Rick Smalley, a Nobel laureate in chemistry at Rice University, died earlier this week. You can read about his scientific contributions and passing here. I had the privilege of having lunch with Rick this summer. The meeting was arranged by his pastor at Houston’s Second Baptist Church, my friend Ben Young. Rick had in the previous year become a Christian as well as a member of Second Baptist Church, and begun to express his doubts about Darwinism publicly (see here and here). I reported on my lunch meeting with Rick here, though to spare him harrassment I did not mention him by name. Rick’s prediction at the end of his life was that ID would be mainstreamed in five years Read More ›

From Chemistry World: Nobel prize-winning chemist and past president of the Royal Society of Chemistry Harry Kroto died on Saturday 30 April aged 76. Kroto was awarded the 1996 chemistry Nobel prize, along with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley, for the discovery of fullerenes, and was knighted the same year. More. He was also an atheist activist in science, seeming not to recognize any distinction, as the campaign against Royal Society theistic evolutionist Michael Reiss suggested. This item from the New York Times in 2006 gives the sense of it. He shared the Nobel that year with Richard Smalley (1943–2005) who came to the opposite conclusion. Curiously, no one was supposed to mind using science to spread atheism but using Read More ›

A week ago, I wrote an article, Feet to the fire, in response to Dr. Stacy Trasancos’s essay, Does Science Prove God Exists? Dr. Trasancos has been gracious enough to respond to my article. In this post, I’d like to make a final reply, and I will happily give her the last word, if she wishes to make a closing rebuttal. Dr. Trasancos’s question for the Intelligent Design community I’d like to begin by answering the (rather lengthy) question which Dr. Trasancos poses at the end of her response to my article. She writes: If 1) certain molecules provide the best evidence for a Designer; and if 2) the “primordial Fiat Lux, uttered at the moment when, along with matter, Read More ›

Jeffrey Tayler, a contributing editor of The Atlantic and a writer for Salon magazine who has lived in Russia since 1993, knows quite a lot about foreign languages, a little about science, very little about history, and nothing at all about religion – a subject with which he appears to be obsessed, judging from the 40-odd articles he has written on the subject for Salon magazine, during the past two years. Strangely enough, Tayler wrote much more sympathetically about religion during the late 1990s, at a time when his articles for Salon were actually entertaining to read, and as late as 2006, he declared in his book, River of No Reprieve (Houghton Mifflin, New York, 2006, p. 121) that “the Read More ›

Adam Gopnik has written an impertinent piece for the New Yorker (February 19, 2015), arguing that political candidates should be put on the spot and required to affirm their acceptance of evolution before being allowed to take office. Evolution, he writes, is “an inarguable and obvious truth” which is “easy to understand,” and if you oppose “Darwinian biology,” you thereby “announce yourself against the discoveries of science, or so frightened of those who are that you can be swayed from answering honestly.” A politician who fails to publicly embrace evolution “shouldn’t be trusted with power.” As Gopnik puts it: It does seem slightly odd to ask a man running for President — or, for that matter, for dogcatcher — to Read More ›

Despite my disagreements with Professor Larry Moran over the years, I respect him as a fair-minded, intelligent and generally sensible person. Recently, however, he said something which can only be described as rather silly. In a post titled, Evidence for the existence of god(s), he wrote: I am always on the lookout for evidence that some sort of god actually exists. The reason I’m an atheist is because I’ve never seen any evidence that’s the least bit convincing. I keep asking for evidence but nobody ever supplies any. Now, had Professor Moran merely remarked that he found the evidence for God’s existence less than compelling, or unsatisfactory, he would have had a leg to stand on. But he went much Read More ›

Imagine that scientists discovered the best documentary evidence for God’s existence that anyone could possibly hope for: messages in the DNA of each and every human cell, saying “Made by Yahweh.” Imagine that a notorious New Atheist and a well-known Catholic philosopher are both asked by journalists what they make of this evidence. The New Atheist shocks everyone by announcing that he now (provisionally) accepts that there is a God. “Sure, aliens might have made those messages,” he concedes. “But it’s not likely, is it? For the time being, I’m going with the hypothesis that God did it. This looks like pretty good evidence to me.” The Catholic philosopher is asked what he makes of the new discovery. To everyone’s Read More ›

