Richard Sternberg, Guillermo Gonzalez, Caroline Crocker. Is there a pattern? Go here. Note especially this story about Gonzalez: go here.
Month: August 2005
John Patterson — Now and Then
John Patterson is one of the Iowa State faculty currently opposing ID and Guillermo Gonzalez (go here). Patterson, an avowed atheist, has a history of censoring ideas inconsistent with his atheism. As one of my colleagues reports:
Masculinity-Threatened Men
According to the 26Aug2005 issue of THE WEEK (p. 20), “Researchers at Cornell University tested the effect of insecurity on men’s attitudes by giving a survey on gender identity to about 50 men. The men were then told that an analysis of the survey showed that they exhibited ‘weak’ male characteristics — indeed, that their […]
“Most Scientific Papers Are Probably Wrong”
Lehigh University biologists have, just shy of a consensus, condemned intelligent design (the lone dissenter — surprise, surprise — is Michael Behe). The various anti-ID blogs (go here and here) are crowing about this, as though this vindicates their criticism of ID and, to boot, must somehow be disconcerting to us. Quite the contrary.
Hate Mail with a Religious Theme
Now and again I receive irate emails. The funniest of these come from Peter Pajakowski, who makes me appreciate the Polish jokes I heard growing up in Chicago. For the record, I have no shame, enjoy the attacks of critics, and think I’m completely right. So there. Enjoy the following two letters:
Tom Bethell on “Cancer Genes”
When an erroneous theory is rewarded with the top prize in science, abandoning that theory is difficult. The backtracking required is an embarrassment to all.
“Taking Down Darwin”
Taking Darwin Down Emma Schwartz Legal Times (http://www.legaltimes.com) 08-29-2005
John Mark Reynolds in Touchstone — Out of Touch?
My friend and colleague John Mark Reynolds at Biola University has just published a piece in Touchstone titled “Séances & Science: The Lessons of the Spiritualist Challenge to Darwinism” (go here). The piece is meant as a warning to the ID movement not to repeat mistakes of the past.
The Undermining of Science?
If intelligence is a real causal power in the natural world that is not reducible to the law-governed interactions of matter and energy, then how can intelligent design avoid undermining science? This worry can be restated as follows:
Calling Dennett’s Bluff
When it comes to the evolution-ID controversy, Daniel Dennett seems to forget that he is a philosopher, foregoing rigorous argumentation for bold, but unsupported, assertions.
“Intrinsic Intelligence”
Just Check the ID By Sally Jenkins Monday, August 29, 2005 Washington Post ….Jeffrey M. Schwartz, a neuroscientist and research professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, is a believer in ID, or as he prefers to call it, “intrinsic intelligence.”
ID in Greece
From a colleague in Greece:
Bill Buckley on ID
In the United States, the battlefront is in the schools, on the question of evolution and creationism. If a 14-year-old student is introduced to the contingent possibility that life evolved as it did because its creator so willed it, which of the following risks, from the hard-line evolutionists’ point of view, is that student taking? […]
Have Darwinists “Jumped the Shark”?
From an ID supporter (let’s hope he is right):
ID in Italy
ID is in the news in Italy. The University of Milan has published an article on recent developments in ID in the U.S. (Vita e pensiero, vol. 4, September 2005). A preview of that article was published in a national newspaper called L’Avvenire, 13 August 2005, p. 23 by a journalist named Luigi Dell’Aglio, and […]