Pre-Game Coin Toss Makes Jacksonville Jaguars Realize Randomness Of Life

On Thursday, 16 October 2008, the University Philosophical Society of Trinity College, Dublin — the world’s oldest debating society (founded 1684) — will sponsor a debate on evolution, creation, and materialism. The debate will occur at 7:30 pm in the Debating Room of the Graduates’ Memorial Building (that’s the building in the photograph above), just off the College’s Front Square. The evening’s discussion will open with a paper read by Bob Bloomfield of the British Museum [scroll down in the link for Bloomfield’s biography and current work]. Responses will then follow from David Berlinski, Fellow at the Discovery Institute, Stephen Moore, of the Northern Ireland based Giants’ Causeway Creation Committee, and me. Opposing will be Christopher Stillman, Fellow Emeritus in Read More ›

People who have been following the upcoming American election will know that last week featured a sustained media hit on Republican Veep nominee Sarah Palin’s family.

Some of the visceral hatred of Sarah Palin is, of course, completely understandable. As commentator Bill Whittle perceptively noted,

Sarah Palin has done more than unify and electrify the base. She’s done something I would not have thought possible, were it not happening in front of my nose: Sarah Palin has stolen Barack Obama’s glamour. She’s stolen his excitement, robbed his electricity, burgled his charisma, purloined his star power, and taken his Hope and Change mantra, woven it into a cold-weather fashion accessory, and wrapped it around her neck.

That no one thought Palin could achieve this may be inferred from Ben Stein’s early pointed dismissal (which annoyed many fans of Expelled because Palin is not a Darwin hack). In fairness to Ben, he may have mistaken Palin for one of the cackling horde of entitlement/extortion babes who want to play with the boys – by girls’ rules.

No doubt the Dem campaign will regroup tomorrow, but meanwhile, I want to draw attention to the culture war over Trig Palin (the Palins’ youngest son, and what it tells us about the culture in which evidence for design in the universe is so very unwelcome.

Trig, as most know, has Down syndrome, a genetic disorder. It usually features retardation as well as physical problems, though the degree varies greatly from one individual to the next. Years ago I interviewed a young Canadian actor who had Down syndrome, read a book by a young British author who also had it – and have just learned today of the passing of a Canadian artist of some note who lived with the disorder for half a century. Most people with DS today can be educated, live as young adults in group homes, and undertake light responsibilities. Recent medical advances enable most to reach middle age.

However, 90% of American children who have the disorder are aborted, often late in pregnancy. Thus, I wasn’t surprised when intrepid Canadian blogger Wendy Sullivan (the Girl on the Right) alerted me to this Palin hate site, featuring ridicule of the infant Trig. Now, the site is a troll hole, to be sure, but it inadvertently draws attention to widespread American attitudes to children like Trig.

Recently, LA broadcaster Frank Pastore invited Jill Stanek, the Oak Lawn, Illinois nurse whose testimony about babies who survive abortions and are left to die triggered the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in Obama’s state. She recalls how she got involved:

… if they were aborted alive, they were allowed to die in the hospital’s soiled utility room without any medical intervention whatsoever.

This came home to me one night when a nursing coworker was taking a little baby boy (who had been aborted because he had Down syndrome) to our soiled utility room to die because his parents didn’t want to hold him and she didn’t have time to hold him that night. When she told me what she was doing I couldn’t bear the thought of this suffering child dying alone and so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived. Needless to say, this was a life-changing event, …

A curious coupling of pictures that: Trig Palin, help up by his family before an adoring crowd … . The nameless, abandoned Oak Lawn child held by a lone, caring nurse in the soiled utility room …

It was Barack Obama who later prevented the Illinois “born alive” legislation from being passed. Although many clouds of smoke have billowed from his handlers’ offices, Obama quite clearly opposed protection for children such as the Oak Park boy, where the overwhelming majority of legislators supported it.

How strongly does Obama feel about his stand? When political reporter David Freddoso was asked by Bill Steigerwald “What the most damning thing you say about Obama’s ideology or belief system?”, he replied:

Sen. Obama promised to a gathering of Planned Parenthood last July that his first act as president – and that’s what he said, “my first act” — won’t be to bring home the troops from Iraq, or to set up a government health care system or any of the other things that Barack Obama has promised. The Number One thing, the top priority, his first act, is to sign a bill called the Freedom of Choice Act, which re-legalizes partial-birth abortion, among other things. Fine. People have all kinds of opinions about abortion. People are pretty much in agreement about partial-birth abortion – that they don’t want it. But that will be his first priority, and that he would go so far as to pander to Planned Parenthood and say that at their gathering last July, is really, really amazing to me.

