the… more
Interview: Mathematician David Berlinski explains why famous mathematicians have doubted Darwin
| November 27, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism |
Darwin and the Mathematicians”, here, is David Berlinsk’s final interview with Evolution News and Views. Berlinski, a Darwin skeptic of long standing, discusses the reasons famous mathematicians have doubted Darwin, along with entertaining anecdotes. In the first part of the 20th century, Darwin v. Dissent had not yet acquired its riveting incarnation as a melodrama… more
IC All The Way Down, The Grand Human Evolutionary Discontinuity, And Probabilistic Resources
| November 26, 2009 | Posted by GilDodgen under Intelligent Design |
The more we learn the more it appears that almost everything of any significance in living systems is irreducibly complex. Multiple systems must almost always be simultaneously modified to proceed to the next island of function. Every software engineer knows this, and living things are fundamentally based on software. Evolution in the fossil record is… more
Intellectual freedom: New atheists vs. everybody else
| November 26, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Intellectual freedom |
I only got round to posting about this conference just now, and do not know if anyone else did before, but note this: Atheists have disabled the web page for the ID conference in Castle Rock this weekend. They are also calling the 800 number and trying to tie up the lines so others cannot… more
Human evolution: FoxP2 and speech
| November 26, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Human evolution |
A friend warns, wisely in my view, that we be skeptical about vast claims made in the popular science press about human evolution. One paper asserts that FOXP2 was probably involved in the evolution of speech and language, but another paper has cautioned about being too hasty in making this conclusion. Well, after the “Ida”… more
Happy chrildren in Dawkins’ atheist ad campaign are from Christian family
| November 26, 2009 | Posted by Steno under Intelligent Design |
The Times is reporting that the happy, smiling children on an atheist ad campaign are in fact from a Christian, evangelical family. An interesting irony perhaps. Children who front Richard Dawkins’ atheist ads are evangelicals The ad calls for children to be brought up without having religious labels placed upon them by their parents. Of… more
Books: Frank Turek on Signature in the Cell
| November 26, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Books of interest |
Steven Meyer’s Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009) seems to be waking people up to the basic stupidity of modern Darwinism. Here: Most of Turek’s column riffs, quite rightly, off “climategate”: “You mean science is not objective?” No, unless the scientists are, and too often they are not. I don’t want to impugn all… more
Atheist Student Groups On The Rise At College
| November 25, 2009 | Posted by Clive Hayden under Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
There’s an interesting article about the prevalence of atheist college groups, and their slow but rising numbers, here. The article focuses on Iowa State University’s resident atheist group, the ISU Atheist and Agnostic Society, and how they go about conducting themselves. At Iowa State, most of the club’s roughly 30 members are “former” somethings, mostly… more