Monthly Archives: March 2010
MacNeill is on a Roll
| March 31, 2010 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
Allen MacNeill has jumped into the Sam Harris thread and raises some interesting points. I am always pleased to find areas of agreement with our (sometime) opponents, such as Allen. Therefore, I am going to close the comments to the Sam Harris thread and let Allen lead this thread off. Let me hasten to add… more
Judge Rules DNA is Unique Because it Carries Functional Information
| March 31, 2010 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
Here is the actual text of Judge Sweet’s opinion that DLH brought to our attention below: Association for Molecular Pathology v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, __ F.Supp.2d __ (S.D.N.Y. 2010): The question thus presented by Plaintiffs’ challenge to the composition claims is whether the isolated DNA claimed by Myriad possesses “markedly different characteristics” from… more
Just a hack writer, but … question
| March 31, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Human evolution |
Yesterday, another hack writer caught up with me, for an interview, and wanted to know: so why do you fight Darwinism … ? Yuh, I know. Why bother fighting the huge Darwinist tax burden. Of course, Darwinism is false, but so? People’s careers are wrecked if they oppose it. Among other things, her editor had… more
Bipedal walking at Laetoli
| March 31, 2010 | Posted by David Tyler under Intelligent Design |
The Laetoli trackways from Tanzania were first reported in 1979 and immediately attracted attention because they provided evidence of bipedalism. The tracks were preserved in volcanic ash dated at 3.6 million years. Many at the time thought they looked exactly like human footprints, but few of the researchers were willing to adopt this interpretation. The… more
Why Evolutionists Say Evolution is a Fact
| March 31, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
Evolutionists say evolution is a fact, every bit as much as gravity is a fact. That is remarkable. We see and even feel gravity everyday. Evolution, on the other hand, entails rather dramatic, one-time, events that were supposed to have occurred long ago, when no one was around to witness them. How could we be… more
Judge rules DNA is unpatentable because it is INFORMATION not extracted chemicals
| March 30, 2010 | Posted by DLH under Biology, Chemistry, Comp. Sci. / Eng., Courts, Design inference, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
Judge Robert W. Sweet has turned the biotech patent industry into turmoil. See: After Patent on Genes Is Invalidated, Taking Stock By ANDREW POLLACK, March 30, 2010 Although patents are not granted on things found in nature, the DNA being patented had long been considered a chemical that was isolated from, and different from, what… more
Comets and Cosmology
| March 30, 2010 | Posted by Robert Sheldon under Intelligent Design |
I had an exchange recently that brought up the subject of life on comets and its implications for ID. As I reviewed the work on comets, it brought up some surprising connections that I had not seen before. I thought it was worthy of a blog, though somewhat old material. The correspondent complained that comets… more
Lies Sam Harris Tells Himself
| March 30, 2010 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
I watched the video of atheist Sam Harris trying to prove that science can form a basis for morality (posted by Dr. Dembski below), and it got me to thinking. Everyone knows the moral law. It is, as Budziszewski writes, that which we can’t not know. Therefore, like everyone else, Mr. Harris knows that his… more
Sam Harris on Deriving Ought from Is — BY MEANS OF SCIENCE!
| March 30, 2010 | Posted by William Dembski under Ethics, Neuroscience, Religion, Science |
LINK About Sam Harris: Adored by secularists, feared by the pious, Sam Harris’ best-selling books argue that religion is ruinous and, worse, stupid — and that questioning religious faith might just save civilization. more
Scientific American: The Banality of Evil (ution)
| March 30, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
Katherine Pollard’s Scientific American article from last year, about what makes humans different from chimpanzees, is an unfortunate example of the banality of evolution. Charles Darwin’s theory, updated to account for a variety of surprise evidences, is taken as fact and this leads to a remarkable level of credulity. Whatever we find in biology, it… more
Francis Beckwith’s Biography Pertaining to ID
| March 29, 2010 | Posted by Clive Hayden under Evolution, Intelligent Design, Religion, Science |
At Biologos, Francis Beckwith has written what appears to be a biography of his interactions and considerations with Intelligent Design in two parts: Part 1 and Part 2. Thomas Cudworth has already done a wonderful job of explaining and engaging the content of the two-part blog. Since I had already started my response to Beckwith… more
Evolution’s Appeal
| March 29, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
Scientific problems with evolution don’t really matter. This genre of thought scratches too many itches to let science bring it down. Traditionally those itches have mainly been theological and philosophical. Now, as the evolutionary narrative subsumes human nature, new itches emerge. Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist, provides a peek into this latest addition to evolution’s… more
Can You Derive Ethics from Science?
