Monthly Archives: January 2010
Top ten ID science stories of the year
| January 17, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
Well, here are three of the top ten winner stories, and I have inserted some comments, with further stories to follow if you click on the link: 1. Authors William A. Dembski and Robert J. Marks II use computer simulations and information theory to challenge the ability of Darwinian processes to create new functional genetic information.… more
Uncommon Descent Contest 20: Why should human evolution be taught in school?
| January 16, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Uncommon Descent Contest |
I just came across this fact in the journal Nature: Little is known about human evolution other than basic outline. Note: This contest has been judged. Go here for announcement. So, contrary to widely heard huffing, there are huge gaps in our understanding of early humans. In Nature’s 2020 Visions (7 January 2010) Scroll down… more
California Lawmaker demands answers over museum censorship
| January 15, 2010 | Posted by DonaldM under Biology, Cambrian explosion, Constitution, Courts, Culture, Darwinism, Education, Ethics, Evolution, Evolutionary biology, Free Speech, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Laws, Legal, Media, Science |
Apparently round two of the controversy over the California’s Science Center’s cancellation of Darwin’s Dilemma is getting ready to take place. This was reported and discussed here back in October, as well as here and here in December. Now, a California State Senator is calling the constitutionality of the censorship into question. more
Burying the view that Neanderthals were half-wits
| January 15, 2010 | Posted by David Tyler under Intelligent Design |
“It seems we have all been guilty of defaming Neanderthal man” declared a recent Editorial in The Guardian. This comment was triggered by a report documenting evidence for the use of pigments and decorative shells by Neanderthals. This is claimed to have occurred many years before any direct contact with modern humans, thereby undermining any… more
National Academy of Sciences Bestows Its Biggest Honor on [drum roll please] … Eugenie Scott!!!
| January 14, 2010 | Posted by William Dembski under Culture, Humor |
I’m heartened to see our tax dollars working to such good effect: Date: Jan.11, 2010 Contacts: Maureen O’Leary, Director of Public Information Luwam Yeibio, Media Relations Assistant Office of News and Public Information 202-334-2138; e-mail FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Eugenie C. Scott to Receive Public Welfare Medal, Academy’s Most Prestigious Award WASHINGTON — The National Academy… more
Darwinian Revisionism: Transmuting not only organisms but also the history of the subject
| January 14, 2010 | Posted by William Dembski under Atheism, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
A week ago I described here at UD my debate with atheist Lewis Wolpert. A blogger who goes by “Manic Street Preacher” sent me three unsolicited emails about his reaction to the debate, which was not positive. Denyse O’Leary briefly adverted to this blogger here. I finally had a look at what this blogger wrote.… more
Tossing Scientism’s ‘Addled Eggs’ Out Of The Frying Pan
| January 14, 2010 | Posted by Robert Deyes under Intelligent Design |
In their book The Privileged Planet, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez and philosopher of science Jay Richards point out that rather than adopting the original definition of ‘science’ as a search for knowledge (literal translation from Latin), some opinion makers in science have taken it to mean “applied naturalism” defined as, “the conviction that the material world… more
ID and Common Descent
| January 12, 2010 | Posted by johnnyb under Intelligent Design |
Many, many people seem to misunderstand the relationship between Intelligent Design and Common Descent. Some view ID as being equivalent to Progressive Creationism (sometimes called Old-Earth Creationism), others seeing it as being equivalent to Young-Earth Creationism. I have argued before that the core of ID is not about a specific theory of origins. In fact,… more
A blow-by-blow response to Dr. Denis Alexander
| January 12, 2010 | Posted by David Anderson under Books of interest, Christian Darwinism, Creationism, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, Religion, Science, theistic evolution |
In the last year and a bit I’ve done a lot of work in trying to understand and then critique the approach of Dr. Denis Alexander of the Faraday Institute in Cambridge (UK). I know that many readers of UD are familiar with Alexander’s big-selling work, “Creation or Evolution – Do We Have To Choose?”.… more
Coffee! But who said monkeys were smart?
