Monthly Archives: November 2010
Survival of the Godliest: Does strong religious belief provide an evolutionary advantage?
| November 28, 2010 | Posted by vjtorley under Intelligent Design |
Over at MercatorNet, Phillip Longman, a former senior writer and deputy assistant managing editor at U.S. News & World Report, has written a thought-provoking post on what might be described as a battle between genes and memes – the genes being those of very religious people (who are much more likely to procreate), and the… more
Remembering Phil Skell
| November 27, 2010 | Posted by scordova under Culture, Science |
Casey Luskin reports the passing of our colleague and member of the National Academy of Sciences, Phil Skell. Philip S. Skell, sometimes called “the father of carbene chemistry,” is widely known for the “Skell Rule,” which was first applied to carbenes, the “fleeting species” of carbon. The rule, which predicts the most probable pathway through… more
Intelligent Design – Pseudoscience or A Credible Challenge To Evolution?
| November 27, 2010 | Posted by Jonathan M under Intelligent Design |
As I previously noted, Michael Behe has been touring the UK this week, speaking in such cities as Belfast, Bournemouth, Cambridge, Glasgow, Leamington/Warwick, London, and Oxford. On Monday, Michael Behe debated the former director of the Royal Society, Michael Reiss, before an audience of invited guests – including scientists, religious leaders and secularists. The event… more
Is PZ Myers the Future of Secular Humanism?
| November 26, 2010 | Posted by William Dembski under Atheism, Culture, Religion, Science |
UD moderator Clive Hayden referred UD readers to an article at SuperScholar.org titled “The Future of Secular Humanism.” The article itself focused on a rift between the secular humanism old guard, represented by Paul Kurtz, and the new guard, represented by Ron Lindsay, who apparently ousted Kurtz from the various humanist organizations he had founded.… more
Eugene Koonin: The Pot Calls the Kettle Black
| November 25, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
A paper written by an evolutionist from earlier this year, erroneously claiming to confirm common descent, has now been rebuked by other evolutionists. Unfortunately this is not a healthy sign of evolutionists turning to science, for the new paper is just as unscientific as the first. Read more A paper written by an evolutionist from… more
UK Christians Embrace ID;
| November 24, 2010 | Posted by clivecopus under Intelligent Design |
I had the privilege of attending Michael Behe’s talk at Westmister Chapel in London on Monday evening. The talk was organised by Premier Christian Radio, so it is safe to assume that most of those in attendance were Christian listeners of that radio station. The hall was almost full as Professor Behe began his talk by illustrating how… more
Secular Humanists Despise Each Other and Humanity
| November 24, 2010 | Posted by Clive Hayden under Biology, Culture, Darwinism, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Religion, Science |
A friend of mine referred me to this article at superscholar.org about the recent 30th anniversary conference that The Center For Inquiry held in Los Angeles this past October. There seems to be a lot of disagreement among the influential in the movement advocating secular humanism. Despite calls for unity at the conference, a significant… more
Glasgow Humanists Unable To Mount Successful Argument Against Behe
| November 24, 2010 | Posted by Jonathan M under Intelligent Design |
Michael Behe is currently on a speaking tour around the UK (tour website here), organised by the newly founded Centre for ID UK. Last night, I attended Behe’s Glasgow lecture. The evening was entitled “Darwin or Design – What Does the Science Really Say?” As is to be expected, Behe spoke both articulately and persuasively,… more
“Evolution Readiness” and Other Tools for Teaching Evolution in Our Schools
| November 24, 2010 | Posted by Clive Hayden under Biology, Culture, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science |
Education Week has this article expounding on the fruitfulness of campaigns designed to educate our youth in the theory of evolution. When a federal court in 2005 rejected an attempt by the Dover, Pa., school board to introduce intelligent design as an alternative to evolution to explain the development of life on Earth, it sparked… more
The Fly’s Adaptive Aerodynamics
| November 24, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
Recent experiments have revealed that when perturbed in flight, a fruit fly can recover its heading to within 2 degrees in less than a tenth of a second. Here’s how the researchers describe the results: Read more more
