Monthly Archives: December 2009
Intelligent design and ecology: Environmental change via biosphere feedback mechanisms
| December 12, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Ecology |
British physicist David Tyler writes at Access Research Network (10 December 2009): With millions of eyes on Copenhagen, this seems an appropriate time to ask whether ID thinking has any relevance to understanding the Earth’s environment. Can design concepts help us weigh the diverse and often conflicting messages? I think ID is helpful, because features… more
Uncommon Descent Contest Question 17: Why do evolutionary psychologists need to debunk compassion?
| December 12, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Uncommon Descent Contest |
This contest has been judged . Go here for winner. Well, it certainly sounds like debunking to me. According to the evolutionary psychologists, either compassion is a useful gene or it somehow spreads our selfish genes or it is an accidental “spandrel” in our makeup. Or whatever. It’s not a choice, and it’s not identification… more
Coffee!! Could Climategaters and Darwinists share a shrine to save money?
| December 12, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Climate change |
In “Promises, Promises,” Stuart Blackman warns: “Ill-judged predictions and projections can be embarrassing at best and, at worst, damaging to the authority of science and science policy. (The Scientist, Volume 23 | Issue 11 | Page 28). (Registration wall) As Michael Gerson, who does not dispute global warming, puts it, in the famous East Anglia e-mail… more
[Off Topic] TR on Peace
| December 12, 2009 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
From Teddy Roosevelt’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech: We must ever bear in mind that the great end in view is righteousness, justice as between man and man, nation and nation, the chance to lead our lives on a somewhat higher level, with a broader spirit of brotherly goodwill one for another. Peace is generally… more
Uncommon Descent Contest Question 16: Are materialist atheists smarter than other types of believers?
| December 12, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Atheism, Uncommon Descent Contest |
So, for a free copy of the The Spiritual Brain, which argues for non-materialist neuroscience, provide the best answer to this question: Are materialist atheists really smarter than other people? By what measure would we know? What difference does social privilege – such as tenure at a tax-funded institution and general acceptance in popular media make in determining who is smart?
more
Brian Leiter’s rampage against Thomas Nagel
| December 12, 2009 | Posted by William Dembski under Culture, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Science |
. By any accounts, Thomas Nagel has proven himself a more nimble philosopher than the hamfisted Brian Leiter. That’s perhaps why Leiter simply can’t get over that Nagel liked Stephen Meyer’s SIGNATURE IN THE CELL (reported at UD here). For Leiter, when scholars of Nagel’s stature endorse books coming out of the rogue Discovery Institute,… more
Toothless birds: Deprogramming from Darwinism
| December 12, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Evolution |
We are informed in this New Scientist article that “Early birds may have dropped teeth to get airborne.” (Colin Barras, 08 December 2009) If true, it would be no surprise. It’s the same reason airports impose luggage weight restrictions on passengers. Not clear why this is even a story. Apparently, four extinct groups of birds… more
Deconstructing Avida
| December 11, 2009 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Evolution, Informatics, Intelligent Design |
Back in 2003 NATURE (vol 423, pp 139-144) published an article by Richard Lenski, Charles Ofria, Robert Pennock, and Christoph Adami titled “The Evolutionary Origin of Complex Features.” The abstract reads: A long-standing challenge to evolutionary theory has been whether it can explain the origin of complex organismal features. We examined this issue using digital… more
The End of Natural Selection
| December 11, 2009 | Posted by PaV under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Natural selection |
Playing off the title of Dr. Dembski’s new book, I’m going to cite three articles that are summarized at PhysOrg.com just this past week. I don’t have access to any of them, but let’s just take a look at what these summaries report. I think it’s quite interesting. First, there is this article, DNA study… more
MercatorNet: Can evolution explain religion?
