Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Spring it on ’em and Watch the Fur Fly

Dennis Venema is an associate professor in the biology department at Trinity Western University, a Christian university near Vancouver, British Columbia.  Over at Biologos Venema has an article entitled The Sorrows and Joys of Teaching Evolution at an Evangelical Christian University in which he recounts his efforts to indoctrinate his students in Darwinian evolution. In the opening paragraphs of his article Venema describes one of his teaching methods:  After the “information dump” using the fruit fly examples, it’s time for a class discussion/application before the students drift off too much. Ok, here’s a slide that shows the chromosome structure of a group of organisms that other lines of evidence suggest are part of a group of related species. What do you Read More ›

An anti-ID biology professor who doesn’t even know the facts of life, let alone evolution

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. You wouldn’t expect a biology professor, of all people, to get the facts of life wrong. You wouldn’t expect a man whose specialty is genetics to overlook the most basic facts about how evolution works. And you certainly wouldn’t expect a scientist who declares that “it is necessary for schools to teach biological evolution” to be ignorant of the key events in human evolution. “Surely,” you might say, “that could never happen.” And yet it did. When? Just last week. (Lydia McGew has an excellent article about the whole episode here.) The man I’m talking about is Greg Hampikian, a professor of biology and criminal justice at Boise State University, who received his Ph.D. Read More ›

UB Sets It Out Step-By-Step

UD Editors:  No one has come close to refuting UB’s thesis after 129 comments.  We are moving this post to the top of the page to give the materialists another chance. I take the following from an excellent comment UB made in a prior post.  UB lays out his argument step by step, precept by precept.  Then he arrives at a conclusion.  In order for his argument to be valid, the conclusion must follow from the premises.  In order for his argument to be sound, each of the premises must be true. Now here is the challenge to our Darwinist friends.  If you disagree with UB’s conclusion, please demonstrate how his argument is either invalid (as a matter of logic Read More ›

That’s the Way, ASA!

Reposted with permission from AITSE Report on the 2012 American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) Annual Meeting  About a year ago AITSE and Uncommon Descent featured an article that, between it and the follow-on posts, attracted 3773 hits and 182 comments. Why this high level of interest? Simply because the article pointed out that some of what happened at the ASA 2011 annual meeting near Chicago was not consistent with the values that the ASA posts on their website. There the ASA state that “We are committed to providing an open forum where [scientific] controversies can be discussed without fear of unjust condemnation…” But, at times the atmosphere communicated from the podium was one of thinly-veiled hostility against those who question aspects of consensus science. Details can Read More ›

“Conservation of Information Made Simple” at ENV

Evolution News & Views just posted a long article I wrote on conservation of information. EXCERPT: “In this article, I’m going to follow the example of these books, laying out as simply and clearly as I can what conservation of information is and why it poses a challenge to conventional evolutionary thinking. I’ll break this concept down so that it seems natural and straightforward. Right now, it’s too easy for critics of intelligent design to say, ‘Oh, that conservation of information stuff is just mumbo-jumbo. It’s part of the ID agenda to make a gullible public think there’s some science backing ID when it’s really all smoke and mirrors.’ Conservation of information is not a difficult concept and once it Read More ›

Ten Questions for Professor Coyne

Over at his Website, Why Evolution is True, Professor Jerry Coyne is a vigorous defender of science against what he sees as the encroachments of religion. Professor Coyne has made many forceful criticisms of religion over the past few years, so I thought I would respond by writing him an open letter, in which I ask him questions under ten broad categories, regarding what I regard as key weaknesses in his own philosophical position. I look forward to Coyne’s response. Question 1 – Is science the only road to knowledge? Professor Coyne, you have repeatedly affirmed that science is the only road to knowledge, and you’ve argued (cogently, in my view) that faith cannot be equated with knowledge. So here’s Read More ›

Do you have to believe in Adam and Eve?

