Blackburn Man helps Raze get tenure at PIT. Read more at TheBRITES.org …

Oh, now you’re in for it, Laura — someone is going to put you on the Naughty Female Science Journalists list. Right next to Catherine Shaffer of Wired. Readers will have to pop for a New Scientist subscription to see the whole of Laura Spinney’s piece about new puzzles in reconstructing the Tree of Life, from the June 13 issue, but here’s the bit of science crack they’re giving away to hook you: IF YOU want to know how all living things are related, don’t bother looking in any textbook that’s more than a few years old. Chances are that the tree of life you find there will be wrong. Since they began delving into DNA, biologists have been finding Read More ›

Renowned Darwinist Sean Carroll is by all counts part of the Darwinist All-Stars. He made a lame attempt to refute Behe’s recent book in a review published by the prestigious journal Science. Carroll writes: pyrimethamine resistance in malarial parasites (6)–a notable omission given Behe’s extensive discussion of malarial drug resistance Carroll argues Behe omitted mention of pyrimethamine resistance! But what did Mike actually write? He did not omit mention of pyrimethamine resistance: One successor drug is called pyrimethamine. Interestingly, malaria can counter it with a single amino acid substitution. That single amino acid change makes malaria one hundred times more resistant to the drug. Is Carroll’s fabrication the best the Darwinist All-Stars can offer? Mike Behe has written the editors Read More ›

To my surprise and delight I found Behe mentioning Engines of Creation by K. Eric Drexler four times in the opening few paragraphs of Appendix A of The Edge of Evolution titled I, Nanobot. Behe appears to have been as impressed by Engines as I was 20 years ago. Engines was what made me realize cells aren’t just sort of like robotic machines but rather they are quite literally robotic machines – the same kind of robotic machines that we envision ourselves creating in the not too distant future. The following quote is from the notes on page 301 of The Edge of Evolution: 3. The terms “robot” and “machine” applied to the cell are not meant as analogies – Read More ›

…such as, for instance, those LINE elements? Wired magazine weighs in with an article about the shifting fortunes of so-called “junk DNA.” Anyone following the ongoing discovery of functional roles for DNA once assumed to be evolutionary rubbish should agree that this is the very worst heuristic for biology: I don’t know what X does; therefore, X probably does nothing. Wrong.

Michael Behe was recently interviewed on the the Michael Medved show. Click on the “Listen Now” button. Medved is an incredibly articulate and insightful interviewer. Behe, as usual, demonstrates sober rationality, good character, composure and respect, even in the face of silly and confrontational questions from some of Medved’s talk-show callers.

I have posted below an article by Sam Zaramba, the Director General for Health Services for the nation of Uganda entitled “Give us DDT.”   Dr. Zaramba argues that the ban on DDT was misguided and has resulted in countless unnecessary deaths in Africa.

I  have limited personal experience with this issue.  A couple of years ago my daughter and I traveled to Kenya (just east of Uganda).  We met with many nationals, many of whom had the tell tale yellowish tinge to the whites of the eyes of malaria sufferers.  I will never forget one father in particular, who literally begged us for money for malaria treatment for his daughter.  He could not afford the $10.00 cost of treatment.  Our hearts were broken, and of course we helped as much as we could, but we realized our efforts were a drop in a vast ocean of pain caused by the disease.

When I got home I did some research and was horrified to learn that the malaria epidemic in Africa is perhaps the most preventable health care tragedy in the history of the world.  We could eradicate African malaria if only we would allow them to use DDT to combat the mosquitos that spread the disease.  I also learned that everything I thought I knew about DDT was flat wrong.  Not only is DDT safe, scientists have known this for decades.

It turns out the DDT ban was based on a combination of junk science and moral preening by the environmental movement.  It as if greenies said, “What are a few million African lives so long as we affluent Westerners can feel good about having ‘done something’ even if that something means nothing?” 

As it turns out, the western environmental movement’s push for polices that will kill millions of Africans is far from over.  The drive to force LDC’s (lesser developed countries) to reduce their CO2 emissions will delay the electrification of the continent by decades, and millions will die as a result of lung cancer and other respiratory diseases caused by smoke inhalation from indoor wood fires –- a very real cost for environmental gains that are, to say the least, speculative. 

