I hate being right about this but I warned y’all it was going to happen. God help the billions already hungry if the globe starts cooling. It probably will begin cooling soon as it always does on cycles of two to four decades. Pray to whatever gods you believe in that it’s a small cooling. Global warming rage lets global hunger grow By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor We drive, they starve. The mass diversion of the North American grain harvest into ethanol plants for fuel is reaching its political and moral limits. “The reality is that people are dying already,” said Jacques Diouf, of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “Naturally people won’t be sitting dying of starvation, Read More ›

I received this press release moments ago: The skinny: 1. The Expelled producers have filed suit in the Northern District of Texas seeking declaratory judgment that there is no copyright or other infringement. Premise Media also seeks its attorneys’ fees in responding to the XVIVO claims. 2. They also suspect that some will try to influence Internet search ranks for Expelled, to direct persons seeking information to attack sites instead. (To solve this problem, just go to Expelled directly.) For the fire and brimstone press release, go here.

The following statement is from the Executive Producers of EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed. Since we began working on this very interesting project, the producers have been the subject of any number of groundless accusations, most of which we found amusing. The vast majority of these accusations we chose to ignore given that agitation is typical with any provocative documentary. We also recognized that as the film took form, it would specifically disturb a vocal minority of academic elites, and tread on what some people involved with science and academia consider sacred ground. We therefore expected a high level of criticism against the film from this particular group, who view themselves as self appointed gatekeepers. We accepted in good humor many Read More ›

As reviews of Expelled pile up, ranging from the “Dishonest!” (as if) through “missed the exit lane two hours ago*” through facile, and on to thoughtful, ending with the rousingly positive, one thing has become quite obvious: There really is a culture war, and whether you love or hate this film will largely depend on which side you are on.

If you are a materialist, you will think that any level of harassment, persecution, or unjust dealings against non-materialists or Darwin doubters is justified. Or else you will simply refuse to see it when it is before your face. After all, you know that Darwin was right, there is no free will and no hereafter, and all that matters is winning now.

If you are a non-materialist, you think that the line between good and evil passes through the human heart and that there really is free will and truth, and you keep hoping that evidence will one day finally matter.

This struggle for the soul of science will  be played out  in public from now on, which is probably a good thing. But expect to groan through many TV-driven fatuities  (Big Science, meet Big Hair; New Science, meet Christian pundettes).

Prediction: The ability to communicate skillfully with the public – over against legacy media story distorters – will be critical.

*This critic apparently believes that Expelled will wreck Ben Stein’s career. Yeah really.

Just up at the Overwhelming Evidence blog

From Mutation Works: Evolve your own musical cave man. (And if he turns out to be a great, yawping troll, please reclassify him as an anthropoid ape and send no photos). Read More ›

Clarke’s Three Laws Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three “laws” of prediction: 1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. 2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I think I’ve read almost everything written by Arthur C. Clarke. For the last 35 years usually shortly after he wrote it. I often quote the third law but I’d forgotten about the other two. All three laws color my perspective on ID and a lot of Read More ›

Ben Stein’s Intelligent Adventure By Kate Wright Ben Stein’s new film EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed, is a documentary that appears to be about Intelligent Design and the shortcomings of Darwinism. The film is not just an exploration of the limitations of The Origin of Species, but a journey to uncover the mindset that Darwinism engendered among those with an agenda to replace traditional understandings of God with pure materialism. But far from offering a weighty discourse on theories of monism, Stein delivers a pop culture MTV-style Road Film that has already reignited the Culture Wars, with a just-issued cease and desist letter from a group at Harvard. The Harvard letter claims that a clip in the film plagiarizes an “Inner Read More ›

Ironically, in David Bolinski’s letter backing down on the lawsuit threat to Premise Media (for lack of standing I’m sure as Harvard owns the video not XVIVO) he employs CSI (complex specified information) to back his accusation that Premise ripped off the video from Harvard: Given the vast number of structures to be removed, and given the structures remaining “on camera”, whose positioning and relationships, both aesthetic and functional, needed to remain true to the function and beauty of molecular biology, it is inconceivable, mathematically, that the animator hired by EXPELLED’s producers, independently and randomly came up with the same identical actin filament mesh XVIVO depicted in one scene, which had never before been rendered anywhere in 3D! Check it Read More ›

“Richard Dawkins … and Pee Zee were tricked into appearing in Expelled. They were tricked into signing release forms. They were tricked into long unedited denouncements of Christianity which appear in the film. They were tricked into receiving generous honoraria for being interviewed. They were tricked into cashing these checks and spending the money so it could not be returned. But trickery is what you can expect from peddlers of thought porn.” Details at TheBRITES.org.