It is not often that I find myself in agreement with Professor Jerry Coyne, but this is one of those occasions. Over at his Website, Why Evolution is True, Professor Coyne has written a lengthy post entitled, Catholics proclaim complete harmony between science and their faith, trot out Aquinas again, in which he cites (without naming me) a post of mine from 2010 on Why Aquinas’ views on Scripture would have prevented him from becoming a Darwinist. I stand by the conclusions I reached in that post, regarding Aquinas’ views on God, creation and Scripture, and I share Coyne’s sense of indignation with the following statement, made by a prominent Catholic theologian from the University of Oxford and a scientist Read More ›

For record: Questions on the logical and scientific status of design theory for objectors (and supporters)

Over the past several days, I have been highlighting poster children of illogic and want of civility that are too often found among critics to design theory – even, among those claiming to be standing on civility and to be posing unanswerable questions, challenges or counter-claims to design theory. I have also noticed the strong (but patently ill-founded) feeling/assumption among objectors to design theory that they have adequately disposed of the issues it raises and are posing unanswerable challenges in exchanges A capital example of this, was the suggestion by ID objector Toronto, that the inference to best current explanation used by design thinkers, is an example of question-begging circular argument. Here, again is his attempted rebuttal: Kairosfocus [Cf. original Read More ›

Trading on borrowed capital

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/07/16/new-genus-of-south-asian-fish-named-after-richard-dawkins/ [Rohan] Pethiyagoda, an ichthyologist and internationally acclaimed conservationist, said extensive studies in India and Sri Lanka showed that the level of diversity among such fish was “much greater than previously suspected”. This was partly the reason that the study group had chosen to name the new genus after the 71-year-old Dawkins, the British author of the anti-religion polemic, “The God Delusion”. Is this irony? Having been trumpeted as the masterpiece of the new atheist movement, most readers of “The God Delusion” found vastly less evidence of developed thought than they had expected. “Richard Dawkins has through his writings helped us understand that the universe is far more beautiful and awe-inspiring than any religion has imagined,” Pethiyagoda told AFP on Read More ›

Review of a review of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

First posted at AITSE. With the release of Obama’s America, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is again attracting media attention. Both movies are conservative documentaries–Obama’s America has now displaced Expelled as the top conservative documentary. The difference between the two? You can see Expelled for free by clicking on the link above; you have to pay for Obama’s America. The similarity? Both movies elicit strong reactions–either people love them or they hate them. Politics is outside the purview of AITSE’s mission, except in so far as it infringes on integrity in science, so one may ask why a review of a film was addressed in our newsletter. Simply because, the main premise of Expelled is that scientists are being penalized for Read More ›

Shakespeare or Whitman?

“This above all: to thine own self be true.” William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, scene 2.   Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) Walt Whitman, Song of Myself Watching the materialists tangle themselves into linguistic and intellectual knots in the comment thread over at my On Self Evident Moral Truth post put me in mind of these two famous quotations.  Let me explain. Astronomers estimate the universe contains more than 100 billion galaxies and 300 sextillion (3X10^23) stars.  On the atheist/materialist account, I am nothing but a jumped up hairless ape walking around on my hind legs on a speck of dust orbiting another speck of dust in a collection Read More ›

Examples of Darwinist “Free” Thought Blogging

There is never ending drama over at Darwinist Ed Brayton’s “Free” Thought Blogs (FTB). We have the example of Greg Laden (affectionately known as Greg bin Laden by some), describing how he intends to terrorize a US Army soldier: Think about that. You f–king sh-t. Now, get forever out of my life. Do not turn back. You do not deserve to even know the people you’ve insulted in that idiotic post you wrote. Don’t ever, ever find yourself in my presence or think you deserve to breath the air that I, and Jen, and Stephanie, and Gret and Ophelia and PZ and the rest of us breath, because you do not. If you do make that apology it better be Read More ›

On Self Evident Moral Truth [Updated]

Some years ago I posted an excerpt from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov in which Ivan Karamazov brings his indictment against God to his brother Alyosha.  In it he describes a number of atrocities based on real life stories.  (Warning:  Not for the faint of heart):  People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that’s all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it. These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children, too; cutting the unborn child from the mother’s womb, Read More ›

The Shallowness of Bad Design Arguments

The existence of bad design, broken design, and cruelty in the world inspires some of the strongest arguments against the Intelligent Design of life and the universe. I consider the “bad design” argument the most formidable of the anti-ID arguments put forward, but in the end it is shallow and flawed. I will attempt to turn the “bad design” argument on its head in this essay. The “bad design” arguments have at least two major themes: 1. An Intelligent Designer like God wouldn’t make designs that are capable of breaking down 2. God (as the Intelligent Designer of Life) doesn’t exist because of all the cruelty and evil in the world To address the first point, consider the synthesis of Read More ›