August 2007

In his post below Dave refers to Karl Popper’s famous white swan/black swan illustration.  Dave is, of course, quite correct to show how ID can be formulated within Popper’s paradigm, which was most cogently set forth in The Logic of Scientific Discovery in which the swan illustration appears.  Popper may be unique among philosophers in that his ideas have been given the force of law in the United States courts.  One need go no further than Judge Jones’ opinion in Dover (although there are other examples) to see this phenomenon at work.  For this reason all who seek acceptance of their work in the scientific community bow before Popper.  While I find Popper’s ideas compelling and often cite them myself, Read More ›

Some of the hype over recent US temperature records got deflated when NASA corrected a Y2K temperature processing error found by Steve McIntyre. (Aug. 13, 2007: McIntyre is upgrading server, and is temporarily  posting c/o Anthony Watts’ Watts Up With That) In Does Hansen’s Error “Matter?” ClimateAudit.org takes NASA to task for not clearly publicizing its corrections. NASA quietly corrected its GISS data of contiguous 48 states US temperature anomalies and corresponding US 48 state temperature anomaly graphs. IceCap reports the new top 20 rankings. Dust bowl 1934 now holds the hottest temperature record, with 1931, 1938 and 1939 also in the top ten. Of recent years, 1998 drops to second, and only 2006 and 1999 remain in the top Read More ›

If you observe something that has many of the same properties as an apple but you don’t know where it came from, you have observed apples growing on apple trees, then the most reasonable scientific hypothesis about the origin of the apple-like object is that it was produced by something like an apple tree. Indeed, to hypothesize that what you found just spontaneously formed on the ground from inanimate matter would be entirely unsupported.

For the ID hypothesis stated in terms of Karl Popper’s scientific hypothesis of white swans Read More ›

In Chicago recently during the American Society of Plant Biologists annual meeting, jet-setting celebrity Professor Steve Steve visited Charles Darwin. Darwin was wearing his Chicago Cubs batting helmet. He’s is a big fan of those heartbreakers, you know. They met in the office of a notorious ID guy: After Steve Steve left to resume his world travels, Darwin was heard quietly complaining to Nelson — in the politest English tones, of course — that he never got to go anywhere, had to sit on the bookshelf next to the paleontology volumes, and certainly never met Martha Stewart. Just didn’t seem right for the panda to get all the attention…

I just attended a briefing in Seattle about a film aimed at the US presidential election campaign, defending intelligent design, starring Ben Stein: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It details the cases of Rick Sternberg, Guillermo Gonzalez, and Caroline Crocker. For more go to the Post-Darwinist.

According to Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, Richard Dawkins is “out of date” with his genetics. Listen to his opinion on how changes happen in science. This interview is edited from Australian ABC Science Show 11th August 2007. http://www.idnet.com.au/files/pdf/ssw_20070811.mp3

From the AP story regarding new discoveries debunking the Homo habilis evolved into Homo erectus theory (see Sal’s post below): “Susan Anton, a New York University anthropologist and co-author of the Leakey work, said she expects anti-evolution proponents to seize on the new research, but said it would be a mistake to try to use the new work to show flaws in evolution theory.  ‘This is not questioning the idea at all of evolution; it is refining some of the specific points,’ Anton said.  ‘This is a great example of what science does and religion doesn’t do.  It’s a continuous self-testing process.’” Interesting statement.  One suspects that what Anton really means is that, for her, science is a continuous self-testing Read More ›

It understandable that scientists make mistakes, but one would hope an entire scientific discipline could get at least one fact right once in a while. My friend Casey Luskin, an attorney and scientist at Discovery Institute, reports: Paleoanthropologists Disown Homo habilis from Our Direct Family Tree.

In Understanding evolution is crucial to debate Sally Lehrman of the Boston Globe writes:

intelligent design proponents claim that schools should do a better job of explaining evolution. They may very well be right.

Unfortunately, this was the only good line in an otherwise horrible piece of biased tabloid style editorializing by Lehrman, who appears to have gladly become a part of the propaganda machine of the National Center for Selling Evolution (NCSE).

She is indeed correct to say the ID proponents are right. ID proponents are advocating that Darwin’s theory be taught in the way that Charles Darwin would have wanted his theory be taught. It was Darwin who said:

A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question

To that end, a book consistent with Darwin’s wishes, Explore Evolution, was written and promoted by several individuals affiliated with one of the nation’s top-rated think tanks, Discovery Institute.
Read More ›

In the most commented entry in this blog’s history (go here), I referred to Kevin Padian as “the Archie Bunker Professor of Paleobiology at Cal Berkeley.” On further reflection, it seems that standard evolutionary reasoning allows us to say that Kevin Padian actually is Archie Bunker: One of the beauties of evolutionary theory is that it eliminates essentialism from the biological world. There’s nothing that makes humans human and fundamentally distinguishes them from their putative apelike ancestors. Darwin himself made this point in THE DESCENT OF MAN: “The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind. We have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various Read More ›

Our webmaster was working with the server people to fix the 404 error that’s been coming up lately. Unfortunately, that temporarily deleted all our posts back to mid-July. We’re back up and running. –WmAD

He might just take you up on it: That lovely trilobite tattoo now resides on Michael Ruse’s right arm, thanks to a dare from one of his students.

I thought this was worth sharing: On Page 8 of a Report from the National Research Council there is an interesting admission: “Natural selection based solely on mutation is probably not an adequate mechanism for evolving complexity.” Of course the report itself supports the concept of Darwinian evolution. But I think the admission that mutation is an insufficient mechanism is significant. They invoke lateral transfer of genes as the alternate explanation: “More important, lateral gene transfer and endosymbiosis are probably the most obvious mechanisms for creating complex genomes…” Of course this begs the question; where did the genes come from that are being laterally transferred? As far as I saw in the report, the authors only indirectly address this problem Read More ›

Why Europe has been in decline for so long:

At the Post-Darwinist, I received a message in my inbox regarding my update to the file I keep up on opinion polls relevant to the intelligent design controversy:

Immigrant from Europe, I have been living in the country for a little over 7 years now.
SInce then, I have been flabbergasted by the creationism-intelligent design movement in the States. Before coming here, I have never, ever seen anyone even remotely question evolution, and this in a number of countries were I have stayed and lived. To be fully exact, in none of what we usually call “civilized” countries; not to put some countries down but just that there education level is not at the typical “western world” level.

I am always amazed by hearing comments by citizens of this most advanced country about what has been accepted as basic fact, not even subject to discussion outside the physical walls of churches, in all advanced countries.

This post is not intended to hurt anyone. I would just like to understand why and how a vast number of American came to so firmly believe in creationism (or intelligent design if you want to call it that name). – xxxxxx

I assume that by “this country” my correspondent meant the United States. I replied, a tad frostily, Read More ›

I was just reading this fairly-well written article, and came upon one of the last paragraphs. It’s an interesting take by a, shall we say, “non-scientist”: “These scientists argue that only ‘rational agents’ could have possessed the ability to design and organise such complex systems. Whether or not they are right (and I don’t know), their scientific argument about the absence of evidence to support the claim that life spontaneously created itself is being stifled – on the totally perverse grounds that this argument does not conform to the rules of science which require evidence to support a theory.” You have to like this logic: the scientific community doesn’t want to entertain the idea of ID with its implicit argument Read More ›