2007

“Framing,” as a colleague of mine pointed out, is the term that UC Berkeley Professor of Linguistics George Lakoff uses to urge Democrats that the public will agree with liberal policies if only the policies are described in different terms — “framed” in other words. Politics aside, framing is part and parcel with the condescension of our secular elite that the masses cannot be reasoned with and must therefore be manipulated.

The authors of “Framing Science” (see below), which appeared in Science, are world-renowned scientists and therefore know whereof they speak. Well, not exactly. Matthew Nisbet is a professor of communication and Chris Mooney is a correspondent for the atheist magazine Seed. (Nisbet’s blog is also hosted by Seed.) Nisbet and Mooney are both outspoken defenders of Darwinism and critics of ID — which is no doubt why the American Association for the Advancement of Science (publisher of Science) regards them as qualified to “frame” science.

FRAMING SCIENCE — A Science and Society Policy Forum
Matthew C. Nisbet and Chris Mooney

Science 6 April 2007: Vol. 316. no. 5821, p. 56
SOURCE: www.sciencemag.org

Issues at the intersection of science and politics, such as climate change, evolution, and embryonic stem cell research, receive considerable public attention, which is likely to grow, especially in the United States as the 2008 presidential election heats up. Without misrepresenting scientific information on highly contested issues, scientists must learn to actively “frame” information to make it relevant to different audiences. Some in the scientific community have been receptive to this message (1). However, many scientists retain the well-intentioned belief that, if laypeople better understood technical complexities from news coverage, their viewpoints would be more like scientists’, and controversy would subside.

In reality, citizens do not use the news media as scientists assume. Research shows that people are rarely well enough informed or motivated to weigh competing ideas and arguments. Faced with a daily torrent of news, citizens use their value predispositions (such as political or religious beliefs) as perceptual screens, selecting news outlets and Web sites whose outlooks match their own (2). Such screening reduces the choices of what to pay attention to and accept as valid (3). Read More ›

From God’s Numbers:

Nine in 10 (91 percent) of American adults say they believe in God and almost as many (87 percent) say they identify with a specific religion. …Nearly half (48 percent) of the public rejects the scientific [sic] theory of evolution; one-third (34 percent) of college graduates say they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact. Seventy-three percent of Evangelical Protestants say they believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years; 39 percent of non-Evangelical Protestants and 41 percent of Catholics agree with that view.
….
Just 3 percent of the public self-identifies as atheist.

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Marcus Ross, the young ID-friendly paleontologist recently featured in the New York Times, will be giving a lecture on intelligent design and the Cambrian Explosion at Temple University today (Monday, April 9). The lecture will be located in Gladfelter Hall, 1115 W. Berks Street, Room 16. Also speaking (for evolution) will be dinosaur paleontologist Dr. Peter Dodson of the University of Pennsylvania. Dodson has been a skeptic of the dino-to-bird hypothesis, and has interacted with Ross at professional meetings. Their exchange today should be fascinating. The lectures begin at 6 and run to 8:30 PM. This event is free and open to the public.

As record breaking cold sweeps the U.S. this Easter weekend, plunging temperatures 20 degrees below average for early April, nary a mention of global warming can be found in the news. Talk about putting a cold damper on Friday’s release of the 2007 IPCC report on so-called global warming, the timing couldn’t have been better. Is someone trying to tell us something by making it snow in southern Texas in April just as the IPCC report is released? You can bet your bottom dollar that if the temperature in the U.S. was 20 degrees ABOVE normal we’d be hearing plenty from the global warming alarmists but they are mysteriously silent now. I can’t find a single major news source carried Read More ›

THE ATHEISM TAPES: JONATHAN MILLER IN CONVERSATION Mondays beginning 18 October 2004 Jonathan Miller meets up with some of the key contributors from his three-part Brief History of Disbelief in these half-hour extended conversations. Arthur Miller ARTHUR MILLER Tuesday 29 February 2005 12.30am-1am (Monday night) As a tribute to the recently deceased playwright Arthur Miller, another chance to see the discussion between Jonathan Miller and Arthur Miller about disbelief and their experiences of anti-Semitism, recorded in 2004. —– FULL LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Colin McGinn COLIN MCGINN Monday 18 October midnight-12.30am; 2.30am-3am; Saturday 23 October 7pm-7.30pm Jonathan Miller talks to the philosopher Colin McGinn about atheism and anti-Theism. Steven Weinberg STEVEN WEINBERG Tuesday 26 October 12.05am-12.35am; 2.35am-3.05am (Monday night); Friday 29 Read More ›

