Richard Dawkins says As an outsider, I observe American culture polarizing fast, and religion is at the center of the action. Side note: Dawkins’ essay disappeared from his website after 3 days. I wonder if the thumbsters will accuse him of deleting embarrassing articles as they accuse us of doing? Something tells me Dawkins’ faux pas will escape mention over there. Can you spell “hypocrite”? Or how about “double standard”? I knew you could. Anyhow… As an outsider, I observe European culture deteriorating fast, and religion is at the center of the action. Rushing in to fill in the cultural power vacuum created by Christians abandoning their beliefs Muslims set fire to France. Europe, the birthplace of the Protestant church, Read More ›

Leave it to Jonathan Wells to tell it like it is: . . . The truth is Darwinism is not a scientific theory, but a materialistic creation myth masquerading as science. It is first and foremost a weapon against religion – especially traditional Christianity. Evidence is brought in afterwards, as window dressing. This is becoming increasingly obvious to the American people, who are not the ignorant backwoods religious dogmatists that Darwinists make them out to be. Darwinists insult the intelligence of American taxpayers and at the same time depend on them for support. This is an inherently unstable situation, and it cannot last. . . . Source: http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52166

A colleague of mine added Of Pandas and People to the Wikipedia’s list of Banned Books at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banned_books. It clearly qualifies under the American Library Association’s definition of a successfully challenged book: A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. The positive message of Banned Books Week: Free People Read Freely is that due to the commitment of librarians, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens, most challenges are unsuccessful Read More ›

the presence of a creative deity in the universe is clearly a scientific hypothesis. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more momentous hypothesis in all of science….the God Hypothesis is a proper scientific hypothesis

Richard Dawkins

Whoa!
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Here’s a first in Canada, maybe: A conference at the University of Toronto (September 29-20, 2006) on intelligent design and the universe/life that is not just the usual “God and science” snore – at least the organizers will do everything in their power to keep it from being the usual theistic evolution cop-out snooze. Here’s what you will NOT primarily hear: “Faith, you see, is about feelings and involves no evidence at all. Materialism is about facts because it is based on evidence. And, guess what, folks, materialism IS science! So if ever you get it into your little pinhead that you think you see design in the universe or life forms, or that you have consciousness or free will, rest Read More ›

ID is quietly advancing in the mother state of one-fourth of the American Presidents. I do not know if the advance of ID in Virginia means anything to Richard Dawkins, but 4 of his 17 scheduled stops in his God Delusion world-wide book tour will be in the Virginia/DC area! Coincidence?
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A key problem with the argument over Darwinian evolution (evolution by natural selection acting on random mutations) is that so few actual examples of speciation (new species forming) have ever been observed that we really have no way of knowing for sure whether Darwin had the right idea. I suspect that explains precisely why acceptance of Darwinism is so often treated as some kind of loyalty test for support for science in general. That is, the Darwinist is taking a great deal on faith. And those Darwinists who also happen to  be fanatics  by temperament behave just as other fanatics do when they think they have found certainty: They go about like bulls looking for a fight - demanding that you too, brudder, Read More ›

No friend to religion, Andrew Brown nonetheless says that Richard Dawkins’s “incurious and rambling” diatribe against religion “doesn’t come close to explaining how faith has survived the assault of Darwinism, opening with It has been obvious for years that Richard Dawkins had a fat book on religion in him, but who would have thought him capable of writing one this bad? Incurious, dogmatic, rambling and self-contradictory, it has none of the style or verve of his earlier works. It gets better from there – or worse, I guess, if you bought The God Delusion. Which reminds me to come to the point of this blog: When was the last time Dawkins had an original idea in biology? I don’t mean an Read More ›

Over at Evolution News and Views there is a notice about a new organization in the UK, Truth in Science, that seeks “…to promote good science education in the UK. Our initial focus will be on the origin of life and its diversity.” From their website: For many years, much of what has been taught in school science lessons about the origin of the living world has been dogmatic and imbalanced. The theory of Darwinian evolution has been presented as scientifically uncontroversial and the only credible explanation of origins. This is despite the National Curriculum which states: “Pupils should be taught… how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence (for example, Darwin’s theory of evolution). The Read More ›

I first got interested in alligators when I discovered, from zoologist Norbert Smith, that the “reptilian brain” theory – according to which alligators cannot show emotion because the mammalian brain (which they don’t have) must evolve first – can’t be true. Alligators are quite capable of showing emotion or curiosity about anything that they are capable of understanding. That includes sex and baby alligators. Their intellectual limitations come in part from the fact that they are exothermic (cold-blooded), and therefore cannot keep up activities for as long as endothermic (warm-blooded) animals. Now, I see Smith has written a book, summarizing a lifetime of research into the passive fear response. It has long been held that animals speed up their metabolism Read More ›

Paul Nelson spent yesterday morning in the editorial offices of Dagbladet, the main daily newspaper in Oslo, and fielded reader’s questions via the Internet. Approximately 1,000 emails came in. Here is the exchange: http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2006/09/20/477320.html. Note that the title of the Dagbladet piece, “Hadde Darwin Rett?” means “Was Darwin Right?”

There’s a big “evolution of religion” conference coming up in Hawaii: http://www.evolutionofreligion.org/index.php. Daniel Dennett is among the featured speakers. Here’s a brief description of another featured speaker: On Sunday evening the Rev. Michael Dowd, who has been called “North America’s evolutionary evangelist,” will share his experience of teaching and preaching a sacred, meaningful view of cosmic, biological, and human evolution to secular and religious audiences of all ages and across the theological spectrum. You think ID might be a welcomed perspective at this conference?

I just learned that Frank Beckwith has been awarded tenure at Baylor. This is a huge development for Baylor, signifying a decisive reversal for the forces of secularization that have done everything in their power of undermine Baylor’s Christian identity. Note that Frank was opposed because of his openness to ID (not outright support) and his refusal to disassociate himself from Seattle’s Discovery Institute. Frank’s case has been reported on this blog in the past (search “Beckwith”). World Magazine and the Chronicle of Higher Education have reported on Frank’s upcoming tenure decision in the last two weeks.

I’m informed that simple blockquotes are dangerous when trying to stay in Google’s good graces. I’m also informed that providing a comment in front of a blockquote, which thus constitutes new material, is a way of keeping Google happy. Hence this comment. The blockquote below is self-explanatory. Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools (Paperback) by Eugenie C. Scott (Adapter), Glenn Branch (Adapter) Book Description: An accessible, multifaceted critique of the latest incarnation of creationism-“intelligent design”-from a team of legal, education, religion, and science experts More than eighty years after the Scopes trial, creationism is alive and well. Through local school boards, politicians, strategic court cases, and well-funded organizations, a strong movement has developed to Read More ›

I came across this quote from 1906 today: “Each of us was, at the beginning of his existence, a simple globule of protoplasm, surrounded by a membrane, about 1/120 of an inch in diameter, with a firmer nucleus inside it. Ernst Haeckel, Last Words on Evolution (London: A. Owen & Co., 1906). One wonders if the process that culminated in NDE would have ever gotten off the ground if its progenitors had had even a faint notion of how laughably wrong they were about the cell.