2007

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). (links to other stories follow)

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 ›

I remember reading years ago violently conflicting opinions on Richard Dawkins’s famous/infamous/faked silence when a filmmaker asked him about the origin of genetic information.

Eventually the tape made its way to Barry Williams, the editor of an Australian journal called The Skeptic, who consulted with Dawkins and then published a blistering article with the title “Creationist Deception Exposed.” Williams at first seemed to be accusing the filmmakers of altering the tape by substituting a question Dawkins was never asked, but that accusation was never made explicitly and in any case was dropped after the creationists produced the raw tapes. (Phillip Johnson, The Wedge of Truth, pg. 40 (InterVarsity Press, 1999).)

Anyway, here’s a video and here’s his response. You da judge.

Also Read More ›

That’s me on the right, trying to climb back up into the rafters of the Nelson house garage. (Photo credit: Hannah Nelson.) Oh, you wanted information about the Shermer/Nelson debate at Penn State-Altoona? Go here.

Apparently, in the most recent edition of First Things, Fr. Richard Neuhaus defends Mike Behe, author of Edge of Evolution. It’s not on line yet, but Fr. Neuhaus says, among other things,

You usually know that somebody is losing the argument when he loses his cool and resorts to bluster, abuse, caricature, and the invocation of authorities who agree with him.

He is referring, of course, to Richard Dawkins’s attempt to trash Behe’s book in The New York Times. He notes the curious fact that the Times should never have given the book to Dawkins to review anyway, without giving Behe the right of reply (which it would never dare to do):

It is hard to know what purpose is served by the Book Review in having Dawkins review Behe, except, possibly, to ostracize anyone who presumes to raise questions about prevailing Darwinist orthodoxies and, perhaps, to pander to the smug prejudices of the presumed readership of the Times. That does not instill confidence in the Darwinist materialism that they are so desperately defending.

This is all particularly interesting because Neuhaus is not especially one of the ID think tank Discovery Institute fans. Read More ›

Baylor’s move to shut down Prof. Robert Marks’s exposure of Darwinism as the Enron of biology is a harder line than the institution took seven years ago. Curiously, the 2000 report on the Polanyi Center (long closed) had actually proclaimed, ” … the committee wishes to make it clear that it considers research on the logical structure of mathematical arguments for intelligent design to have a legitimate claim to a place in current discussions of the relations of religion and the sciences.” Presumably, Baylor honchos don’t think that any more. Is that because Bob Marks can actually do it now? Bill Dembski tells me that the shutdown committee had never suggested that he couldn’t put such papers on his own Read More ›

Because so many people have asked me what The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist’s case for the existence of the soul addresses, I thought I would post the Introduction. It doesn’t deal with everything the book addresses, but it gives you some idea. In this book, we intend to show you that your mind does exist, that it is not merely your brain. Your thoughts and feelings cannot be dismissed or explained away by firing synapses and physical phenomena alone. In a solely material world, “will power” or “mind over matter” are illusions, there is no such thing as purpose or meaning, there is no room for God. Yet many people have experience of these things. We intend to argue that Read More ›

Bustrak’s insightful comparisons and interesting definition and basis for Intelligent Design are published as an Opinion Article 2007-09-12 on the Michigan Tech Lode:   Web Exclusive: The differences between Intelligent Design, Creationism, and Evolution By: John Bustrak “Three terms, addressing the same issue, where everything in existence comes from, e.g. origins, are hotly contested. For the sake of the reader, I will define the terms as they relate to the issue of origins to the best of my ability: Evolution: the belief that everything came into existence through naturalistic (non-supernatural) means, that through chemical interactions the basics of life formed, then evolved into every living thing that now exists. Creationism: the belief that some sort of supernatural identity (deity or Read More ›

Baby is yawning ’cause baby is bored. In three weeks, Michael Ruse and I will be asked to explain what evidence, arguments, or attractive baubles — you know: glass beads, tin whistles, loops of colored string — would persuade us to adopt each other’s viewpoint. An undebate, of sorts. A skeptical friend, who is a professor of biochemistry and prominent critic of ID, saw the debate announcement, and wrote me the following. Sounds boring, he said, unless you take some decisive steps to avoid the obvious. My reply is below his remarks, which I excerpt here: Actually, Paul, I believe this “undebate” has all the makings of a pretty humdrum affair. You’ll answer, as other commenters here would, “reproduce for Read More ›

Challenge to Scientific Consensus on Global Warming: Analysis Finds Hundreds of Scientists Have Published Evidence Countering Man-Made Global Warming Fears Posted : Wed, 12 Sep 2007 14:58:42 GMT Author : Hudson Institute Category : PressRelease WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A new analysis of peer-reviewed literature reveals that more than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming scares. More than 300 of the scientists found evidence that 1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age and/or that 2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun’s irradiance. “This data and the list of scientists Read More ›