Josh Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2003 completed the deployment of 3000 oceanic robots that dive 1 kilometer deep and record the water temperature. The unexpected result is that the robots have found that the ocean cooled slightly in the past 4 years. Willis also says that the oceans contain almost ten times the amount of heat as the atmosphere so the ocean temperature is much more critical to watch. Compounding the mystery is the fact that the oceans have risen by one centimeter in the past 4 years which is much more than was forecast. A cooling ocean should be falling not rising. He says the fall is offset by icemelt in Greenland and Antarctica but the Read More ›

Language matters. And my recent search on the terms “post-Darwinist” and “post-Darwinian” suggests that getting over Darwin may be catching on. Check the figures. I would not have named my personal ID news blog the Post-Darwinist in April 2005 if the use of the term then had been anything like what it is now. Someone else searched on “intelligent design”, minus the supposed chief culprits (you can do that with a Google Advanced search), also with some very interesting results. And all this in the year of ridiculous Darwin hagiography – with more to come in 2009! Excerpt: When I first started researching this controversy in 2001, I kept turning up promotional copy for products or ideas that show “intelligent Read More ›

Check out this CBN segment that features Ben Stein, David Berlinski and yours truly: GO HERE.

The BRITES today launched their crusade to lobby the Motion Picture Association to rate the documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed NC-17. Dr. Richard Knuther railed against Expelled‘s practice of reductio ad Hitlerum, questioned the morality of the producers of the documentary, and called the movie thought porn. More at TheBRITES.org.

While cleric Michael Heller disparages Intelligent Design, Chuck Colson observes: “John Scotus Eriugena is considered perhaps the first proponent of “intelligent design.” See: Learning from the Irish, Chuck Colson

“Observe the forms and beauties of sensible things,” he wrote, “and comprehend the Word of God in them. If you do so, the truth will reveal to you in all such things only He who made them.” . . .

See Colson’s full “Breakpoint” 3/17/2008
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Michael (Michal) Heller is a Polish cosmologist and Catholic priest and recipient of this year’s Templeton Prize.  Here he is over at FT bashing ID.  Adherents of the so-called intelligent design ideology commit a grave theological error. They claim that scientific theories that ascribe a great role to chance and random events in the evolutionary processes should be replaced, or supplemented, by theories acknowledging the thread of intelligent design in the universe. Such views are theologically erroneous. They implicitly revive the old Manichean error postulating the existence of two forces acting against each other: God and an inert matter; in this case, chance and intelligent design. There is no opposition here. Within the all-comprising Mind of God, what we call Read More ›

A web page on “Einstein’s razor” at Wikipedia and ResearchID cited:
* Q. T. Jackson (2005) describes:

“a corollary from Occam’s Razor, which I shall call herein ”Einstein’s Razor.” The notion that a theory should be as simple as possible (but no simpler). . . Einstein’s Razor brings forward the following notion: ”even when a simple explanation is theoretically sufficient, it is sometimes insufficient to reach desired goals.” That is, some ”needs” or ”goals” are not necessarily attainable by the simpler of two or more systems. . . . When Occam’s Razor is insufficiently sharp to split hairs, Einstein’s Razor is required.”

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In my neighborhood in Southern California, a high school student has filed suit against a history professor who openly and consistently disparages Christianity in the classroom. Note that this teacher is “faculty adviser to the Free Thinking Atheist and Agnostic Kinship student club.” Question #1: Why is no discussion of scientific challenges to Darwinism permitted in high schools, when open hostility to Christianity is? Where is the ACLU when you really need them? Question #2: Why are atheists and materialists the only ones who qualify as “skeptics” and “free thinkers”? I used to be an atheist and materialist, but when confronted with the evidence, I became skeptical of atheism and materialism. I became a free thinker.

GO HERE: newworldencyclopedia.org/….

Why SETI hasn’t found any space aliens yet: Excerpt: Gonzalez and fellow astronomer Hugh Ross have pointed out, Over the last four centuries the CP [Copernican Principle] has evolved from a simple claim that the Earth is not located at the center of the solar system to an expansive philosophical doctrine that the Earth, and particularly its inhabitants, are not special in any significant way. It is worth noting that the Copernican principle is not testable. It is simply an assumption. If right, it will aid research, but if wrong, it will impede research. Suppose it is wrong? Could that be one reason why the SETI search for extraterrestrial civilizations has not turned up any results for forty years, despite Read More ›

There is an interesting discussion going on about “How do you prove purpose”, led by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, blogger, at Overwhelming Evidence. Here was my contribution: One question that commonly arises when people discuss design in the universe is “how can you tell it is design if you do not know the motive of the designer?” Or perhaps the “purpose” of the designer? Actually you can. The police do it every day in criminal investigations. For one thing, there is a difference between motive and intent. Confusion on that subject can sometimes result in confusion about detecting design. Legal cases typically turn on intent, not motive. Here is an example: Harry and Jack are having a somewhat tense conversation over a Read More ›

Nepotism and dishonesty…

Climate panel on the hot seat
By H. Sterling Burnett
The Washington Times
March 14, 2008

More than 20 years ago, climate scientists began to raise alarms over the possibility global temperatures were rising due to human activities, such as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels.

To better understand this potential threat, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 to provide a “comprehensive, objective, scientific, technical and socioeconomic assessment of human-caused climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”

IPCC reports have predicted average world temperatures will increase dramatically, leading to the spread of tropical diseases, severe drought, the rapid melting of the world’s glaciers and ice caps, and rising sea levels. However, several assessments of the IPCC’s work have shown the techniques and methods used to derive its climate predictions are fundamentally flawed.

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More at TheBRITES.org

John Wakeley1 Abstract Arising from: N. Patterson, D. J. Richter, S. Gnerre, E. Lander & D. Reich Nature 441, 1103–1108 (2006); Patterson et al. Genetic data from two or more species provide information about the process of speciation. In their analysis of DNA from humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and macaques (HCGOM), Patterson et al.1 suggest that the apparently short divergence time between humans and chimpanzees on the X chromosome is explained by a massive interspecific hybridization event in the ancestry of these two species. However, Patterson et al.1 do not statistically test their own null model of simple speciation before concluding that speciation was complex, and—even if the null model could be rejected—they do not consider other explanations of a Read More ›

Jefferson to John Adams on April 11, 1823: I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripedal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with its distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organised as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, Read More ›