Monthly Archives: October 2010
Coffee!! Fox News story: Chances are 100 per cent that far off planet has life
| October 12, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Intelligent Design |
If you want to read science, don’t read the news. more
Ken Miller and Chromosome Fusion
| October 12, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
In the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District court case, federal judge John Jones was heavily influenced by the first expert witness, evolutionist Ken Miller. As Jones later recalled, he “was taken to school.” Unfortunately what Miller “taught” Jones was a series of scientific misrepresentations. Miller focused on two examples from molecular biology: a… more
World-record genome
| October 11, 2010 | Posted by William Dembski under Biology, Genomics |
SCIENCE: “Now THAT’s a genome. A rare Japanese flower named Paris japonica sports an astonishing 149 billion base pairs, making it 50 times the size of a human genome—and the largest genome ever found. Until now, the biggest genome belonged to the marbled lungfish, whose 130 billion base pairs weighed in at an impressive 132.83… more
Hyperskepticism: The Wrong Side Of A Continuum
| October 11, 2010 | Posted by StephenB under Intelligent Design |
Philosophers and scientists who know their business recognize that any attempt to seek knowledge presupposes the existence of a rational universe ripe for investigating. The fact that we even bother to make the effort says something about our nature. As Aristotle says, “all men by nature want to know.” That is why the discovery of… more
Prescribed Reading On Prescriptive Information
| October 11, 2010 | Posted by Robert Deyes under Intelligent Design |
Review Of Programming of Life By Donald Johnson, ISBN-10: 0982355467 There are some science writers that quite simply have a knack for combining the detail of their subject of expertise with a talent for exposition that a wide audience can easily understand. Donald Johnson is one of them. After carefully defining the various types of… more
Judge Jones: I was taken to school
| October 11, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
In reflecting on the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District court case over which he presided, federal judge John Jones recalls that he “was taken to school.” Ever since his liberal arts days at Dickinson College, Jones has never doubted evolution. But his knowledge of the biological details, what little there was to begin… more
Science fiction author asks, why are atheists who write space operas supposed to know best whether God exists?
| October 9, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Science fiction |
Lawyer Hal G.P. Colebatch observes, re atheist science fiction: A magazine I frequently write for (not this one) recently published a review of a book of essays advocating atheism. The reviewer pointed out with some enthusiasm that a large number of the contributors were science-fiction writers. This left me somewhat nonplussed. I publish a good… more
Physicist resigns from American Physical Society, after 67 years, and scorches earth
| October 9, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Physics |
Hal Lewis* reminisces for Society president, Curtis G. Callan, Jr. of Princeton University, charging: When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as… more
Wishing can make it so … or maybe not, if this is about monkeys
| October 9, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Evolutionary psychology |
In, “Document Sheds Light on Investigation at Harvard (Chronicle Review, August 19, 2010),” Tom Bartlett reports that Harvard has told evolutionary psychologist Marc D. Hauser to explain issues around a few of his journal articles: The experiment tested the ability of rhesus monkeys to recognize sound patterns. Researchers played a series of three tones (in… more
Aub’s World
| October 9, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
In Isaac Asimov’s 1958 futuristic short story “The Feeling of Power,” Myron Aub is a technician who rediscovers arithmetic. Aub’s future world is one dominated by computers which do all the number crunching and people who not only are mathematically-challenged but, more importantly, don’t see the point. What good is math anyway? Today evolution has… more
Towering Giants Of Teleological Beauty
| October 8, 2010 | Posted by Robert Deyes under Intelligent Design |
“Keep walking back with your kite. There you go. Now stop where you are. The distance between you and me right now is equivalent to about half the height of California redwoods—the tallest trees on earth. Can you imagine that?” This was my stab at an illustration of how tall trees can really get. But my eight year old… more
Comments on Kathryn Applegate’s May Posts on BioLogos
| October 7, 2010 | Posted by Caroline Crocker under Intelligent Design |
Since I am a cell biologist and immunologist by training, it is with great interest that I read Kathryn Applegate’s May BioLogos posts drawing parallels between adaptive immunity and evolution. In the first essay she claims that antibody “production requires randomness at multiple levels” and that God may use random processes to create “life over… more
Michael Shermer vs. William Dembski streamed debate tonight, 7:00pm CST
| October 7, 2010 | Posted by William Dembski under Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design |
I’m debating Michael Shermer at Washburn University in Topeka Kansas tonight at 7:00pm CST. The topic of the debate is on ID and its scientific status. The debate is being streamed here (scroll down): http://www.challengewashburn.com more
Coffee!!: Why are polar bears white?
| October 7, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Evolutionary biology |
Conventional, and fairly obvious, wisdom would suggest that the bear avoids being noticed by its prey by blending in with the landscape and moving through the snow on silent feet. Evolving that way should be easy enough – the colour gene drops out, and … We readily assume that the prey is on land, casting… more
Back to School, Part V
| October 7, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
Shortly after World War II Mochitsura Hashimoto was summoned to the United States to give testimony in the trial of Charles McVay. Hashimoto’s and McVay’s fates intersected just after midnight, July 30, 1945, when the Japanese submarine I-58, commanded by Hashimoto, sunk the cruiser, the USS Indianapolis, commanded by McVay. Read more more
Don Johnson’s PROGRAMMING OF LIFE
| October 5, 2010 | Posted by William Dembski under Intelligent Design |
Amazon.com product description: “This is currently the best book covering the relationship between genome and computer architectures.” – JOHNATHAN BARTLETT, Author / Publisher / Speaker / Director of Technology —– This book highlights the informational aspects of life that are generally overlooked or ignored in chemical and biological evolutionary scenarios. Each cell of an organism… more
Darwin vs. Einstein?
| October 5, 2010 | Posted by William Dembski under Culture, Science |
Frank Tipler writes at Pajamasmedia: The current battle for America is, as Angelo Codevilla has recently emphasized in his seminal essay, a war between the majority of Americans and America’s ruling class. This conflict is a reflection of a battle between the two greatest scientists of the past two centuries, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein.… more
Euthanasia and the Search for Morality
| October 5, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
Virginia Ironside and Bob Brown advocate euthanasia. If Ironside had a child who was in terrible pain, she would hold a pillow over its head, as she would for any living creature that was suffering. Likewise Brown, the Australian Greens leader, explains that abolishing the federal statute that outlawed euthanasia would be his first legislative… more
Behe v. Barr
| October 4, 2010 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
Michael Behe debates Stephen Barr on ID here. more
Keep Your Eye on the Cause Ball
| October 4, 2010 | Posted by Barry Arrington under Intelligent Design |
In his post below Clive Hayden quotes Dr. Bruce Gordon: “spontaneous creation” minus “any cause illustrates the lack of an explanation rather than scientific comprehension.” nikkipolya objects: “The popular interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is also anything but comprehensible. Yet, it correctly explains most of the phenomena at the atomic level. Comprehensibility is a problem that… more