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Evolution

Ten (or so) Anti-Intelligent Design Books You Should Read

I have posted the second video in my two part book recommendation series on the YouTube channel. In the previous video I highlighted many books that argue for intelligent design. My view is that proponents of design should face the strongest criticisms possible, and not be afraid of doing so. In line with this philosophy, in this video I talk about just a handful of the many books that attempt to refute ID. Again, I would be interested to know what others think are the best books that attempt to show ID is wrong. Ten (or so) Anti-Intelligent Design Books You Should Read

Writing Science Fiction Helps Students Understand Science Better

A recent study published in Issues in Teaching Earth Science suggests that having student write a science fiction story incorporating a concept helps them understand the concept better. Students in an introductory college geology course engaged in one of two exercises to learn more about the concept of cross cutting relationships, a major principle in stratigraphy. One exercise involved writing a report on the concept, the other involved writing a science fiction story based on the concept. Preliminary results suggest that students who engaged with the material within the context of science fiction writing gained a deeper understanding. While the study was focused on geological concepts, we might suggest that Darwinists have been writing science fiction for decades and publishing Read More ›

Ohio Bill Protects Student’s Right to Religious Expression – Will Teaching Creationism Be Next?

Last week, the Ohio House of Representatives passed HB 164, the “Ohio Student Religious Liberties Act of 2019.  The purpose of the bill is to protect the rights of students to religious expressions without penalty in the public school classroom.  Under this bill, a student cannot be given a punative grade for simply expressing their religious views as part of a class assignment.  The bill sounds sensible enough, given the many documented instances of students receiving poor grades on otherwise well written assignments merely because a teacher disagreed with the student’s religious views of the subject.  A key part of the bill says that no school… “shall prohibit a student from engaging in religious expression in the completion of homework, Read More ›

Interview with Berlinski on “Human Nature”

In a couple of prior posts, here and here, we mentioned David Berlinksi’s new book Human Nature.  Here’s a podcast of Berlinksi being interviewed by Jonathan Witt, regarding the book.    On this episode of ID the Future, philosopher, mathematician, and Discovery Institute Senior Fellow David Berlinski answers questions from Jonathan Witt about Berlinski’s celebrated new book Human Nature. Is evolution carrying us upward to new heights of human goodness, as some have claimed? If not that, then will a computer-connected singularity take us on that upward trajectory, as Yuval Noah Harari argues in Homo Deus? With his famous quick wit, Berlinski says no, and warns of a new “explosion of religion,” but a new religion, one without rational grounding Read More ›

New Book by David Berlinski Challenges the Darwinian View of Progress

Evolution News has announced the publication of a new book by David Berlinski entitled Human Nature.  In Human Nature, Berlinski takes aim at the standard narrative of history in our secular culture, the fatuous Whig view that sees human life and human nature on an upward-inclining plane, evolving toward ever greater, even god-like enlightenment. In this telling, represented by the likes of Steven Pinker and Yuval Harari, an accomplishment like the Cathedral of Notre Dame is just part of the dark, regrettable past, which modern, secular men are in the process of transcending. What is medieval, they would have us believe, is embarrassing, whereas modernity, with its keystone of Darwinian materialism, means peace, contentment, true understanding. Berlinski’s wiser perspective sees Read More ›

Matzke is Back on the Flagellum Horse

In October 2006, Nick Matzke, a name not unfamiliar to denizens of UD, and Mark Pallen co-authored a review article for Nature Review of Microbiology regarding the status of research into the evolutionary origins of the bacterial flagellum.  Matzke and Pallen felt the need to write such an article because since the publication of Michael Behe’s book “Darwin’s Black Box” ten years prior, there had been much hand waving and hand wringing over exactly what is the evolutionary explanation for the seemingly irreducibly complex flagellar system.  Matzke’s first line of attack prior to the ’06 article was to lurk various discussion threads and offer up lists of studies that supposedly provided the very thing that Behe said was nowhere to Read More ›

My Tribute to Phillip Johnson

Many of us here were greatly influenced by Phillip Johnson’s books, articles, and lectures. Indeed, if not for Johnson, this blog might never have come to be. Like so many, I was saddened to learn of his death on November 2nd. While several of Johnson’s fellow academics and colleagues have written some wonderful tributes to him, I wanted to give one from the perspective of a layman. My tribute was published in The Stream last week and republished today over at Evolution News.