Read More ›

Stuff you might want to know if you are not just a bunch of chemicals running around in a bag: Evolutionary psychology: Why Clan of the Cave Bear makes more sense as a novel than as a science. Atheist gives millions to Catholic schools Quantum weirdness and consciousness New neuroscience blog questions pop science media’s neuro-this and neuro-that. Articles of interest on atheists, materialists, consciousness, and tenured authoritarian crackpots Re chemicals, bag = you – I think that expression was originally coined by Dean Hamer of “God Gene” fame.

Have you noticed that heroes are often scoundrels too (at least in the movies)? Can we say Rhett Butler or Han Solo?

Recall this romantic scene from The Empire Strikes Back:

Scoundrel I like the sound of that

Han: Hey! Your worship, I’m only trying to help.
Leia: Would you please stop calling me that?

Han: Sure…Leia.
Leia: You make it so difficult sometimes.

Han: I do. I really do. You could be a little nicer, though. C’mon admit it, sometimes you think I’m alright.
Leia: Occasionally, maybe, when you aren’t acting like a scoundrel.

Han: Scoundrel? Scoundrel…I like the sound of that. Read More ›

David DeWolf, professor of law at Gonzaga University and a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, explains in today’s Boston Globe why questions about teaching evolution can either be silly and tendentious (“Okay, who doesn’t believe in evolution?” — duh) or thoughtful. Alas, not many media types — let’s be honest — want to do the thoughtful thing. Doesn’t play in the headlines the way the silly questions do: “Senator Mockworthy Sez Earth is Flat, His Constituents Agree.” (‘Flat’ Left Undefined To Allow for Maximum Hilarity; Mockworthy Answers the Question Anyway.) Nor is thoughtful readily used for short clips on the Daily Show or Colbert Report. Still, one can hope. If most people know that the question was dumb, they’ll Read More ›

For those UD readers who are not familiar with it, I recommend visiting ARN. On the right-hand side of the home page you will see a section entitled “The ID Report.” Here, UD’s very prolific author and commentator, Denyse O’Leary, posts on a regular basis. So do other authors, and one of my favorites is Roddy Bullock of idnetohio. In this recent ARN essay, Roddy does an excellent job of summing up UD’s mission statement. Below is an excerpt. I encourage UD readers to check out Roddy’s contributions at ARN whenever they become available. Naturalism, the unscientific crutch for unguided, purposeless Darwinism, turns scientific inquiry on its head. Suddenly a philosophy that presumes only unintelligent causation becomes gatekeeper to the Read More ›

Yeah, the show’s back in town. And with most of the original cast, too.

I mean the poll, recently reported by USA Today, that shows that 66% of Americans think that the statement, “Creationism, that is, the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years” is definitely or probably true.

This is wonderful poll question for people who believe that Uncle Sam’s alter ego is Santa Claus. I wonder how much public money Darwin lobbies in high science will screw out of US taxpayers in order to try to change their minds – with about as much success as they have had in the past – zilch.

As I pointed out in By Design or by Chance?, the human history that most people would recognize is certainly less than 10,000 years old. Read More ›

We need to face the fact that it may still be a very long time before the majority of scientists will take seriously the idea that a designer may have been directly involved in the origin and development of life. However, it may not be nearly so long before they will at least finally acknowledge that science has no clue about the “natural” causes involved. I have written a short article, submitted to several publications without success so far, which encourages readers to think about what it will be like when this happens. It will, in my opinion, be a much improved world. Here begins the article, entitled “How Evolution Will Be Taught Someday”: A 1980 New York Times News Read More ›

Sean Carroll writes a review of Michael Behe’s new book “Edge of Evolution” for Science Magazine titled God as Genetic Engineer. Professor Behe can’t respond to this for at least a week so let’s give him a hand by fisking it. Please keep your comments topical, focused, and well supported by evidence arguing against the reviewer’s conclusions. Read More ›

Review of “The Edge of Evolution, The Search for the Limits of Darwinism,” by Michael J. Behe. Read it at TheBRITES.org.