Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Year

2007

Schoenborn on Dover in NYTimes

Cardinal Schoenborn suggests that Darwinists are every bit as dogmatic as the Catholic Church has been accused of being. February 8, 2007 Cardinal: Schools Quiet Evolution Debate By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 12:28 a.m. ET NEW YORK (AP) — An influential Roman Catholic cardinal whose comments on evolution are closely followed condemned a court decision Wednesday that barred a Pennsylvania school district from teaching ”intelligent design” in biology class. Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna said in a lecture that restricting debate about Darwin’s theory of evolution amounts to censorship in schools and in the broader public. ”Commonly in the scientific community every inquiry into the scientific weaknesses of the theory is blocked off at the very outset,” Schoenborn said Read More ›

‘The ID Files’, Interviews with Salvador Cordova, Michael Behe and more …

SciPhi guy Jason Renie has put up a free online Audiobook, actually a set of four interviews with proponents and detractors of ID. The other two Interviews are with Michael Shermer and Nick Matzke. Go here.

Comments I just posted at the site:

“First let me applaud Jason Rennie for some interesting dialogues. In his opening remarks, his pro ID perspective shows, but in the interviews he remained largely neutral. That kind of interview approach works well in this type of controversy, where emotions run high. Personally, if it were I interviewing Michael Shermer, I fear I would have become unrestrained, and challenged him on many of the points he made. But for this kind of objective comparison, Rennie’s approach is best. Read More ›

Design problems at Airbus

Design errors stemming from slightly incompatible versions of the same computer-aided design program will cost Airbus two years and $6 billion in lost profits (go here). Airbus engineers, working with programs simulating real, tangible objects and physical laws which are nearly perfectly understood cannot manage to model the correct length of wires for its lighting without making small errors that result in catastrophic setbacks. Meanwhile, climatic scientists have nevertheless created absolutely perfect models for the world’s weather patterns extending 100,000 years back and forwards in time (and yet they still can’t tell you if it’s going to rain on the weekend). Likewise, Darwinists have conclusively shown that living creatures, far more complex than the new Airbus plane, are the result Read More ›

The American Cancer Society FINALLY Notices DCA

Thanks to so many people making so much racket on the internet this potential wonder-drug is finally getting noticed. Let’s keep up the pressure. New Cure for Cancer: Truth or Dare? by Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, American Cancer Society, for ABC News There is the medical equivalent of a tsunami wave building out there, only we don’t know where this one is going to land. It is called DCA, and we at the American Cancer Society are suddenly receiving requests for information about something few if any of us had heard about as a cancer treatment until this past week. Read the rest at the link and also visit Dr. Len’s Cancer blog.

Hoax of Dodos: another Darwinist caught in the act of misreporting and misrepresentation

Hoax of Dodos Randy Olson, who in his film Flock of Dodos portrays biologist Jonathan Wells as a fraud for claiming in the book Icons of Evolution (2000) that modern biology textbooks continued to reprint Haeckel-based drawings. But it turns out that Olson is the one who is promoting a fraud…. Olson must believe his viewers are a bunch of “dodos” if he believes they are going to fall for such a complete rewriting of history! Visit www.hoaxofdodos.com And watch this video Hoax of Dodos Video

Physics Today publishes letters from a creationist geneticist and a pro-ID physicist

Michael G. Todhunter, a creationist and geneticist had his letter to the editor published in Physics Today. He was responding to Addressing the public about science and religion by Murray Peshkin.

See: Volume 60, Issue 2, “Debate About Science and Religion Continues”

Being a PhD geneticist and a creationist, I was disappointed that Murray Peshkin did not give references for the statement “Hundreds of Darwin’s predicted missing links have been found.” I find quite the opposite.
Read More ›

Darwin’s Final “Resting” Place

Over at Larry Moran’s blog, where I am identified as one of the ID movement’s stellar idiots, there is a picture of Darwin’s tombstone with the caption: “Here’s a photo of Darwin’s final resting place in Westminster Abbey.” I posted the following comment: Darwin doesn’t have a resting place. When he died he entered eternal oblivion. Nothing he did, and nothing that any of us do, has any lasting significance or meaning. One day our sun will turn into a red giant. When that happens its corona will expand beyond the orbit of the earth. The earth’s atmosphere will be stripped away, the seas will boil away, the sands will fuse into glass, and all life will be exterminated. There Read More ›

O’Leary remains skeptical: Does Richard Dawkins really exist?

A commenter, at the bottom of this collection of news posts on the ID controversy, asks me whether I think that long-running atheist bore Richard Dawkins really exists. Well, I’ve given some thought to how to respond to such a sensitive question, because I do so dislike hurting anyone’s feelings. So, here’s the straight dope:

It makes me feel more intellectually fulfilled to assume that Dawkins does exist. But, unlike some people, I will not assume that a correct answer to this question will necessarily make me feel intellectually fulfilled, or you either. We must have better evidence than that. Read More ›

Van Till, Schloss, Numbers, and Dembski at Grove City College

This Wednesday, there’ll be an ID symposium at Grove City College:

GROVE CITY, Pa. – The Grove City College Society for Science, Faith and Technology and The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College will host a one-day conference Feb. 7 on “Creatively Seeking a Creation Story: Evolution and Intelligent Design in America.” All lectures will be given in the Sticht Lecture Hall in the Hall of Arts and Letters on campus and are free and open to the public. Read More ›

The cutting room floor — The place Dawkins leaves his more incisive critics

You tell me who is playing fair: Richard Dawkins: 4 December 2006 http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article2037496.ece Why have you not engaged in public debate with Alister McGrath, Mary Midgley, Michael Ruse, Keith Ward, or indeed anyone else who would present you with a serious challenge? JAMES RADFORD, By e-mail RD: The producers of my Channel 4 documentary [Root of All Evil?] invited the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and the Chief Rabbi to be interviewed by me. All declined, doubtless for good reasons. I don’t enjoy the debate format, but I once had a public debate with the then Archbishop of York, and The Observer quoted the verdict of one disconsolate clergyman as he left the hall: “That was easy Read More ›