Social Darwinist sterilization hits bookshelf in Canada
| November 23, 2010 | Posted by O'Leary under Culture, Darwinism |
Fight Card: Jane Harris Zsovan vs. It Couldn’t Happen Here (My comments on how Christians got involved in that mess … ) The Alberta Christian support for forced sterilization is a case in point: Why on earth did anyone think that social Darwinism was a reasonable fit with Christianity? It can’t be, and the original… more
Chickens Have Cellular Sunglasses
| November 23, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
When light enters your eye it triggers a sequence of actions, ultimately causing a signal to be sent to your brain. Even a mere single photon can be detected in your vision system. It all starts with a photon interacting with a light-sensitive chromophore molecule. The interaction causes the chromophore to change configuration and this,… more
Sir Roger’s Revelation
| November 22, 2010 | Posted by Robert Sheldon under Intelligent Design |
In a previous blog, I had analyzed Sir Roger Penrose‘s new cosmology (CCC) as a reworking of Sir Fred Hoyle’s “Steady State Theory“. And of course, Sir Fred’s is a reworking of the Greek model of Democritus, and one of the three pillars of materialism. Also in the news is Hawking’s attempt to make the… more
The video that proves Intelligent Design
| November 22, 2010 | Posted by vjtorley under Intelligent Design |
Seeing is believing, and they say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Over at Creation.com, Brian Thomas has posted a fascinating article entitled, ATP synthase: majestic molecular machine made by a mastermind. ATP synthase is an enzyme that synthesizes an energy-rich compound, ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which is used by almost every biochemical process… more
Prepared Remarks for the Dembski-Hitchens Debate
| November 22, 2010 | Posted by William Dembski under Atheism, Darwinism, Religion |
Below are my prepared remarks from the 18 November 2010 debate at Prestonwood Christian Academy with Christopher Hitchens. The full debate may be viewed here. more
Ethics and the Evolution of the Synapse
| November 22, 2010 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design |
Scientific mistakes are no sin, but it would be a mistake to think there is no ethical dimension to the theory of evolution. The ethical aspects of evolution are most obvious in its misrepresentation of science. Even evolutionists agree scientists are responsible for the accurate transmission of scientific knowledge to the public. And yet evolutionists… more
Dembski-Hitchens Debate — The Real “Universal Acid”
| November 21, 2010 | Posted by GilDodgen under Intelligent Design |
The recent Dembski-Hitchens debate is available here. As Dembski points out, Hitchens hitches much of his atheistic wagon to Darwinism (the creation myth of atheistic materialism, which is dissolving rapidly in the universal acid* of genuine scientific rigor). Very revealing is Hitchens’ reference to cave-dwelling creatures that lose their eyes. He thinks that this is… more
A review Of Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional (Evolution And Rational Thought)
| November 21, 2010 | Posted by Robert Deyes under Intelligent Design |
Written by Felipe Aizpún Viñes, OIACDI; 2010, ISBN 10-1452800790; Review by Carlos Javier Alonso, University of Navarra, Spain (see original review in Spanish at OIACDI); Translation by Robert Deyes Evolucionismo y conocimiento racional (Evolution and rational thought) presents a thoroughly comprehensive analysis of both the arguments in favor and against evolution and demonstrates the author’s … more
The Designer’s Mechanism: Contingent Irreversibility!
| November 19, 2010 | Posted by PaV under Intelligent Design |
In the latest edition of Science, Michael Gray, Julius Lukes, et.al, tackle what they see as a big dilemna for Darwinism: “gratuitous complexity”. The first two sentences of their short piece are these: “Many of the cell’s macromolecular machines appear gratuitously complex, comprising more components thatn their basic functions seem to demand. How can we… more
Goldenfeld and Woese, paradigm-busting even more (with added goodies for ID front-loaders)
| November 19, 2010 | Posted by Paul Nelson under Intelligent Design |
Some scientists grow more conservative with age; others, more radical. Carl Woese (age 82) represents a vivid example of the latter group. His latest paper, “Life is physics: evolution as a collective phenomenon far from equilibrium,” co-authored with fellow U of Illinois scientist and frequent collaborator Nigel Goldenfeld, includes more heterodox ideas per page than… more