.. in which he captured the militant materialism of some modern scientists.To these self-confident researchers, the idea that the spirit might exist apart from the body is just ridiculous. Instead, everything arises from atoms. Genes shape temperament. Brain chemicals shape behavior. Assemblies of neurons create consciousness. Free will is an illusion. Human beings are “hard-wired” to do this or that. Religion is an accident.

In this materialist view, people perceive God’s existence because their brains have evolved to confabulate belief systems.

Uh huh.

Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and I took it all to pieces in The Spiritual Brain. There was no basis whatever from the new neuroscience for that view - on the contrary, the new neuroscience was killing it!

Brooks, author of BoBos in Paradise, acknowledges, (more…)

Abstract
A propulsion system similar in size and motion to the helical bacterial flagella motor is presented. The system consists of a magnetic nanocoil as a propeller (27 nm thick ribbon, 3 mun in diameter, 30-40 mum long) driven by an arrangement of macro coils. The macro coils generate a rotating field that induces rotational motion in the nanocoil. Viscous forces during rotation result in a net axial propulsion force on the nanocoil. Modeling of fluid mechanics and magnetics was used to estimate the requirements for such a system. The fabrication of the magnetic nanocoils and the system setup are explained. Experimental results from electromagnetic actuation of nanocoils as well as from their propulsion in both paraffin oil and water are presented. This is the first time a propulsion system of this size and motion-type has been fabricated and experimentally verified.

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Ted Peters, a researcher in the field of science and religion and author of SCIENCE, THEOLOGY, AND ETHICS (Ashgate 2003), is conducting a survey. The central question is this: Would contact with extraterrestrial intelligent life affect religion on earth? Would you be wiling to participate? The questionnaire is very brief and would take only 5 minutes to fill out. Although we will tabulate the data anonymously and will take every step to maintain confidentiality, please note we cannot guarantee full confidentiality when receiving email responses. Thank you. Ted Peters, Principle Investigator, is professor of systematic theology at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, the Graduate Union, and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. Julie Froehlig, Research Assistant, is a student at PLTS.

I found the survey questions interesting, but I couldn’t really answer most of them decisively.

For example, I have no idea what the religious opinions of an extraterrestrial would be. It would be just my luck to run into a hopelessly conflicted alien who believes that space travel is sinful … but it feels so good anyway that he just can’t … and so his shrink says … (O’Leary yawns and switches off tape … )

Go vote at Survey Monkey. You can leave comments too.

Also, just up at the Overwhelming Evidence blog:

Prof thinks profs’ intellectual sneers at public are not great TV, and he sure is right

Check your calendar … is it still Orwell’s 1984 where you live?

Science teacher symposium: Answer student questions without getting sued or fired

In some ways, bonobos (pygmy chimps) are more similar to humans than to other chimps

How fares the Expelled film? Still No. 5 - and who’s ahead of it anyway?

David Attenborough, 81, to make one last film - on evolution

Employing Google’s scholar-specific search engine, which limits results to academic journals, WORLD performed controlled searches for the names of each of this year’s 30 tenure candidates. In general, those faculty members receiving tenure have published with greater frequency since arriving at Baylor in 2002. And specific comparisons between individuals in particular fields reveal similar disparities.

However, Bergin is reluctant to simply leave the matter there - advisedly in my view.

A focus on publications alone tells against long term research that might turn up more substantial findings. Colleagues and department heads might be more aware of valuable longer projects.

And, as Frank Tipler has pointed out, many papers are cited by nobody at all, which implies that the authors published so as not to perish. Publications that nobody cites should not be equivalent to publications cited by several other research studies.

Considerations like these could be part of the reason why the faculty senate is unhappy that President Lilley overruled so many of their decisions.

Now, whether Lilley’s program for improving the university is a bad idea or whether he just hasn’t convinced enough people that it is a good idea, I don’t know. But an army without soldiers isn’t going anywhere. And that is what he has, now that the faculty senate has voted against him.

Reporter Bergin is not convinced that there is an anti-Christian purge afoot, as Bill has thought. (more…)

Part One: Our Mitochondria: A piece in the puzzle of our origins?

Part Two: What Does Our Mitochondrial DNA Say About Human Ancestry?

Part Three: African Eve - when pop culture falls in love with science

Abortofascism and Free-Market Homicide

By Rick Pearcey, Pro-Existance, May 12, 2008
In a column titled “Atheism and Child Murder,” Dinesh D’Souza comments on his recent debate with Princeton ethicist and atheist Peter Singer:

Some of Singer’s critics call him a Nazi and compare his proposals to Hitler’s schemes for eliminating the unwanted, the unfit and the disabled. But as I note in the debate, Singer is no Hitler. He doesn’t want state-sponsored killings. Rather, he wants the decision to kill to be made by you and me. Instead of government-conducted genocide, Singer favors free-market homicide.

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“The only distinct meaning of the word ‘natural’ is stated , fixed or settled ; since what is natural as much requires and presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so, i.e. to effect it continually or at stated times, as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it for once.”

 second edition of Origin of species (1860)

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Journalist Susan Mazur continues her series of remarkable articles about dissenters from neo-Darwinism with a compelling interview of Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, professor of cognitive science at the University of Arizona, and co-author (with Jerry Fodor) of the forthcoming book What Darwin Got Wrong.

In the interview, Piattelli-Palmarini points out that many academic biologists muffle their unhappiness with the received neo-Darwinian theory, either out of fear of being ostracized, or from worries about being exploited by intelligent design advocates. Jerry Fodor’s quips about having to join the federal Witness Protection Program, because of his public dissent from neo-Darwinian theory, lend some humor to this reality. If Expelled could be expanded to a multi-part television series, interviews with non-Darwinian evolutionary theorists such as Piattelli-Palmarini — who makes his loathing of ID explicit (see the interview) — would add richness to the complex landscape of opinion, circa 2008.

Piattelli-Palmarini argues that the role of natural selection is limited by the logic of complex developing systems, such as seen in the animal phyla. While selection clearly operates, he says, its power is confined to minor adjustments:

Of course, there is natural selection all around us (just think of the flu virus, mutating and adapting every year, to our detriment) and inside us (just think of our antibodies and our synapses and the pancreas cells and the epithelial cells). The point is, however, that organisms can be modified and refined by natural selection, but that is NOT the way new species and new classes and new phyla originated.

It’s a stimulating interview; check it out.

Real Christians, presumably, wouldn’t demand an accounting about the rapidly growing evidence against Darwinism and other materialist isms. And real Christians wouldn’t make a film about the people who get Expelled for doing so.

(Of course, all ID sympathizers are Christians, right? Hear that, Ben? David? Gerald?)

Schloss’s essay illustrates the fact that theistic evolutionism (vending Darwin to the masses on behalf of Christ) is dead. Dead because it is a solution to a problem that does not exist any more. (more…)

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