| January 11, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Animal minds |
This from ScienceNewsDaily about “grooming” behaviour in primates: ‘Our computer model GrooFiWorld shows that complex calculating behaviour is completely unnecessary. We can add the simple rule to the existing DomWorld model that an individual will begin grooming another when it expects to lose from it upon attacking the other. This in itself leads to many… more
Why Not Accept the Fossil Record at Face Value Instead of Imposing a Theory on it?
| January 11, 2010 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
In a comment to a prior post Johhnnyb makes the following excellent points: One thing which I think ID can contribute to any historical aspect of earth history is shaving off hypothetical creatures. While there are certainly many creatures which haven’t yet been found, and I’m sure many of these creatures include chimeras of existing… more
Kairos, Chronos and Theodicy – Bill Dembski on Premier Radio
| January 11, 2010 | Posted by Steno under Intelligent Design |
I want to kick-off a discussion here following Bill’s very interesting interview on Premier Radio. Premier Radio I’ll add my first thoughts below. more
Tamiflu Hoax
| January 10, 2010 | Posted by Clive Hayden under Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Science |
Hoax as defined by Merriam-Webster’s dictionary: : to trick into believing or accepting as genuine something false and often preposterous According to a recent article, Tamiflu doesn’t prevent the flu, nor does it cure the flu once someone has it. The notion that Tamiflu has any efficacy in fighting the flu is actually the result… more
Stephen Jay Gould: A tragedy of failed convictions?
| January 10, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Darwinism |
Here’s Michael Flannery on Stephen Jay Gould’s attempt to diss Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin’s co-discoverer of natural selection. There was a lot of such dissing as far back as the 1860s, when it first became clear that Wallace was not a materialist atheist. As Flannery recounts, Gould joined in, in this case. Gould was an… more
Lobbing a grenade into the Tetrapod Evolution picture
| January 10, 2010 | Posted by David Tyler under Intelligent Design |
A year ago, Nature published an educational booklet with the title 15 Evolutionary gems (as a resource for the Darwin Bicentennial). Number 2 gem is Tiktaalik a well-preserved fish that has been widely acclaimed as documenting the transition from fish to tetrapod. Tiktaalik was an elpistostegalian fish: a large, shallow-water dwelling carnivore with tetrapod affinities… more
Recent podcasts in the intelligent design controversy
| January 10, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Podcasts |
1. On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin examines a new peer-reviewed paper that demolishes a very common and very fallacious objection to intelligent design. That objection? “Aren’t there vast eons of time for evolution?” Go here to listen. For more information on this and other peer-reviewed papers relating to intelligent design, visit… more
Why anyone takes evolutionary biology seriously after this, I will never know …
| January 10, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Evolutionary biology |
I mean this: A complete inability to predict anything, using current assumptions. I am not saying it’s not worthwhile. Mental health studies may be worthwhile too, even if you can’t predict when someone goes postal …. It’s another thing for people to use laws to force this stuff on the school system. Remember, the One… more
Editing the Tape of Evolutionary History Yet Again
| January 8, 2010 | Posted by DonaldM under Biology, Cambrian explosion, Darwinism, Evolution, Evolutionary biology, Natural selection, Science, The Design of Life |
The late Stephen J. Gould once wrote “Replay the tape [of evolution] a million times from a Burgess [the Burgess Shale fossils]beginning, and I doubt that anything like Homo sapiens would ever evolve again. It is, indeed, a wonderful life.” (Gould, Stephen J. [Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University], “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale… more
The Next Revolution in Biology (according to the Templeton Foundation)
| January 8, 2010 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
I just received this email from the Templeton Foundation. It is fascinating for what it includes and leaves out. On the one hand, it admits that evolutionary theory is incomplete and it even tacitly consents to evolution being a telic process (evolution is a “search mechanism” — Bob Marks and I have been arguing that… more
Pierre-Paul Grassé, Daydreaming, and Darwinian Depression
| January 7, 2010 | Posted by GilDodgen under Intelligent Design |
What gambler would be crazy enough to play roulette with random evolution? The probability of dust carried by the wind reproducing Durer’s “Melancholia” is less infinitesimal than the probability of copy errors in the DNA molecule leading to the formation of the eye; besides, these errors had no relationship whatsoever with the function that the… more