2007

A rare glimpse of natural selection in action was captured today. Look at the bright side: At least the poor creature didn’t suffer, and the lions got an easy meal.

Given that the most spectacular documented successes of natural selection are: changing the color of the peppered moth and the length of the beak of the Galapagos Finch, and the development of resistance to antibiotics by bacteria, and that even these trivial examples are now all in dispute, and that no competing natural explanation for evolution has ever been taken seriously by more than a small band of scientists, where is the “overwhelming” evidence that the development of life is due to natural (unintelligent) causes alone? There are, in fact, some fairly persuasive reasons to believe that the development of life was due to natural causes, but when we honestly analyze them, they all reduce to the argument “this doesn’t Read More ›

It will be interesting to see where this debate is in the Roman Catholic Church by the time we get to Darwin’s bicentennial in 2009.

Pope puts his faith in the Book of Genesis, not Darwin
Richard Owen in Rome
From The Times, April 13, 2007

His predecessor appeared, on balance, to favour the scientists. But the present Pope may have tipped the scales the other way in the argument over which is the truer account of the Creation: On the Origin of Species or the Book of Genesis.

Pope Benedict XVI has stepped into the debate over Darwinism with remarks that will be seen as an endorsement of “intelligent design”.

The Pope did not explicitly back intelligent design or creationism. He praised scientific progress but said that the Darwinian theory of evolution was “not finally provable” because: “We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory.”

Intelligent design (ID) argues that life forms are too complex to have evolved randomly, and must have been created by a higher power. Scientists denounce this as a thinly disguised form of creationism, the view that God created the world literally as described in the Book of Genesis. US courts have ruled that neither should be taught in school science because that would violate the separation of Church and State.

Many of those who back intelligent design will draw encouragement from the Pope’s remarks. Read More ›

I posted a reference the other day to a peer-reviewed paper by two Finnish ID-supporters that I claimed supported ID. The paper highlighted that evolutionary methods work to the degree that they are directed. As is typical with our detractors, whenever a pro-ID paper by pro-ID scientists comes out in a peer-reviewed biology journal, they try their best to show that it doesn’t actually support ID. An example is the following post at PT by Steve Reuland: pandasthumb.org…the_proid_paper In reading Reuland’s critique, try to keep track of “rational design,” “directed evolution,” and “Darwinian methods.” Reuland conflates the last two. In so doing, Reuland completely misses the boat. So let me spell it out: DIRECTED EVOLUTION IS NON-DARWINIAN. DARWINIAN EVOLUTION IS Read More ›

Denyse O’Leary mentioned this review in one of her posts. Here it is. The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism Michael J. Behe. Free Press, $28 (336p) ISBN 978-0-7432-9620-5 http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6430603.html With his first book, Darwin’s Black Box, Behe, a professor of biology at Lehigh University, helped define the controversial intelligent design movement with his concept of “irreducible complexity.” Now he attempts to extend his analysis and define what evolution is capable of doing and what is beyond its scope. Behe strongly asserts, to the likely chagrin of young earth creationists, that the earth is billions of years old and that the concept of common descent is correct. But beginning with a look at malaria and the Read More ›

If the direct approach of withholding Christmas presents doesn’t work, here’s a more reasoned approach along the lines of classical natural theology (not to be confused with ID proper):

Who knows where Richard Dawkins would be if he had a mother like this:

There’s been a fair amount of speculation based on media reports. But media reports are almost never a good source of information on Catholic teachings, so let’s wait and see. Most deadtrees see their role as promoting materialism. So even if they understood what the Pope was saying, reporters would feel duty bound to garble it.

Jay Richards, a research fellow at the Acton Institute and co-author of Privileged Planet [remember the Smithsonian uproar? No no, not the one that involved Rick Sternberg, the other one]  offers some thoughts as to why such reports are almost never a useful source of information:

I suspect there’s a translation problem here. Reading between the lines, it looked like Benedict said some pretty strong things. Of course he’s challenging scientism and calling for a broader concept of reason than is contained in experimental science. Read More ›

Well, it started already. Shifting economic priorities from food production to reducing CO2 emission has already started causing significant problems. The environmentalist whackos are at it again. Evidently unsatisfied with derailing nuclear power plant construction in the United States 30 years ago, a whackjob by the whackos that has gotten us into the foreign oil dependency mess we’re in today instead of getting most of our electricity from nuclear power like France, their latest stupid panic is going to lead to the starvation of hundreds of millions of people. I don’t often laud the French but they at least got their ducks in a row with nuclear power and the U.S. could have too if we’d had the good sense Read More ›

Renowned DNA researcher Andras Pellionisz wrote in One Believer’s Junk Is Another Believer’s Treasure; Quest for Predictive Scientific Theories on the Function of ‘junkDNA’

The national debate about Darwinism (D) contra Intelligent Design/Extraterrestrial Intelligence (ID/ET) centers on the nature of predictive and thus refutable scientific theories.

Most Darwinists erroneously predicted that 98.7% of the DNA was devoid of function (“junk”), while the ID/ET theory correctly predicted some yet to be decoded function of junkDNA.

Read More ›

“Paris – Pope Benedict, elaborating his views on evolution for the first time as Pontiff, says science has narrowed the way life’s origins are understood and Christians should take a broader approach to the question. The Pope also says the Darwinist theory of evolution is not completely provable because mutations over hundreds of thousands of years cannot be reproduced in a laboratory… ” (go to article) You may recall that shortly after Pope Benedict’s inauguration, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna touched off a fire storm (July 2005) with an op-ed piece in the New York Times questioning Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and appearing to endorse the concept of intelligent design. This brought a quick response from Prof. Kenneth Miller, Read More ›

Has Barbara Forrest ever accepted Bill Dembski’s debate invitation? [See The Vise Strategy Revisited and Barbara Forrest: Will The Real Coward Please Stand Up] Apparently not. Now it seems the Darwinists at Southern Methodist University (SMU) are trying pull off their own Barbara Forrest imitation. See: Are the Darwinists afraid to debate us? Speaking of SMU, here are some events of interest: The Intelligent Design Controversy Thursday, April 12, William Dembski will be the featured speaker at the Dallas Christian Leadership luncheon at Southern Methodist University, to talk about the Intelligent Design Controversy. Thursday, April 12, 200712:15pm – 1:30pmSMU Umphrey Lee CenterBallroom (3rd Floor)Reservation Deadline: Noon Monday April 9 Ticket are $20 each, and for SMU Faculty/Staff $14 each, and Read More ›

About one year ago, Sahotra Sarkar and I debated ID and evolution in front of an overflow audience at the University of Texas-Austin. Sahotra and I had known each other since the mid-1980s, when we were graduate students sharing Bill Wimsatt as our primary advisor. As background for the UT debate, Sahotra sent me a couple of chapter drafts from his forthcoming book on “creationism” — a book now available from Blackwell. One criticism that came up both during the debate [here’s some post-debate commentary], and in discussions at Austin bars afterwards, was the perception that ID bad guys circumvent the normal processes of scientific review by arranging debates in front of lay audiences, instead of academic peers. Having just Read More ›

About two months ago I blogged several articles on a potential cancer cure called DCA. To date there has still been no start of an FDA-approved clinical trial so it looks like the conspiracy theorists were right – DCA is a common chemical that has no profit potential for big pharma so even though it shrunk several different types of human tumors in immuno-compromised rats 75% in 3 weeks with no adverse side effects, and even though it’s been used for decades in humans in treating chronic lactic acidosis so its safety was already well characterized in humans, no one will put up the hundreds of millions of dollars to test its efficacy as a chemotherapeutic for cancer. Well, after Read More ›