2007

Readers of this blog will know that my favorite game is “spot the irony” (based upon Monty Python’s “spot the looney” game).  Here a colleague from another listserve brings Richard Dawkins’ statement from “The Enemies of Reason” We’ve got to go back to the evidence and see what is true. We must favour verifiable evidence over private feeling otherwise we leave ourselves vulnerable to those who would obscure the truth. We should be open minded, but not so open minded that our brains fall out. The scientific method tests with objective observation and statistical analysis. Individual scientists may or may not be honest, but science with its’ safeguards of peer review and repeated experiment has scrupulous honesty built into it Read More ›

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any sillier, now Sam Harris, author of “Letter to a Christian Nation” publishes a letter in Nature calling all good scientists to oppose religion at every turn. Unfortunately for Sam, the letter is frought with inaccuracies and mischaracterizations that would make PiZza Myers proud. He even goes so far as to scold Nature for not taking a hard enough line against this pernicious evil.

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The audacity of the secular humanists never ceases to amaze. Their upcoming conference titled “The Secular Society and Its Enemies” is an ill-conceived rip-off of Karl Popper’s THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES. Had they read and understood Popper, they would realize that they are the enemies to which he was referring. I encourage readers of this blog in the New York area to attend this conference — doing so will immeasurably enrich your education and show you what we’re up against:

David Klinghoffer, author of the new book Shattered Tablets: Why We Ignore the Ten Commandments at Our Peril (Doubleday), gives a disconcerting interview in National Review Online about life in Seattle. Here’s a sample: Lopez: What’s the point of a First Commandment protest rally? Klinghoffer: Oh, I attended one, though it wasn’t spoken of explicitly. It was a rally for Richard Dawkins, the atheist Darwinist bestseller guy, at Seattle’s town hall. The First Commandment — “I am the Lord your God…” — really sticks in the craw of materialists like Dawkins, much more so than any other of the Ten Commandments. Everyone was bundled in flannel and they were applauding him for applauding them for being such a bunch of Read More ›

Here is ad hoc, paradigm-driven, rationalistic science at its best: (paraphrase follows) “We know that humans and gorillas had a common ancestor. This finding of an extremely early but largely modern gorilla means that the ancestor must have been much earlier than we thought.” This, along with the Egyptian footprints, ought to be telling a different story, it seems to me. But, in order to see that story you have to adopt an empericalist view of science and be willing to run with the data rather than forcing the data into your paradigm. Read More

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Responding to PZ Myers’ usual commenters, Randy Olson, of FLOCK OF DODOS fame, remarks: Are you folks really this clueless? You make me think of a baseball team that finishes the season in last place, then spends the off season criticizing all the other teams, as if that will address the problem. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that is an excellent trailer they have produced. Not some amateurish clunky mess that you would expect from a science organization. The music cue, “Bad to the Bone,” would have cost them $25,000 at least (assuming they have paid the rights — someone might want to look into that, but I’m guessing they have). Rights for music in Read More ›

Trailers for the movie Expelled are now on the net. See: www.ExpelledTheMovie.com I was viewed as an intellectual terrorist. Rick Sternberg You can get your Rebel ID attire. It’s much better than those goofy Dawkins uniforms.

It’s August, after all. Keep that in mind. Even so, I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it, but apparently, according to SciAm blogger Christopher Mims, Lifecode author Stuart Pivar is suing PZ Myers for libel. Yes, Stuart is the one who was friends with the late Stephen Jay Gould. Hat tip to Jack, who draws my attention to Mims’ last graff, quoting Myers: Huh. I’d heard some noise from Pivar threatening to sue, but this is the first I’ve heard of any formal action being taken. Since I’m a defendant (one who hasn’t been notified of his status!) I suppose I should just shut up at this point and let justice run its course. Since I’m a Read More ›

Recently, an item in Nature News promised big things for the evolution of bacteria:

Beneficial mutations in the bacterium Escherichia coli occur 1,000 times more frequently than previously predicted, according to research from a group in Portugal.

In a study of E. coli populations of various different sizes, Isabel Gordo and her collaborators at the Gulbenkian Science Institute in Oeiras, Portugal, found that thousands of mutations that could lead to modest increases in fitness were going unseen because good mutations were outperformed by better ones

The authors say that the work could explain why bacteria are so quick to develop resistance to antibiotics.

“It’s changed the way I think about things,” says Frederick Cohan, a biology professor at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He adds that although the principles involved were understood, no one expected to find such a high rate of adaptive mutation.

So have the found the answer to evolution? Well, no. Read More ›

From Letter 3154 — Darwin, C. R. to Herschel, J. F. W., 23 May [1861] One cannot look at this Universe with all living productions & man without believing that all has been intelligently designed Charles Darwin, 1861 I think that would make a perfect textbook sticker.

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian archaeologists have found what they said could be the oldest human footprint in history in the country’s western desert, the Arab country’s antiquities’ chief said on Monday. “This could go back about two million years,” said Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. “It could be the most important discovery in Egypt,” he told Reuters. Archaeologists found the footprint, imprinted on mud and then hardened into rock, while exploring a prehistoric site in Siwa, a desert oasis. Scientists are using carbon tests on plants found in the rock to determine its exact age, Hawass said. Khaled Saad, the director of prehistory at the council, said that based on the age of Read More ›

While they don’t call it intelligent design research… that’s in fact what it is. In the article a scientist is quoted saying once a container (cell wall) is synthesized and nucleotides are added in the right proportions then Darwinian evolution will take care of the rest. Yeah, right. Darwinian processes won’t do jack diddly squat. It’ll require intelligent design every step of the way. Mark my words. ID will be proven in concept and Darwinian evolution will (again) be disproven in concept.

Artificial Life Likely in 3 to 10 Years

Aug 19 11:52 PM US/Eastern
By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) – Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they’re getting closer.

Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of “wet artificial life.”

“It’s going to be a big deal and everybody’s going to know about it,” said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. “We’re talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways — in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict.”

That first cell of synthetic life — made from the basic chemicals in DNA — may not seem like much to non-scientists. For one thing, you’ll have to look in a microscope to see it.

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Following on the fact that a Canadian writer, Cameron Wybrow, got a positive review of Mike Behe’s Edge of Evolution published, I think it is worth introducing two things this evening: Go here for more.

Cameron Wybrow wrote me a while back wanting to know why most legacy Canadian mainstream media will not publish anything about the intelligent design controversy beyond the often incompetent or politically motivated stuff that the New York Times would put out. I said it was my guess that the legacy media would go under before they would update their thinking and ask obvious questions like, “Could it be that there IS something wrong with Darwinism, and that that is why Darwinists must attempt to ruin the careers of anyone who questions it?” Well, I underestimated Cameron. He now writes to say, After many failed tries, I hit upon a newspaper to publish a positive review of Behe, and a major Read More ›