Now and again I’m asked to write the foreword to an ID book. Here’s a foreword I recently completed (I leave off the contributors and title so that Darwinists don’t sabotage the book before it sees the light of day): Read More ›

Charles Darwin Institute of Technology (CHIT) in Boston, Massachusetts is the first institution of higher learning to award Certificates of Existence along with diplomas for earned degrees. The certificates are in support of the Progressive Abortion Law (PAL) legislation currently being considered by the Massachusetts legislature. PAL will allow abortion to be performed up to the awarding of a college degree. Details are at www.TheBrites.org.

The Church of Darwin now has a new sect: The Church of Carbon Sin. Same members but scripture based on a newer, hipper, more alarming scientific hoax.

I think that one of the reasons for the irrational hatred of the ID movement is that in the last 50 years a scientific tide has reversed. The hard sciences (as opposed to Darwinian theory, evolutionary psychology and the like), which for centuries had demystified the world and made the transcendent seem increasingly irrelevant, suddenly started providing solid evidence that a materialistic worldview was untenable. The universe was fine-tuned for life, and living things were fundamentally based on highly sophisticated information and information-processing systems. The fact that those of us in the ID movement are promoting public awareness of this has enraged those with a philosophical commitment to materialism, those who counted on the hard sciences to provide ever-increasing support Read More ›

HT to Birdblog for this article from the Wall Street Journal. Increasingly, when the scientific merits are lacking, judicial fiat is called into play.

Climate of Opinion
Holman W. Jenkins Jr.
April 4, 2007; Page A14

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Here’s a pro-ID article without the usual disclaimers (e.g., a ritualistic suck-up to Darwin, an obligatory sneer at ID). Perhaps this is a sign of things to come. Protein engineering: opportunities and challenges Matti Leisola1 and Ossi Turunen1 Journal Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology Publisher Springer Berlin / Heidelberg SpringerLink Date Tuesday, April 03, 2007 SOURCE: http://www.springerlink.com/content/d514772515583767/ Received: 28 February 2007 Revised: 20 March 2007 Accepted: 21 March 2007 Published online: 3 April 2007 Abstract: The extraordinary properties of natural proteins demonstrate that life-like protein engineering is both achievable and valuable. Rapid progress and impressive results have been made towards this goal using rational design and random techniques or a combination of both. However, we still do not have a general Read More ›

Jonathan wells asked me to post the following at UD: Hated by the Right People On April 2, Bill posted a comment by me [1] about a recent press release from the University of Bath. In my comment I made two basic points. First, evolutionary developmental biology (“evo-devo”) – which is currently all the rage among Darwinists – has not lived up to its promise. Despite claims by some of its practitioners to have plugged the last remaining major gap in evolutionary theory – namely, the origin of major innovations such as new organs and body plans – evo-devo has not provided an experimentally confirmed explanation of even one such innovation. Second, one of evo-devo’s most widely advertised claims has Read More ›

Thanks everyone for helping make another new record high for Uncommon Descent traffic in the month of March. The graph is a little misleading as March had 10% greater number of days than February. Daily average number of visits (which eliminates the differences in number of days per month) rose from 6430 to 6896, up 7%. April is shaping up to be far faster growth and indeed the last week of March was more active than the first weeks. I believe we can credit this to the addition of the voting icons at the bottom of each article, particularly Reddit (the last one on the right). So if you see an article you especially enjoy please vote it up by Read More ›

Here’s an abstract to a speculative article by Carlos Gershenson on information. It is relevant to how intelligence might enter and be expressed in evolutionary processes. The article was posted yesterday at arxiv.org: ABSTRACT: This philosophical paper discusses the benefits of describing the world as information, especially in the study of the evolution of life and cognition. Traditional studies encounter difficulties because it is difficult to describe life and cognition in terms of matter and energy, falling into a dualist trap. However, if matter and energy, as well as life and cognition, are described in terms of information, evolution can be described consistently as information becoming more complex. Moreover, information theory is already well established and formalized. The paper presents Read More ›