2006

Somebody, anybody, please put this theory out of its misery. Evolutionary biologists have traced the origins of laughter back 4m years to pre-humans slipping and stumbling in their first faltering attempts to walk on two legs. According to the theory, when they saw a member of their group lose his footing they would laugh as a sign to each other that something was amiss, but nothing too serious. The theory could explain why, to this day, the ungainly walk remains a staple element of slapstick humour from John Cleese’s “Ministry of Silly Walks” to Rowan Atkinson’s accident-prone Mr Bean. . . . http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2157946_1,00.html

Your tax dollars at work: . . . The constant, unanswered assault on evolution is harmful to science and science education. ID and its progeny rely on supernatural explanations of natural phenomena. Yet all of science education and practice rests on the principle that phenomena can be explained only by natural, reproducible, testable forces. Teaching our students otherwise disables the very critical thinking they must have in order to be scientists and is a fundamental distortion of the scientific process. ID is therefore not simply an assault on evolution: it is an assault on science itself. ID groups have threatened and isolated high school science teachers. Well-organized curricular challenges to local school boards place teachers in the difficult position of Read More ›

There is no conflict between institutionally objective science and religion.

Remarks of John H. Calvert, Esq.
Presented on April 29, 2006, at the Northern District of California Judicial Conference Litigating Morality

I wish to think the organizers for the invitation. But also I would like to applaud them for including this item on the agenda. In my view the decision tree about religion, ethics, morals and even government, starts with a very simple question: “Are we designs or occurrences?” The question we are addressing today is how should science and government respond to it? Should they deal with it objectively or should they prejudge the question and permit only one of the two competing possibilities? Along these lines this panel has been asked to address the current conflict between science and religion, particularly in the area of origins.

I don’t believe there is a conflict between institutionally objective origins science and religion. That kind of science objectively seeks an inference to the best current explanation using the scientific method. It is a quest for more reliable explanations, not pre-ordained ones. This kind of science should not conflict with any religion because it is the weight of the evidence, not bias, that drives explanation.

The conflict arises when science abandons this approach, particularly in an area of science that unavoidably impacts religion – science that seeks to investigate and explain the origin of life and its diversity. Where do we come from? As explained recently by Cardinal Christopher Schönborn, this question is key to the formation of our world views. This is because what we believe about where we come from is INSEPARABLE from what we believe about where we should be going.

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[From a colleague:] Any UD readers in the NYC area may want to attend this June 6 seminar on ID at St Bartholomew’s Church (Episcopal) in Manhattan: http://www.religionnews.com/press02/PR050206.html Scroll down to see the event details; information is also available here: http://www.stbarts.org/cri.htm#moral Two of the speakers are Marc Kirschner (Systems Biology, Harvard), whose book with John Gerhart, The Plausibility of Life, addresses ID critically, and Robert Pollack (Columbia Univ), whose book Signs of Life talked in detail about the parallels between DNA and language. Pollack, a geneticist, now runs a religion-and-science program at Columbia: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/faculty/pollack Don’t miss a really amazing paragraph on Kirschner’s Harvard webpage: “Organizing Space and Time: In the development of an organism, as in the theater, timing is Read More ›

Intelligent Design by Cesium-137 (thanks to Joe Manzari for alerting me to this development.)

Many people do not understand what the Explanatory Filter represents, it represent “ordinary practice” of detecting design.

Explanatory Filter from the book Design Inference

The Explanatory Filter faithfully represents our ordinary practice of sorting through things we alternately attribute to law, chance, or design. In particular, the filter describes

how copyright and patent offices identify theft of intellectual property

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Here’s how it works: we find some amazing system in the biological realm, determine how to reverse engineer it, and then design and build a parallel system to serve our needs. But of course, the original system evolved by blind trial-and-error tinkering (random variation and natural selection). To think that it was actually designed because we had to design its human counterpart is just plain stupid. For the Georgia Center, go here: http://www.cbid.gatech.edu.

https://www.discovery.org/e/212

I am anxiously awaiting a transcript of the recent Ward versus Meyer debate. In the meantime you can check out the transcript of their last debate here: https://www.discovery.org/f/3097

Peter Ward is way out of his league in the presence of Stephen Meyer. Frankly, I was embarrassed for Ward.

Here are a few excerpts. Check out the transcript and judge for yourself.

http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/pr.nsf/pages/news.20060425_dna.html

IBM today announced its researchers have discovered numerous DNA patterns shared by areas of the human genome that were thought to have little or no influence on its function and those areas that do.

As reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), regions of the human genome that were assumed to largely contain evolutionary leftovers (called “junk DNA”) may actually hold significant clues that can add to scientists’ understanding of cellular processes. IBM researchers have discovered that these regions contain numerous, short DNA “motifs,” or repeating sequence fragments, which also are present in the parts of the genome that give rise to proteins. Read More ›

Where instruction and indoctrination are the same thing . . . http://www.cdu.edu.au I understand this university evolved from a lower form of educational institution.

In light of Kitzmiller finding that ID is religion I decided to see exactly what PZ Myers, who votes on tenure at the University of Minnesota, said about denying tenure to people who believe in ID. In short order I found I was preceded in this investigation by author “Joy” at Telic Thoughts. So without further ado, especially considering what a thorough and excellent job she did, go read it there then comment here about what you’d like to see done about a University of Minnesota representative boasting about the unversity practicing religious discrimination. More on PZ Myers’ Public Boasting by Joy My thoughts are that the University of Minnesota needs to censure Associate Professor Paul Myers and assure the Read More ›

I reported earlier that Professors admit they’ll deny tenure to IDers. There are now hints the anti-ID crowd are increasingly willing to deny diplomas to PhD students, master’s students, and undergraduates. Based on news reports I’ve read and studies such as those by Steve Verhey, presently, I estimate 1/4 to 1/3 of biology freshman accept ID. The anti-ID crowd knows rising numbers of pro-ID biology students receiving diplomas are a threat to the status-quo.

The Cornell IDEA club has commentary on this report by Nobel Intent (Bill Dembski provided other links at New York Academy of Sciences keeps the world safe for Darwinism) on a recent war planning conference:

Declaration of War?

Branch’s final topic was how to handle a situation where a biology department winds up with a creationist as a graduate student. This was both of general interest, as creationists tend to use their degrees as rhetorical weapons, and of personal interest, as I was part of the Berkeley class that produced the noted Discovery Institute fellow Jon Wells. Unfortunately, his conclusion was that there are no easy answers. He did, however, note that graduate departments exist to serve the scientific community by providing qualified individuals to perform research and teaching services. There is no ethical requirement for graduate faculty to be complicit in the training of someone who is ultimately going to actively harm the field.

No easy answer? The easy answer is to not make someone’s acceptance of ID a factor whatsoever! Simple!

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Do Car Engines Run on Lugnuts? A Response to Ken Miller & Judge Jones’s Straw Tests of Irreducible Complexity for the Bacterial Flagellum http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-get_topic-f-6-t-000630.html by Casey Luskin Abstract: In Kitzmiller v. Dover, Judge John E. Jones ruled harshly against the scientific validity of intelligent design. Judge Jones ruled that the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum, as argued by intelligent design proponents during the trial, was refuted by the testimony of the plaintiffs’ expert biology witness, Dr. Kenneth Miller. Dr. Miller misconstrued design theorist Michael Behe’s definition of irreducible complexity by presenting and subsequently refuting only a straw-characterization of the argument. Accordingly, Miller claimed that irreducible complexity is refuted if a separate function can be found for any sub-system of Read More ›