A block of Carrera marble and a large crane, apparently. Didn’t know about the Clorox® either. So that’s why my asparagus never tastes quite right: keep forgetting to add the chlorine. (HT: Jason)

See my short article in the Michigan Tech Lode (week of 2007-09-19): click here

While it’s routine to hear of ID proponents being persecuted–and there are many more stories than the high profile cases mentioned here on UD–sometimes we may forget that the same may happen to Darwinists. I was reading Darwiniana today and this article by MSNBC caught my eye: Read More ›

Computer programs that purport to validate the grand claims of Darwinian (i.e., chance and necessity) biological evolution are a hoot.

In early August my aerospace R&D company sent me off to Livermore, CA for a four-day course in using a finite element analysis (FEA) simulation program called LS-DYNA, originally developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It models the laws of physics and material properties with astounding fidelity. It is so powerful that it is used heavily in the automotive industry to simulate entire vehicles and how they behave during impacts.

On the first day of the course the instructor warned us that it is very easy to create “cartoons” with LS-DYNA (it not only generates all kinds of data, it produces beautiful animations). By this he meant that if your initial assumptions are not correct, or if the FEA tools are not used correctly, you can get results that look really cool but don’t comport with reality. Much of the course focused on avoiding cartoon-generating pitfalls.
Read More ›

Here are the new entries to the Encyclopedia: Evolution in the light of intelligent design

Acritarchs – oldest known protists (Tyler)

The picture emerging of the Late Archaean is one that includes prokaryotes and eukaryotes, photosynthesis, an oxygenated atmosphere and lots of biological activity. This is a big contrast from the picture even 10 years ago. The significance for our thinking about origins is that the eons of time demanded by Darwinian processes are not available.

Archaea – horizontal gene transfer – review of The Archaea’s Tale (Tyler)

He presents evidence that Darwinian evolution does not go back to the beginning of life. When we compare genomes of ancient lineages of living creatures, we find evidence of numerous transfers of genetic information from one lineage to another. In early times, horizontal gene transfer, the sharing of genes between unrelated species, was prevalent. It becomes more prevalent the further back you go in time. – Freeman Dyson 

(also new Mindful Hack entries linked below) Read More ›

In my 2000 Mathematical Intelligencer article I speculated on what would happen if we constructed a gigantic computer model which starts with the initial conditions on Earth 4 billion years ago and tries to simulate the effects that the four known forces of physics (the gravitational and electromagnetic forces and the strong and weak nuclear forces) would have on every atom and every subatomic particle on our planet. If we ran such a simulation out to the present day, I asked, would it predict that the basic forces of Nature would reorganize the basic particles of Nature into libraries full of encyclopedias, science texts and novels, nuclear power plants, aircraft carriers with supersonic jets parked on deck, and computers connected Read More ›

Media attention continues to focus on the Baylor administration’s censoring of Prof. Robert Marks’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab (now on a third-party server at www.EvoInfo.org). With the coming to campus of a crew from Ben Stein for his forthcoming movie/documentary EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED, things have ramped up further. Baylor President John Lilley continues to dig in his heels, refusing to let the Evolutionary Informatics Lab back on campus. Baylor is simply playing a waiting game until the present wave of media interest dies down, after which the removal of Prof. Marks’s website from the Baylor server can quietly be forgotten. In a better world, the Baylor administration would apologize to Prof. Marks and restore his site with no more restrictions than Read More ›

RC Motorcycles Technical Discussion

I don’t know what I would do without my regular fix of fellow Toronto journalist David Warren, who – having made clear that he thinks Darwinism a crock – is constantly hearing from anxious Darwin fans, who don’t know what they’ll do if it isn’t true.

If life cannot be produced accidentally by jiggling chemicals in a test tube, … apparently life makes no sense to them – or something like that anyway.

Warren continues to offer boilerplate responses (one must live, after all). Indeed, he appears to know some of the same Darwoids as I hear from, to judge from their inimitable prose style:

“Atrociously bad, pig-ignorant garbage.” … “Mixture of gall & negligence.” … “Sheer brazen quality of this ignorance is a wonder to behold.”

This is what’s said ABOUT the likes of me, third-personally, by the more articulate correspondents advising my editors to sack me. The letters to me personally are, however, much ruder. As usual, among the charges, I am a “faggot,” or at least a “closet fag.”

