According to a Mori poll in the UK, 29% of science teachers want to allow teaching of creationism in school science classes. Presumably that includes intelligent design, which is usually lumped into a ‘one-size-fits-all’ creationism. Furthermore, 73 percent of science teachers think creationism should be discussed in other lessons. Dawkins calls the fact that 29 […]
Month: December 2008
TEN THOUGHTS DARWINISTS NEED TO PONDER BEFORE BREAKFAST
As we head into the new year and the impending Darwin bi-centennial on February 12th, we’re sure to be regaled with story after story of the wondrous things that Darwinian evolution hath wrought. A friend e-mailed the following to me, and with his permission, I reproduce it here below the fold. Perhaps pondering some of […]
The top ten Darwin and Design stories of the year 2008
Every year now, a bunch of us get together to determine the top ten “Darwin and Design” news stories of the fast-waning year. Go here for the list with my comments. (I was one of the judges.)
Got mail: Historian is idiot. But guy who pretends to know prehistory is genius
Recently, I got mail. Some U dullard thought I had bumped the shark, when I quoted Bruce Thornton on false knowledge – presumably because a classics prof like Thornton couldn’t really know anything. Wowza! A guy who actually knows what happened thousands of years ago (when at least some people were literate) is an ignoramus, […]
A Poem of Christmas
A baby’s cry pierces the dark night Breath begins A hanging man cries, “It is finished!” Breathing ends A precious child, sinless and pure Wrapped in clothes against the cold He who knew no sin, becomes sin That he might be our righteousness A Christmas babe A dying man As […]
On false knowledge …
Bruce S. Thornton of the Classics department at Fresno State University in California , author of Plagues of the Mind: The New Epidemic of False Knowledge (ISI Books, 1999), certainly spoke for me when he said, What makes us recognizably human, then, is not what is natural about us but what is unnatural: reason and […]
David Berlinksi on Physics and Metaphysics
The discussions on multiverses and string theory bring to mind the following comments of David Berlinski (in “Was There a Big Bang?”): “Standing at the gate of modern time, Isaac Newton forged the curious social pact by which rational men and women have lived ever since. The description of the physical world would be vouchsafed […]
A wad of fraud, falsified data, and other award-winning tenure strategies …
I just got my e-mail notice of the December edition of the “Outside the Cover” of The Scientist, and it made for a curious reading experience: Bad news at Cell Improper citation, disregard for antecedent research, and shoddy experimentation – those are just a few of the allegations levied against a recent Cell paper. Is […]
Conversations: A defense of amateur science
Friend Forrest Mims, recently targeted as one of Discover Magazine’s “50 best brains in science, fielded a complaint from a mutual acquaintance about the fact that I routinely call myself a “hack.” (The complainer probably hoped Forrest would ask me to stop because it sounded like a self-putdown.) I defended myself, pointing out that “Among […]
Finally – Proof of Evolution
It’s all over now. Evolution has been proven. I’ll get me coat… Earth’s Original Ancestor Was ‘LUCA’ ScienceDaily (Dec. 19, 2008) — An evolutionary geneticist from the Université de Montréal, together with researchers from the French cities of Lyon and Montpellier, have published a ground-breaking study that characterizes the common ancestor of all life on […]
Compatible? Not Really.
One of our commenters says he has solved the determinism problem by becoming a “compatibilist.” Briefly, a compatibilist is someone who tries to avoid the logic of his premises by resorting to semantic dodges about the meaning of free will. The compatibilist says that free will is compatible with determinism (thus the name). Isn’t that […]
Neuroscience in the News: Here comes the ambiguously described Decade of the Mind
We are told that Recent advances in brain research, in combination with the scientific consensus that mind emerges as a result of the activities of brains, has led to the notion of a new “Decade” project — one dedicated to understanding the phenomenon of mind within the context of neuroscience. That’s actually a rather ambiguous […]
The (non)Heuristic Value of Evolution
Theodosius Dobzhansky once famously said that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” Except, of course, when biology doesn’t need to even consider evolution, which for practicle purposes is most of the time. Today, I had the privilege to have lunch with a research scientist who works in the area of […]
Arrington, O’Leary on KRKS
Today beginning at 4:00 PM Mountain Time. The show streams live at KRKS.com.
I get mail: More on the awesome, totally world-famous mind reading machine …
Recently, I have been reading Plagues of the Mind by Bruce Thornton, about which I will say more shortly, on the epidemic of false knowledge that surrounds us these days. False knowledge is what we know that ain’t really so. And often common sense will help us see why it can’t be so. Here’s one […]