March 2008

R.S.V.P. is an abbreviation for the French “répondez s’il vous plaît” which means “please respond” and traditionally is appended on invitations so that the host knows who and how many guests to expect. Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers are running around saying they weren’t “gate crashers” at a pre-screening of “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”. But that’s exactly what they were. PZ Myers claims he went through the same process to get a reservation for himself and a number of guests as all the other guests by going here Expelled – RSVP System ADDENDA: 3/25 There is no way to get to the URL above from the main page www.getexpelled.com. The above is not a publicized address. The links from the Read More ›

by K.D. Kalinsky “Either biological life required intelligent design or it did not. As with most problems in science, it is difficult to prove one option or another with absolute certainty. Instead, options can be evaluated against each other in an attempt to estimate which option is more likely. Even then, the fact that one option may be more likely than another does not ‘prove’ that it is actually the case. Instead, I will propose a way in which both options can be evaluated against each other. The results indicate that it seems highly likely that intelligent design was required for biological life.” PDF paper available here

An on line appeal for RD and PZ to make sacrifices in the interest of winning the “war on science”. Will they take the advice? “Richard and PZ, when it comes to Expelled, it’s time to let other people be the messengers for science. This is not about censoring your ideas and positions, but rather being smart, strategic, tactical, and ultimately effective in promoting science rather than your own personal ideology, books, or blog.” Go here.

Why was an American Darwin fan kicked out of the screening of Expelled? Templeton winner trashes design? The Big Bang as a creationist theory At last, a useful encyclopedia entry on intelligent design theory

I read somewhere about a guy in Florida some years ago who was winning races in an offshore speed boat powered by hydrogen/oxygen by water electrolyzed on demand. He used a conventional piston engine modified slightly to run on hydrogen/oxygen (which is one of the most efficient fuels you can get). Normally there’s no way to store hydrogen and oxygen that’s lighter than a tank filled with gasoline. High pressure or cryogenic tanks are HEAVY and DANGEROUS. This guy had developed an extremely efficient method of rapidly electrolyzing water at a throttled rate where the combined weight of the batteries and electronics were much lighter than a tank of gasoline. He won races by having a superior power-to-weight ratio in Read More ›

The Austrailian published a transcript of an interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril. Excerpt: Duffy: “Can you tell us about NASA’s Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we’re now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?” Marohasy: “That’s right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you’ve Read More ›

Listen to it here.

A friend tells me there is quite the kadiddle going on over at Darwinist Web sites on account of PZ Myers getting the bum’s rush out of the recent Expelled screening. And he wasn”t let in  even though Richard Dawkins, also sneaking around, was let in and introduced. What, I wonder, did Dawkins say? Hi, I’m Richard Dawkins and, even though I live in Oxford, England, I just happened to be skulking around here this evening, so I …. (?) Gotta admire his initiative though. Rats, I can’t get a DVD out of the Expelled myself, and their show won’t open in Canada till way later than the States’ kickoff. I didn’t think of trying to sneak into a US showing because Read More ›

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE PRESS CONTACT: ROBERT CROWTHER DISCOVERY INSTITUTE (206) 292-0401 X107 ROB@DISCOVERY.ORG Richard Dawkins, World’s Most Famous Darwinist, Stoops to Gate-crashing Expelled by Bruce Chapman, www.evolutionnews.org Like many films im pre-release, Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is being selectively screened around the country to develop a buzz. There is a growing fear by the producers that Darwinists may be trying get into the showings to make bootleg copies (for the Web?), possibly in hopes of damaging the commercial value. Others may be crashing because they want to trash it before it even gets reviewed by the media. P.Z. Myers, who was not let into a showing last night in Minnesota, probably falls in the latter category. Amazingly, the Read More ›

Can science ever stop being skeptical of the dominant theory?

Ferenc Miskolczi may have discovered an upper bound to Greenhouse Effect. He found a “simplifying” assumption of an optically infinite atmospheric thickness in the original climate models. Modeling an optically finite atmospheric thickness clamped the “runaway greenhouse” projections.

Could similar “simplifying” assumptions be discovered in neo-Darwinian evolution’s random mutation with natural selection” that invalidate conventional wisdom?
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New derivation of equations governing the greenhouse effect reveals “runaway warming” impossible

Miklós Zágoni isn’t just a physicist and environmental researcher. He is also a global warming activist and Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was. That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA’s Langley Research Center. Read More ›

Darwinians objecting to Michael Behe’s Irreducible Complexity appeal to indirect “scaffolding” or Roman Arch routes that support the assembly and are later discarded. Now research shows cancer is caused by mutations in the CARD11 gene that forms a cytoplasmic scaffolding docking site for a signaling molecule.

If mutations in genes forming known scaffolding lead to cancer, why should we believe that numerous mutations needed to form genes to make hypothetical scaffolding will create properly functioning irreducible complex systems?

Read More ›

Militant atheism is on the rise. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have dominated best seller lists with books denigrating religious belief as dangerous foolishness. And these authors are merely the leading edge of a far larger movement – one that now includes much of the scientific community. “If science stands opposed to religion, it is not because of anything contained in either the premises or the conclusions of the great scientific theories,” Berlinski writes in The Devil’s Delusion. “Confident assertions by scientists that… they have demonstrated that God does not exist have nothing to do with science, and even less to do with God’s existence.” A secular Jew and agnostic, Berlinski nonetheless delivers a biting defense Read More ›

The following is an edited extract from a Nature paper. It is an example of real ID research. Notice that the designers only used evolutionary techniques to very slightly tweak the enzymes scaffold structure that had been designed with “borrowed components” from existing enzymes tacked together.  The novel active site was completely intelligently designed. doi:10.1038/nature06879

Kemp elimination catalysts by computational enzyme design

“We designed eight enzymes with computationally designed active sites. In vitro evolution enhanced the computational designs, demonstrating the power of combining computational protein design with directed evolution for creating new enzymes.

Natural enzymes bind their substrates in a well-defined active site with precisely aligned catalytic residues to form highly active and selective catalysts for a wide range of chemical reactions. The design of stable enzymes with new catalytic activities is of great practical interest, with potential applications in biotechnology, biomedicine and industrial processes.

Read More ›

Rich Akin, CPA and CEO of Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity (PSSI), has reported to its membership the completion of a successful five-city educational event, titled What Darwin Didn’t Know, in Spain this past January.

A week prior to the first event the national newspaper El País published a full page article that portrayed these presentations as the Americans bringing creationism to Spain. While riddled with distortions and inaccuracies, the article listed a link to the on-line registration site. The article also carried the times and locations of each event and even placed next to the article the poster prepared to advertise the events, likely increasing attendance.

This article acted like an alarm, awakening and riling up the Darwinists, who immediately began a campaign of intimidation against the locations where the events were scheduled. Read More ›

There has been a Darwinian vs. human-directed evolution experiment running in North America for centuries. It is the horse. That is, the mustang vs. humanly directed horse breeds. What did natural selection do? What did intelligent design (specified complexity) do? For more, go here.