The United Kingdom has now banned the teaching of “any doctrine or theory which holds that natural biological processes cannot account for the history, diversity, and complexity of life on earth and therefore rejects the scientific theory of evolution” at all schools receiving public funding, including academies and free schools (see also here). In science classes, alternative beliefs about origins may not be presented to pupils “as a scientific theory”; however, discussion of these beliefs is permitted in religious education classes, “as long as it is not presented as a valid alternative to established scientific theory.” The new guidelines (which readers may access here) “explicitly require that pupils are taught about the theory of evolution,” without specifying which theory of Read More ›

In a recent post, Professor Larry Moran takes exception to a Youtube video by Intelligent Design advocate Dr. Jonathan Wells, who uses the illustration of a leaking cell to rebut scientific claims that life on Earth could have arisen naturally from non-living matter, via an unguided process. The Youtube video did not mention God. Instead, Dr. Wells began with a discussion of Stanley Miller’s 1953 experiment, which simulated the conditions thought at the time to be present on the early Earth, and which managed to produce more than 20 amino acids, as well as some sugars. Here’s the complete transcript of Dr. Wells’ video: Even if Miller’s experiment were valid, you’re still light years away from making life. It comes Read More ›

Professor James M. Tour is one of the ten most cited chemists in the world. He is famous for his work on nanocars (pictured above, courtesy of Wikipedia), nanoelectronics, graphene nanostructures, carbon nanovectors in medicine, and green carbon research for enhanced oil recovery and environmentally friendly oil and gas extraction. He is currently a Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Rice University. He has authored or co-authored 489 scientific publications and his name is on 36 patents. Although he does not regard himself as an Intelligent Design theorist, Professor Tour, along with over 700 other scientists, took the courageous step back in 2001 of signing the Discovery Institute’s “A Scientific Read More ›

Coyne is soliciting questions for Dawkins to answer on his book tour, but Coyne will not allow certain kinds of questions to be passed on: Please, though, avoid questions that involve the following: • Extremely technical questions about genetics or evolution. reader-survey-do-you-have-a-question-for-richard-dawkins/ We all remember what happened the last time someone asked Dawkins a technical question: Ok, so can anyone formulate dumbed down questions for Dawkins? Ok, I’ll give it a shot, and readers are invited to try. Question: “Do you think society ought to allow married men to sleep around? If so, can you please convince my wife that it’s all right for me to have some fun?” (See: Richard Dawkins defends the idea of having a mistress and Read More ›

Dear President Gora, As an intelligent design advocate (Web page here) who contributes regularly to the ID Website Uncommon Descent, I would like to thank you for your recent statement to the faculty and staff of Ball State University, which clarifies your university’s official position regarding the teaching of intelligent design theory. I hope you will not object if I ask you a few questions which your own faculty staff might want to pose to you, in future meetings. Question 1 You referred to “intelligent design” in your email to Ball State University faculty and staff, without saying what you meant by the term. So I’d like to ask: exactly how do you define “intelligent design”? Specifically: does it include Read More ›

(Part two of a series of posts in response to Zack Kopplin.) The Seven Sages, depicted in the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493. Image courtesy of Wikipedia. Zack, in your poker challenge to Congresswoman Michele Bachmann on May 24, 2011, you declared: Congresswoman Bachmann, you claim that Nobel Laureates support creationism. Show me your hand. If you want to be taken seriously by voters while you run for President, back up your claims with facts. Can you match 43 Nobel Laureates, or do you fold? Actually, what Congresswoman Bachmann said was that “There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design.” (Bachmann-Wetterling-Binkowski candidates’ debate. October 7, 2006. Voter’s Choice Candidate Forum, sponsored Read More ›

Left: 2006 World Series Of Poker main event table. Right: Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Images courtesy of http://www.lasvegasvegas.com, The United States Congress and Wikipedia. (Part one of a series of posts in response to Zack Kopplin.) Hi, Zack. I’ve been following your very well-organized campaign to repeal the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA). In 2011, at the age of 17, you managed to persuade no less than 43 Nobel Laureate scientists to sign a petition urging that the act be repealed, and your most recent list now has 74 signatures from Nobel Laureate scientists, plus one endorsement by Dr. John Sulston (2002 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine), making an impressive total of 75 Nobel Laureates who have endorsed the Read More ›