January 2006

Brief History Cobb County, Georgia, adopted new biology texts which for the first time in Cobb County had a section on evolution. Concerned parents voiced their concern to the school board that the evolution section was presented in a manner that left no room for doubt, effectively presenting as fact something the parents did not believe was an accurate history of the evolution of life. The school board voted to put a sticker in the textbook stating that the textbook contained material about the evolution of life and that evolution was a theory, not a fact, and that it should be carefully studied and critically considered. A group of parents sued the school board saying the stickers were a law Read More ›

Check this out!

I saw this parody ad (from Adbusters) years ago when I was a postdoc at Notre Dame and nearly busted a gut. Turns out it’s difficult to track this down on the web. I’ve therefore posted it here for my future reference and your amusement. Read More ›

Source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/01/6perry.html

Perry: Add intelligent design to teaching
Theory has a place in Texas schools, he says; most rivals disagree
By W. Gardner Selby
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, January 06, 2006

Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican who has made outreach to Christian conservatives a theme of his gubernatorial portfolio, thinks Texas public school students should be taught intelligent design along with evolutionary theory, his office said Thursday. Read More ›

I’ve decided to write a series of articles touching upon ID-relevant portions of the seminal book describing the nanotechnology revolution “Engines of Creation” by K. Eric Drexler. The book was originally published in hardcover in 1986 and purchased/read by me that year. This year marks its 20th anniversary and is a good point to take a look at where its predictions on the path and nature of the nanotechnology revolution stand two decades later. It is now in the public domain in hypertext format here: Engines of Creation For this introductory article I want to skip up to the second to last chapter. EOC Chapter 14: The Network of Knowledge Chapter 14 discusses the (at the time: 1986) revolutionary new Read More ›

Robert Frost is sometimes cited as being critical of design and theism generally. For instance, one finds the following quote at http://www.pharyngula.org/infidelquotes.php: Read More ›

Glenn McGee of “The Scientist” writes this: A leading synthetic biologists said to me recently that she is working so hard on building and animating an artificial bacterium primarily so that she can prove to advocates of intelligent design that it doesn’t take a God to create life. I wish her luck, and Godspeed. I think we’re supposed to be alarmed. I’m shaking in my boots. 🙂 Go here for the full article.

Go here for the article.

Bradley Monton, a Princeton-trained philosopher on the faculty at the University of Kentucky, has an important piece on Dover here. Though Monton is not an ID proponent (he is a philosopher of physics who in his professional work is quite critical of fine-tuning as evidence for God), he exhibits little patience for the reasoning in Judge Jones’s decision. Note especially the following paragraph from his article: There is a problem with this idea that science should change its methodology in light of empirical confirmation of the existence of a supernatural being [[a point that Pennock had conceded in testimony]]. How does this empirical confirmation take place, if not scientifically? By Pennock’s lights, there must be some other epistemic practice that Read More ›

Hello, everyone. For my first contribution, I just want to let you guys know what you can expect from me and what I expect from you. What you can expect from me: My posts will probably be similar to those of Dr. Dembski, but due to my busy schedule, I seriously doubt I will be able to post as often as he did. I’m a college junior studying English and Philosophy, so you probably won’t see me addressing very many, if any, hard scientific matters. What I expect from you: I want you all to be civil and respectful to everyone else on this blog. You don’t have to agree with everything I have to say, and I encourage lively Read More ›

By popular demand this blog is back in operation, though with only limited participation in the future from me. Past contributors to this blog have decided they are willing to shoulder the responsibility of maintaining this blog, namely, DaveScot, Bombadill, Crandaddy, and Gumpngreen. Unlike in the past, when they were limited to commenting on my postings, they now have full posting privileges. They will be in charge of the day-to-day business of this blog, everything from keeping it interesting to approving comments to booting recalcitrant commenters. Of these four, DaveScot has been the designated blogczar — the buck stops with him.