| March 28, 2010 | Posted by johnnyb under Culture, Ethics, Philosophy, Science |
For those of you who don’t know, TED is a convention of (usually) world-class thinkers who each give a 15-minute talk about a subject. Many of the people in TED are thought leaders. Some of them, however, get in merely because they have written a popular or controversial book. In one of this year’s TED… more
Thomism and Intelligent Design
| March 28, 2010 | Posted by niwrad under Intelligent Design, Philosophy, Religion |
Given the frequent criticisms against ID by some neo-Thomists it may be useful to consider here briefly the problem of compatibility between Thomism and ID (or at least what ID is in my view). To analyze some of the neo-Thomists’ critiques I will examine for example the recent article “Intelligent Design and Me”, part I/II,… more
40-Million Tax Dollars to be Wasted on Venerating Darwin
| March 28, 2010 | Posted by scordova under Darwinism, Education, Evolution, Media |
From the NCSE: Congratulations to NESCent NCSE is happy to congratulate the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) on the renewal of its grant from the National Science Foundation. According to a March 2, 2010, press release, NESCent was awarded a five-year grant renewal in the amount of $25 million, to continue its core programs in… more
Evolution, Theistic Evolution, and Intelligent Design
| March 27, 2010 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Religion, Science, theistic evolution |
— Below is a beefed-up version of a piece I posted here at UD earlier this year. The version below appeared at the Chuck Colson blog. — Evolution, Theistic Evolution, and Intelligent Design By William Dembski In 1993, well-known apologist William Lane Craig debated professional atheist Frank Zindler concerning the existence of the Christian God.… more
What Francis Beckwith Gets Wrong about Intelligent Design
| March 27, 2010 | Posted by Thomas Cudworth under Intelligent Design |
Francis Beckwith is one of the more interesting commentators on Darwinism and intelligent design. Beckwith is intelligent and independently minded, willing to move with the evidence and the arguments, and thus capable of non-partisan thought on the issues. Originally a Protestant and a supporter of intelligent design as formulated by the major ID theorists, he… more
Massimo Says It’s Become a Religion
| March 27, 2010 | Posted by Paul Nelson under Intelligent Design |
Not that Massimo — this one. And “it,” of course, is neo-Darwinism, or the Modern Synthesis: textbook evolutionary theory. There’s nothing especially novel in saying that evolutionary theory can function as a secular religion, which is Piattelli-Palmarini’s main point in his new article. Michael Ruse has said as much for years. What has changed within… more
Histone Inspectors: Codes and More Codes
| March 27, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
By now most people know about the DNA code. A DNA strand consists of a sequence of molecules, or letters, that encodes for proteins. Many people do not realize, however, that there are additional, more nuanced, codes associated with the DNA. For instance, minor chemical modifications (such as the addition of a methyl group) to… more
None of the Above: All the Modern Explanations for Religion Except the Most Obvious
| March 27, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Evolutionary psychology |
Did you know that: Religion is good for you; also, Religion is bad for you; also, Religion makes no difference; also, Religion can be explained by a God gene, or a meme, or part of the brain . . . or whatever the editor of your local paper’s “Relationships” section will buy for this weekend’s… more