Before the ink is dry on the revision of the tree of life, giving comb jellies pride of place near the base , we now need to redraw the tree again. “ScienceDaily (Apr. 14, 2008) — Darwin’s tree of life represents the path and estimates the time evolution took to get to the current diversity of life. Now, new findings suggest that this tree, an icon of evolution, may need to be redrawn. In research to be published in the April 13 advance online issue of Nature, researchers at Rockefeller University and the University of Tokyo have joined forces to reveal that insects have adopted a strategy to detect odors that is radically different from those of other organisms — an Read More ›

I watched Dawkins on the Bill Maher show last night. Among other interesting things he said was when it comes to belief in gods if you were to rate his belief on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being most belief and 10 being least he puts himself at a 6. Then he compares belief in gods with belief in fairies and pink unicorns. So I guess he’s conflicted about those too. Bill Maher then ridiculed religion in predictable trite ways which caused Dawkins to reconsider the belief rating and up it to “6 point 9”. Hilarious. Richard Dawkins is really a centrist on religious beliefs. Who’da thunk? Too bad Bill Maher didn’t ask Richard Dawkins to rate Read More ›

[[This blast from the past was originally published here at UD 25oct06. With EXPELLED coming out so soon and given Dawkins’s prominent role in it, I thought it worth moving to the top of the stack (blogs have the data structure of a push-down stack). –WmAD]] Last night Richard Dawkins did a reading from his new book, The God Delusion, at a bookstore in DC. After the reading he fielded questions. A friend of mine was in the front and got to be the first to go. He asked Dawkins if he thought he was being inconsistent by being a determinist while taking credit for writing his book. The answer so shocked my questioner friend that he typed out a Read More ›

He’s the guy in the blue shirt, talking about the National Academy of Science.

Jeff Schwartz is best known as the lead author of The Mind and the Brain, which addressed key findings on how the mind controls and shapes the brain. (Move over, Steve Pinker, you’re hogging the bench again.)

Incidentally, Bill was commenting on Time science writer Jeffrey Kluger’s Cordon Bleu theory of the origin of life (stir and slow cook). I have never read a serious OOL researcher who talked in such a blithely optimistic way.

This highlights a key feature of current materialism: Read More ›

Jeffrey Kluger’s review of EXPELLED in TIME Magazine is on balance negative. Interestingly, though, he makes clear something of what is motivating EXPELLED: In fairness to Stein, his opponents have hardly covered themselves in glory. Evolutionary biologists and social commentators have lately taken to answering the claims of intelligent-design boosters not with clear-eyed scientific empiricism but with sneering, finger-in-the-eye atheism. Biologist P.Z. Myers, for example, tells Stein that religion ought to be seen as little more than a soothing pastime, a bit like knitting. Books such as Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion often read like pure taunting, as when Hitchens pettily and pointedly types God as lowercase god. Tautology as typography is not Read More ›

Author of the theory that global warming breeds stronger hurricanes recants his view Noted Hurricane Expert Kerry Emanuel has publicly reversed his stance on the impact of Global Warming on Hurricanes. Saying “The models are telling us something quite different from what nature seems to be telling us,” Emanuel has released new research indicating that even in a rapidly warming world, hurricane frequency and intensity will not be substantially affected. “The results surprised me,” says Emanuel, one of the media’s most quoted figures on the topic. Read more… I love being right.

DMS, with an as yet undetermined appendage writes: Might I suggest that “someone” (perhaps a group effort) work up a brief flyer to hand out to people going to see Expelled. It should be non-snarky, non-confrontational, with some simple points and web addresses to go to for more information Great idea! I think they should shave their heads, wear togas, and chant ziiiiiiii-enzzzzzz ziiiiii-enzzzzz ziiiiii-enzzzzz. People will wonder if the Hare Krishnas are making a comeback and be naturally curious. Now boys and girls at Ms. ERV’s website please, no applause for this awesome marketing strategy. Just send me money to show your appreciation. Y’all have paypal, right? Of course you do.