Understanding Intelligent Design: Everything You Need to Know in Plain Language, which I coauthored with Sean McDowell, and for which his father Josh McDowell wrote a bang-up foreword, is now available at Amazon.com (click here). The book is geared at Christian young people (junior high and high schoolers) as well as for Church groups (e.g., […]
Month: June 2008
Biological Neg-Entropy
Some of you might have heard that Jonathan Schaeffer and his team at the U. of Alberta recently solved the game of checkers. It made big news in the computer science world. I first met Jon at the First Computer Olympiad in London (organized by the famous David Levy of chess and computer-chess fame) at […]
Expelled: Why are Americans allowed to care so much about freedom?, and other thoughts
Two nights ago, I finally saw the Expelled film. I had become almost proprietorial about the widely denounced #5 political documentary. I had first broken the story of its existence last August. I watched it pitch and roll through accusations of trickery, a threatened lawsuit over plagiarism and a real one over intellectual property, production […]
Zillions of Universes
I am completely envious and I, like, totally admit it. This guy Steve Burri (one of the fellows in this picture) is way better than me when it comes to sending up goofy “zillions of universes” cosmology: The scientists and researchers employed in my secret basement laboratory are quite an ecclectic bunch. We have staff […]
Oldie but Goodie: Berlinski’s Open Letter to the Amazing Randi
Back in 2005, David Berlinski responded to James Randi’s attempt to bribe the Smithsonian to suppress showing THE PRIVILEGED PLANET. Enjoy Berlinski’s response by clicking here.
Louisiana Science Education Act — Gov. Jindal signs off on it!
I just received this press release from Seattle’s Discovery Institute: Governor Bobby Jindal Signs Historic Science Education Act On Evolution and Education Baton Rouge – Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signed into law the Louisiana Science Education Act, ensuring the state’s teachers their right to teach the scientific evidence both for and against Darwinian evolution. “The […]
Rights for Apes in Spain
Here is one consequence of evolution being used to justify strict continuity between humans and other forms of life. Discovery Institute’s persistent stress on humans being made in the image of God and that not being a privilege extended to the rest of the animal world makes more and more sense. This action in Spain […]
Making genetic history – Jerry A. Coyne
BOOK REVIEWED–In Pursuit of the Gene: From Darwin to DNA by James Schwartz Harvard University Press: 2008. 384 pp. Fruitful collaborations were formed in Thomas Hunt Morgan’s fly genetics lab. When I was a student, ‘doing genetics’ meant crossing two different strains or species. Now it means sequencing DNA, preferably human. Between these two poles […]
First paragraph of Lenski paper contains an error
I started reading Lenski’s full paper myself to see what raw data was provided and I got no farther than the first paragraph beyond the abstract when I encountered a bias error that a chance worshipper would never notice. My emphasis: At its core, evolution involves a profound tension between random and deterministic processes. Natural […]
IQ and ID
Uncommon Descent member AussieID brought up the point in my previous article that belief in God tends to fall off with increasing IQ. I countered with the point that the very highest IQs tend to come back around, not full circle to a belief in a personal God (such as the God of Abraham), but […]
The Schlafly-Lenski Briefwechsel
PZ Myers at the Panda’s Thumb draws our attention to an exchange between Andrew Schlafly and Richard Lenski (the impetus for the exchange is Lenski’s work running tens of thousands of generations of E. coli to produce some interesting, or not so interesting, evolution as the case may be). Myers thinks Lenski gets the better […]
14% of Americans Don’t Believe in an Intelligent Designer
In the latest Gallup poll in a 26-year series asking the same questions, only 14% of Americans are chance worshippers when it comes to evolution. The other 86% believe an intelligent agent was involved. Of course the poll names the intelligent agent “God” but you know what my old pal William Shakespeare had to say […]
Does Naturalism Aid the Environment?
Cross posted at The Christian Watershed One of the biggest issues trends in the West – especially in America – is for people to go ‘green’ in what they do. Whether it be from getting a hybrid vehicle, to eating organic foods, to just installing energy efficient light bulbs, it is not considered chic to […]
The History Channel: “How Life Began”
I watch very little television, but I enjoy The History Channel (THC). I’ve learned a lot from it. When it comes to hard science and engineering they do a very good job. I’ve particularly enjoyed their programs about the history of aviation, since I’m a software engineer in the aerospace R&D industry with hundreds of […]
Jason Rosenhouse’s Love/Hate Relationship with Ken Miller
This is funny stuff. Jason Rosenhouse, an incurable chance worshipper, fawns over Ken Miller’s gratuitous ID bashing, then goes all negative when Miller starts mouthing telic code-phrases like “the universe was waiting for us” and that “a human-like intelligence was the inevitable result of evolution”. Go to Rosenhouse’s blog at the link above for the […]