[ … ]

Many, many, of my apoplectic correspondents refer me to websites on “The God Delusion,” & other standard sources for atheist proselytizing. Several correspondents refer to a website where Michael Behe’s “claims” are “refuted” in a similar manner to the above (i.e. with a lot of more-or-less clinical abusive language).

And apparently, many of these ill-tempered illiterates have taken to Read More ›

Today’s Baylor Lariat (the student newspaper) has an amazing editorial:

Editorial: Lilley’s two cents are missing
Sept. 20, 2007

Being Baylor’s president is not an easy job. Between managing a staff of professors and administrators and fundraising enough to finance Baylor 2012, President John Lilley has a lot on his plate.

But one of the most crucial roles a university president must play, especially during times of dispute, is to act as the face of the university. By virtue of his job description, Lilley is the voice of Baylor. Lately it seems he has laryngitis. Read More ›

Larry Summers, who is definitely not an intelligent design proponent, is nonetheless paying the penalty of standing for what is obviously true in current academic life, columnist John Leo reveals:

So former Harvard president Lawrence Summers is once again paying for his sins, this time having a dinner speech canceled by the board of regents of the University of California. The regents caved because feminists circulated a petition announcing that Summers “has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia.”

Summers lost his post as Harvard chair for doubting that girls were just as good as boys at math.

Mmmm but, as Leo notes, general stuff that everybody knows is heresy nowadays.

Vanderbilt’s Camilla Benbow, a commanding researcher in the field for years, reports sex differences in mathematical precocity before kindergarten, differences among mathematical reasoning ability among intellectually gifted boys and girls as early as the second grade and pronounced sexual differences among intellectually talented 12- to 14-year-olds. Yet Summers, in capitulating to feminist anger, announced that “the human potential to excel in science” has nothing to do with gender. That isn’t true. At the very top of the profession, where the geniuses reside, there will be more males than females — absent political pressure and arguments about “underrepresentation,” that is.

Wondering about the title of this post? See When Marxism ruled instead of Darwinism Same demand to ignore evidence, different victims. For Darwinism’s rule, go to Baylor (the Enron of biology).

Walt Ruloff, the executive producer of the Ben Stein movie EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED, has an amazing op-ed in today’s Baylor Lariat, the school newspaper. WOW!

BU administration silencing science by design
Sept. 18, 2007

It may sound like a crazy question, but it needs to be asked: Does the administration at Baylor believe in God?

This is a legitimate question in light of the university’s heavy-handed actions in shutting down the research Web site of Dr. Robert Marks.

As many of you have heard, Marks, a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering, has been conducting research that ultimately may challenge the foundation of Darwinian theory. In layman’s terms, Marks is using highly sophisticated mathematical and computational techniques to determine if there are limits to what natural selection can do.

At Baylor, a Christian institution, this should be pretty unremarkable stuff. I’m assuming most of the faculty, students and alumni believe in God, so wouldn’t it also be safe to assume you have no problem with a professor trying to scientifically quantify the limits of a blind, undirected cause of the origin and subsequent history of life?

It would seem this kind of research would be praised and encouraged at Baylor.

But the dirty little secret is university administrators are much more fearful of the Darwinian Machine than they are of you. Read More ›

According to today’s Baylor Lariat (the student newspaper), the producer of the upcoming Ben Stein documentary on suppression of ID (www.expelledthemovie.com) is sending a crew to Baylor to interview President John Lilley and others regarding the removal of Robert Marks’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab from Baylor (for the background on this story, go here). It appears that this whole episode will feature in the documentary, which is scheduled to be released February 12, 2008.

Kudos to whoever is responsible for the new look of Uncommon Descent! I know that you guys put a lot of work into maintaining this site and I’m sure that this new look will make the site even easier to navigate. The Scubaredneck

The dangers of creationism in education Report Committee on Culture, Science and Education Rapporteur: Mr Guy LENGAGNE, France, Socialist Group Summary The theory of evolution is being attacked by religious fundamentalists who call for creationist theories to be taught in European schools alongside or even in place of it. From a scientific view point there is absolutely no doubt that evolution is a central theory for our understanding of the Universe and of life on Earth. Creationism in any of its forms, such as “intelligent design”, is not based on facts, does not use any scientific reasoning and its contents are pathetically inadequate for science classes. The Assembly calls on education authorities in member States to promote scientific knowledge and Read More ›