No, David, it is not amazing. Not in a country where far more boys with Down syndrome will die alone in a soiled utility closet than live in a family.

Obama, I think, knows his country well.

Or does he? From the dawn of history, most human beings have known that there is – in any event – Another country, whose governor hates nothing and no one that he has made. And influences from that country sometimes make their way here.

As a traditional Christian, I believe that even now in that country, my childhood friend Johnny (1948-1957), who had Down syndrome, has placed his bet – and is smiling.

Also, just up at The Mindful Hack Read More ›

See the coverage at the Onion.  

This month in Current Biology Vol 18 No 16, Howard C. Berg writes a “Quick guide” to the Bacterial Flagellar motor. In it he outlines what is currently known of these amazing structures.

“The flagellar motor is a remarkably small rotary electric motor that includes a stator, drive shaft, bushings, mounting plate, and a switch complex. The motors are powered by protons or sodium ions, that flow through channels from the outside to the inside of the cell. Depending upon the configuration, the rod, hook, and filament are driven clock wise or counter clock wise. Other components include a rod cap, discarded upon rod completion, hook cap, discarded upon hook completion, hook-length control protein, and a factor that blocks late-gene expression.”

As “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”, Berg concludes with a few brief comments.
Read More ›

Videos of Kauffman in ALife XI, kind regards AMir Parts 2 and 3

Massimo with an as yet undetermined appendage writes Education is not about having “kids debate both sides,” since most kids would probably conclude that the earth is flat and at the center of the universe (after all, the sensorial evidence is overwhelming in favor of the flat-earth, Ptolemaic system). If Massimo doubts that the science establishment can present the evidence for a round earth, like live satellite images, well enough to let children use critical thinking skills to decide if the scientists have made a compelling case, then quite frankly Pigliucci is a worrisome character whose own critical thinking skills leave a lot to be desired.

Randy Isaac, the executive director of the ASA (i.e., the American Scientific Affiliation — an organization of evangelical Christians largely committed to theistic evolution) will give a talk titled “Science: A Misused Weapon in a Religious War” at Baylor on September 9th. I’m fifteen minutes from the school, so I’ll probably be there. For details, see below. From his talk description, Isaac seems to have things exactly backwards. For Isaac the science-faith problem is a clash of competing religious perspectives. In fact, the problem is a clash of two competing scientific conceptions of biological and cosmological origins, one that incorporates real teleology, the other that eschews it. These two scientific conceptions have radically different implications metaphysically. Hence the enormous stakes Read More ›

A very interesting programme on the problem of inbreeding with pedigree dogs has recently been shown on BBC 1 in the UK; “Pedigree dogs exposed,” Tuesday 19th August 2008 21.00 BST. Although this programme didn’t set out to be anti Darwinian, there are some very interesting observations that come out of it that are really quite damaging to neo-Darwinian explanations. In fact the programme stated that the whole concept of purebred dogs came out of the eugenics movement of the 19th century.

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This from the Faraday Institute Newsletter (No 32 | September 2008): The Faraday Course entitled “Science and Religion for Church Leaders”, also intended for those training for ministry, will take place Nov 4-6th . As usual full details are up on the Faraday web-site (www.faraday-institute.org). . . . Those in the Birmingham UK area might be interested to know that on Saturday, 27th September, at 4.0 p.m. in the George Hotel, Lichfield, the Institute Director will be in debate with Prof. Steve Fuller (Prof. of Sociology at Warwick University) at the Lichfield Literary Festival (hwww.lichfieldfestival.org) on the subject of Intelligent Design. This is a somewhat counterintuitive debate in that Prof. Fuller, an agnostic, is an ID supporter whereas the Director, Read More ›

I have no objection to origin of life research, but then I have no objection to the search for the Lost Atlantis either. To the extent, however, that a quest seems primarily religious in character, the case for public funding must be constructed on public grounds. And that must begin with an examination of the faith under discussion. 1. Origin of life – the Genesis of a new religion? 2. Was origin of life ever mainly a science quest in the first place? 3. The sacred mysteries of the prebiotic soup 4. So should the established religion seeking the origin of life be disestablished? There is an alternative …