Design Disquisitions: Giving the Critics a Fair Hearing

This is a short post explaining a little feature I’ll be doing on my blog called ‘Critic’s Corner’. Hopefully it will turn out to be a useful resource. It goes without saying that ID isn’t the most popular idea in the world. Since its development and increased prominence in western culture, it has been widely derided and criticised. It has many, many critics. Among those critics are people from a wide range of disciplines including biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, philosophy, theology, and journalism. ID also has the misfortune of being disliked not only by atheists and naturalists (as one might expect), but also many theistic evolutionists, and even more surprisingly, many young-earth Creationists. There are of course many within those Read More ›

Design Disquisitions: Why the Question of Biological Origins Really Matters

Finally, I’ve managed to publish my first blog article! It’s been a rocky start as I had some technical difficulties. Nevertheless, it feels good to get the ball rolling. In this first article, I’ve chosen to take a step back and reflect upon whether or not intelligent design is an important problem to consider in the first place. I outline what I consider to be five strong reasons why this is a matter of great significance.   In the foreword to the intelligent design text, The Design of Life, biochemist William S. Harris notes: The scientific community continues to wrestle with the deep and fundamental questions: Where did the universe come from? How did life originate? How did a coded language (i.e., DNA) Read More ›

But who says today’s philosophers must make sense?

A friend can’t make sense of this, from philosopher Keith Frankish in Aeon: Consciousness is a life-transforming illusion So, again, what is consciousness for? In his 2011 book Soul Dust, Humphrey proposes a novel idea. He argues that consciousness enriches life. It doesn’t add information; it adds interests and goals. Qualia are wonderful, magical things, and conscious creatures enjoy having them. They relish their sensations, and this relish gives them a deeper interest in their own existence. They also project qualia onto their surroundings and take a deeper interest in them too; and they come to think of themselves as having a self, which is of great importance to them. These developments, Humphrey argues, have great survival value and explain Read More ›

Try thinking harder about supporting National Public Radio

From NPR: Don’t Believe In Evolution? Try Thinking Harder … The theory of evolution by natural selection is among the best established in science, yet also among the most controversial for subsets of the American public. It’s appalling that this pysch prof can get away with misinforming the public about the fact that evolution by natural selection (= Darwinism) is increasingly regarded as a millstone around the necks of evolutionary biologists, so few are its demonstrated effects. By contrast with the many common, little-publicized modes of evolution, such as horizontal gene transfer and genome doubling, to say nothing of genetic drift. For decades we’ve known that beliefs about evolution are well-predicted by demographic factors, such as religious upbringing and political Read More ›

Poll: Atheists 15% – God involved 78%

Gallup has updated their origins survey:

Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings?
1) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process,
2) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process,
3) God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.

They found:

since 1982 . . .
the 46% who today choose the creationist explanation is virtually the same as the 45% average over that period — and very similar to the 44% who chose that explanation in 1982. The 32% who choose the “theistic evolution” view that humans evolved under God’s guidance is slightly below the 30-year average of 37%, while the 15% choosing the secular evolution view is slightly higher (12%).

See: In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins Read More ›

Debating Darwin and Design: A Dialogue Between Two Christians

A couple of months ago, I agreed to take part in a written debate with a good friend of mine, Francis Smallwood. Francis, like me, is a commited Christian. Unlike me though, he is also a neo-Darwinist. On his blog Musings Of A Scientific Nature he writes on many different scientific issues, although his primary focus is on Darwinism. I encourage UD readers to check his blog out. As an enthusiastic ID proponent, I obviously think his embrace of Darwinian theory is profoundly mistaken, and equally I think his criticisms of ID are weak. However, he is at least willing to engage in debate with people of opposing view points and is not as dismissive as most Darwinists. Our idea Read More ›

Responding to Moran – Is “Unguided” Part of Modern Evolutionary Theory?

I am always aghast that in the 21st century people still make the claim that mutations are unguided. This is a hold-over idea from before the discovery of DNA, simply because some mutations were found to occur independently of selection. However, modern evidence has showed that mutations are actually in large part due to mechanisms geared for adaptive purposes, just like the rest of biology. And, just like hearts have heart attacks, mutation systems can break down, too, and lead to disease. Just like bacteria, we discovered mutations first by noting the ones that were causing disease, but with every closer look we see that these are the exception rather than the rule. To point to a simple example (and Read More ›