| December 11, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Evolutionary psychology |
Here’s my MercatorNet column (10 December 2009), Evolutionary psychologists offer two contradictory explanations for the existence of religion. They can’t both be right, but they can both be wrong. In a recent issue of the leading journal Science , Elizabeth Culotta offers a variety of speculations in an article titled “On the Origin of Religion.”… more
Gravity is Bringing Me Down
| December 10, 2009 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
Al Gore in Slate responding to climategate: “The physical relationship between CO2 molecules and the atmosphere and the trapping of heat is as well-established as gravity, for God’s sakes. It’s not some mystery.…” Now where have I heard the “as well established as gravity” mantra before? Hmm. It’ll come to me in a moment. more
Intellectual freedom: The difference the blogosphere makes
| December 10, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Climate change |
In “Bloggers peer review a scientific ‘consensus,’” Gordon Crovitz writes (Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2009), Unlike Watergate, Climategate didn’t come to light because investigative journalists ferreted out the truth. Instead, this story so far has played itself out largely on blogs, often run by the same scientists who had a hard time getting printed… more
Coffee!! First morning cuppa, an interview with me: What makes O’Leary tic – but those Word Guild people have ways of making me toc
| December 10, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Here is an interview with me at Hot Apple Cider, an anthology of writing in various genres by Canadians who are devout Christians. I have an article in there, on neuroscience, faith, and health. If you think HAC is mostly amateur devotionals, jeremiads, and hellfire tracts, you will be very surprised. That sort of thing… more
Darwinism and popular culture: Socrates, the employment line forms out back, eight blocks from here, in front of a boarded-up door …
| December 9, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism |
A philosopher recently wrote to some friends, including me, with the following problem: He was tired of the stupidity that passes for discussion over at certain Darwinist blogs that we will leave unnamed at present. He proposed to engage the bloggers and commenters in discussion. Well, he certainly isn’t the only person who has proposed this… more
A De Novo Gene: Unlikely and Very Unlikely
| December 9, 2009 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
If you scramble about 90% of a protein sequence—randomly replacing amino acids with different ones—would the protein still work? That is what evolutionists are implying in order to make sense of their theory. The problem is that evolution’s explanations for de novo genes are unlikely and very unlikely. In the case of the T-urf13 de… more
How much attention should we pay to pundit predictions?
| December 9, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Climate change, Neuroscience |
Maybe not so much. Jonah Lehrer, contributing editor at Wired, and blogger at The Frontal Cortex writes, In the early 1980s, Philip Tetlock at UC Berkeley picked two hundred and eighty-four people who made their living “commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends” and began asking them to make predictions about future events.… more
New York Times: Science Not About Certainty
| December 9, 2009 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
From this article: Science is about probability, not certainty. And the persisting uncertainties in climate science leave room for argument. What is a realistic estimate of how much temperatures will rise? How severe will the effects be? Are there tipping points beyond which the changes are uncontrollable? Does this mean we can wait for a… more
Coffee!!: What do polls mean?
| December 9, 2009 | Posted by O'Leary under Climate change |
Here, Barry offered some poll numbers re beliefs of Americans: Percentage of Americans who believe in angels: 55 Percentage of Americans who believe in evolution: 39 Percentage of Americans who believe in anthropogenic global warming: 36 Percentage of Americans who believe in ghosts: 34 Percentage of Americans who believe in UFOs: 34 Some commenters wanted… more
Why Richard Dawkins won’t debate William Lane Craig
| December 9, 2009 | Posted by William Dembski under Atheism, Philosophy |
William Lane Craig is not only one of the world’s leading Christian apologists but he has actually made outstanding original contributions to philosophy. Yes, Craig publishes popular-level books. Unlike Dawkins, however, who in 20-years plus has been purely a popularizer (of Darwinian evolution, materialist science, and atheism), Craig continues to publish at the highest levels… more
A Frightening Admission?
| December 8, 2009 | Posted by Flannery under Darwinism, Ethics |
Peter J. Bowler published an article in Science (Jan. 9, 2009) titled “Darwin’s Originality.” While much of Bowler’s analysis is just plain wrong (e.g., Darwin’s theory being already “in the air” is NOT accurately premised largely upon Wallace co-discovery of natural selection as Bowler suggests but upon much deeper secularizing processes coextensive with skeptics like David Hume and… more