Check out this breathtaking video: http://www.studiodaily.com/main/technique/tprojects/6850.html

The reason some media never run short of bad news is that they can make bad news out of pretty well anything, including the end of scarcity of food in many parts of the developing world. Remember when it was too late  to save humanity from starvation? Thirty years ago I used to hear people explain that evolution had programmed us all to produce more people than could be fed. “Man is a species that has overbred,” and all that. There are some really remarkable comments in this hot-weather scare, including “This is the first generation in history where children may die before their parents,” Steinbeck told the conference. Oh? Centuries ago, nothing was more common, actually, than parents burying Read More ›

Islam Online recently organized an online debate, “Evolution vs. Intelligent Design”, between Turkish journalist Mustafa Akyol and National Center for Science Education spokesman Nicholas Matzke. Akyol tells me that he countered Matzke’s effort to portray ID as “Christian fundamentalism” to Muslims, thus urging them not to “buy” it. That’s amusing. Genuine Christian fundamentalists don’t see ID that way at all. ID guys, they correctly note, do not thump the Bible. Heck, the ID guys wouldn’t even thump Nick Matzke, unless they were in a really bad mood. Another Cuppyism: “The Age of Reptiles ended because it had gone on long enough and it was all a mistake in the first place.” – Will Cuppy, from How to Become Extinct

In a comment to Denyse’s article that touched on altruism a commenter said that evolution predicted altruism.  I then explained that Neo-Darwinian Evolution would also predict no altruism if no altruism is found.  That’s because random mutation plus natural selection explains everything (thus it explains nothing). Like a wish come true, one of the more informed posters at Panda’s Thumb came along and explained how NDE explains both altruism where it is found and lack of it where it isn’t.   Hilarious!  Check it out… People who comment here know this, but it needs to be said for the record and for any UD folk that stray over here: the claim that the ToE predicts altruism is bone-ignorant, because the portion of Read More ›

This new evo devo spoof site might be a good time to revisit the charming Will Cuppy (1884-1949), author of How to Become Extinct, a similar send-up of the ponderous truisms uttered on the history of life: Some fishes become extinct, but Herrings go on forever. Herrings spawn at all times and places and nothing will induce them to change their ways. They have no fish control. Herrings congregate in schools, where they learn nothing at all. They move in vast numbers in May and October. Herrings subsist upon Copepods and Copepods subsist upon Diatoms and Diatoms just float around and reproduce. Young Herrings or Sperling or Whitebait are rather cute. They have serrated abdomens. The skull of the Common Read More ›

Thanks, Denyse, for the previous post. The following schematic from that same site deserves a separate entry. Here finally is proof positive that science is self-correcting!

Here is the ultimate explanation of evolution, but do not read it while you are drinking coffee.

The following is taken from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/  The Marxist account of history too, Popper held, is not scientific, although it differs in certain crucial respects from psychoanalysis. For Marxism, Popper believed, had been initially scientific, in that Marx had postulated a theory which was genuinely predictive. However, when these predictions were not in fact borne out, the theory was saved from falsification by the addition of ad hoc hypotheses which made it compatible with the facts. By this means, Popper asserted, a theory which was initially genuinely scientific degenerated into pseudo-scientific dogma. These factors combined to make Popper take falsifiability as his criterion for demarcating science from non-science: if a theory is incompatible with possible empirical observations it is scientific; conversely, a Read More ›

Stu Harris is my once long-lost first cousin. He ferreted me out after I posted some ID-apologetic comments at ARN — Gilbert Dodgen is obviously a fairly rare name. Apparently there are some nefarious Dodgen-ID-gene-memes that have been lurking in the background of our evolutionary history, waiting to rear their ugly heads, since we are both converts from a materialistic worldview. Stu offers an interesting link on the topic of peer review: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/13/soa/peerreview.htm But wait! There’s more, at no extra charge! You too can earn your degree in postmodernist thinking (PT), without having to think at all! Stu offers this indispensable tool for those aspiring to rise to the apogee of PT: Here’s an essential tool for any postmodernist writing Read More ›

Denyse’s post below (What did Hitler believe about evolution?) quoted Edward Oakes, a writer of great erudition for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect.  Although Oakes frequently sends me scrambling for my dictionary, I look forward to reading his articles and book reviews in First Things and his posts on First Things’ blog.  Because I respect Oakes and am in general agreement with his writings and his worldview, I am puzzled and troubled by his blithe acceptance of evolution and his vehement opposition to ID. 

For those interested in my response to Fr. Oakes’ views on whether ID proponents confuse finality and design and primary and secondary causation, read on.

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Who sucker punched this guy’s selfish genes? (a 28 year old Ontario power company employee – a complete stranger – is donating part of his liver to help a toddler in Toronto who needs a transplant.) Oh, and here and here are some other everyday “genuine altruism” stories I happen to know about from Canada, one of them from the Toronto area, involving young guys, who (as a group) are supposed to be selfish, according to feminists. Toronto is not the City of Angels, by the way; readers can likely supply instances from their own communities. As philosopher David Stove would probably have said, if Dawkins was right about the “selfish gene”, these cases would be much more rare and Read More ›

Casey Luskin has posted an interesting response (part II) to Barbara Forrest’s Kitzmiller Account, Here he addresses Dr. Forrest’s usage of quotations from ID proponents: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/09/response_to_barbara_forrests_k_1.html As is typical in the Evo camp, Dr. Forrest attempts to make the usual conflation of ID and religion by quoting Phillip Johnson and William Dembski. Many cite Johnson as the founder of the current ID movement. Popularizer perhaps, but founder he was NOT, nor can he authoritatively be credited with setting its parameters. Luskin notes (as does Dembski in ‘Cosmic Pursuit’, 1998) that Charles Thaxton and Dean Kenyon first wrote on the subject during the ’80s. But is concept even that new? “Throughout the centuries theologians have argued that nature exhibits features which Read More ›

I’m not sure how many people read the Comments to the Post-Darwinist, but some are quite interesting, so I want to draw your attention to a pair of them: In response to the post on the Coral Ridge TV special on social Darwinism, blogger Steven Carr commented that Hitler was a creationist: Hitler, of course, believed that mankind was specially created. Hitler explicity rejected Darwinism and the evolution of man. From Hitler’s Tischgespraeche for the night of the 25th to 26th 1942 ‘Woher nehmen wir das Recht zu glauben, der Mensch sei nicht von Uranfaengen das gewesen , was er heute ist? Der Blick in die Natur zeigt uns, dass im Bereich der Pflanzen und Tiere Veraenderungen und Weiterbildungen vorkommen. Aber nirgends Read More ›

This isn’t a point I would push too far, but the more I read and keep up with experimental evidence, the more I question the existence of NS. In the ID camp, most would readily accept NS, which is exactly the position I took for a long time. After all, we would admit to ‘microevolution’. But there just seems to be a lot of evidence suggesting that the interplay of genetics and the environment is much more fluid and vital than previously thought.

The following experimental findings suggest to me, at least, that in the case of Drosphila obscura DNA inversions are completely non-random, and connected directly to environmental changes.

Populations of fruit flies on three separate continents have independently evolved identical gene changes within just two decades, apparently to cope with global warming.

“What we’re showing is that global warming is leaving its imprint on genes,” says Raymond Huey at the University of Washington in Seattle, US, who made the discovery with colleagues. “For this to happen in such a short time-frame in so many parts of the world is rather disturbing,” he says.

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Here is a press release from Answers in Genesis (AiG), second only to the Institute for Creation Research in influence among young earth creationists. It describes a $50,000 essay contest for a creationist paper by high-school and college students. Further down are the stated rules for the contest.

Although those rules seem to allow for a straight ID paper, in fact they do not. Liberty University, which is administering the award in the form of a scholarship, holds to a strict 6-day creation view, even requiring a semester course on creation-evolution from a young earth perspective. In consequence, the essays are expected to explicitly adopt this perspective.

For all the talk about intelligent design being “incredibly well funded,” we have nowhere near the resources of these creationist organizations. Moreover, they seem to be making sure to exclude ID’s distinctive contributions to the origins debate by requiring work that is not merely independent of the age of the earth but instead argues postively for a young earth.

This contest demonstrates that creationism and ID are charting separate paths.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, August 29, 2006
Contact: Cindy Malott, (859) 727-2222 ext. 461

$50,000 grand prize announced for “Research Paper Challenge 2007”

PETERSBURG, Kentucky. ­In a bold move sure to catch the eyes of students, Answers in Genesis today announces “Research Paper Challenge 2007.” The contest will encourage students to defend biblical authority in an unbiblical world. The grand prize is a $50,000 scholarship to Liberty University, a premier Christian institution in Virginia with 10,000 students. Read More ›