2008

Professor Antony Flew writes:

The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins, is remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this book show Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: namely, a secularist bigot. (Helpfully, my copy of The Oxford Dictionary defines a bigot as ‘an obstinate or intolerant adherent of a point of view’).

Read More ›

http://www.nature.com/nrm/journal/v9/n9/pdf/nrm2472.pdf “MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are known to regulate gene expression at the level of translation, but how does this affect what proteins are produced? Two recent papers have shown that individual miRNAs can affect the expression of hundreds of proteins. One known as miR-223 seems to function as a rheostat to finely adjust protein output. Another miRNA let-7b is can fine-tune protein production from thousands of genes. Individual miRNAs can have an effect on global protein expression, and protein repression is likely to be mediated by a specific complementary sequence target region in the corresponding messenger RNA. The emerging picture is that miRNAs do not have just a small number of mRNA targets — they function at the transcriptional and translational level Read More ›

I made the following response in the commentary on another thread. Because some people thought it deserved to become an article in its own right… here it is.

Also with an apology to Jonathan Wells for calling him a “Moonie”. I had no idea it was considered by many to be derogatory. I thought it was merely a neutral descriptive like “Jehovah” or “Mormon” or “Amish”.

Ever wonder what Science Bloggers do when they’re not science blogging? Wonder no longer. http://trends.google.com/websites?q=scienceblogs.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 Top Five Things Science Blog Readers Search For: 1. scotch tape mosquito bites 2. kate beckinsale 3. sponge bob 4. bruce lee 5. britney spears Interesting (if you’re a 12 year old). Top Five Blogs Science Blog Readers Also Visit 1. richarddawkins.net 2. catholicleague.org 3. rememberthycreator.com 4. dirtgetswet.com 5. politicalirony.com Yup. All science.

In the post below, where U Warwick sociologist Steve Fuller replies to the attempted hatchet job by third-rate Darwin hack Sahotra Sarkar, I think this point made by Fuller is especially critical:

The overarching sense of scientific progress and its concomitant faith in greater explanatory unity and increased predictive control of nature over time: All of these trade on an ID-based view of the world, in which human beings enjoy a special relationship to reality that enables us to acquire a deep knowledge, most of which affords no particular reproductive advantage and more likely puts our continued survival at risk. Armed only with a Darwinian view of the world – and without the implicit ID backstory – it becomes difficult to justify the continuation of the scientific enterprise in this full-bodied sense.

The idea that we can understand nature is daily retailed to science students in publicly funded schools. We want them to know that we can somehow acquire the ability to understand reality – but that requires explanation.

And the explanation cannot be Darwinian. The Darwinian view is, as I have noted before, that our minds are illusions created by our neurons – which are in turn under the control of our selfish genes. These systems did not originate in order to discover truth but to enable us to leave offspring.

So Sarkar’s theories cannot be true to nature. They can only be meaningless (but for those who take them seriously, they may possibly result in a need for infant shoes).

That is okay with me, to be sure. But producing the infants to wear the shoes is not Read More ›

In the Face of an Aspiring Baboon: A Response to Sahotra Sarkar’s Review of Science vs. Religion?

Introduction

Some will wonder why I expend such great effort in responding to Sahotra Sarkar’s negative review of my Science vs. Religion? I offer four reasons: (1) The review was published in the leading on-line philosophy reviews journal (which offers no right of response). (2) Word of the review has spread very fast across the internet, especially amongst those inclined to believe it. Indeed, part of the black humour of this episode is the ease with which soi disant critical minds are willing to pronounce the review ‘excellent’ without having compared the book and the review for themselves. (3) The review quotes the book sufficiently to leave the false impression that it has come to grips with its content. (4) Most importantly, there is a vast world-view difference that may hold its own lessons. Sarkar and I were both trained in ‘history and philosophy of science’ (HPS), yet our orientations to this common subject could not be more opposed. Sarkar’s homepage sports this quote from Charles Darwin: ‘He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke’. I take this to be wishful thinking on Sarkar’s part.

My response is divided into 4 parts:
1. The Terms of Reference: Start with the Title
2. What to Make of the Philosophical Critique of ID?
3. Sarkar’s Particular Criticisms I: The More Editorial Ones
4. Sarkar’s Particular Criticisms II: The More Substantive Ones

I see all these scientists and science teachers in this video proclaiming they see “God’s Hand” in the universe all day long then in the same breath they say design detection is bogus. So what exactly do they “see” that convinces them that God’s hand is all over the place? Obviously it isn’t rational evidence that can weighed, measured, or otherwise rationally evaulated because that would be science and furthermore it would be the science behind intelligent design. Personally I think these people are either liars who are not convinced they see God all over the place or they are being truthful in becoming convinced of things with no rational evidence which technically means they are hallucinating and probably shouldn’t Read More ›

Expelled wins the next legal step.

———————————–

Sampling a song can be fair use, rules US court

OUT-LAW News, 21/08/2008

The producers of a film defending the anti-evolutionary theories of Intelligent Design probably did not infringe copyright when they used a sample of John Lennon’s song Imagine in the film, a New York court has ruled.

Judge Richard B Lowe III ruled in the Supreme Court of the State of New York that “fair use is available as a defence in the context of sound recordings.” Past rulings outlawed the use of even very short music clips without copyright holders’ permission.

Premise Media Corporation and others produced Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a film which claimed that exponents of Intelligent Design theory are being unfairly criticised and censored for their association with it. . . . Read More ›

For those with a penchant for masochism, check out Ken Miller on the Dennis Prager show discussing his book about how ID is threatening America’s soul. (The Miller segment begins at 11 minutes.) As usual, Ken completely misrepresents ID and ID theorists, and argues that the ID movement threatens to destroy science in America. Miller argues that ID proponents view science as a “cultural construction” and “relativistic knowledge” instead of the objective search for truth. He claims that the ID movement seeks to undermine the view that science is a way to find out the truth about nature, and that it tells stories to support a worldview (gag). Dennis challenges Miller to explain how belief that there is design in Read More ›

The paper whose abstract lies below the fold has been cited as supportive of intelligent design here by my friend Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute . I’m afraid I disagree with Casey’s analysis but I don’t have access to the full paper and would welcome review of my take on it from someone with access and expertise in virology. I’ve never agreed that ID, per se, predicts that “junk DNA” isn’t really junk. That’s a prediction based on young earth creationism. If an omnipotent designer created a perfect human genome 6,000 years ago then we might reasonably expect most of it today would still be functional. Design detection in and of itself does not predict any specific state of perfection or decay in the design. Thus the common assertion that “ID” predicts junk DNA will have function is not strictly an ID prediction at all but rather a young earth creation science prediction. Failure to make the origin of the predictions clear in these cases is a big reason why we keep getting slapped down in courts. It’s too transparent that design detection alone doesn’t predict things about junk DNA. You have to add in some young earth creationism to get there.

I’ve been thinking today about the ACLU’s favorite former liquor control board member (i.e., Judge Jones) and his decision in the Dover case.  In my post today I want to focus on only one of Jones’ many errors – his reliance on the subjective motives of the Dover school board members in striking down the ID policy in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Dist. 400 F.Supp.2d 707, 748-762 (M.D.Pa. 2005).  I will demonstrate that under very clear United States Supreme Court precedent, the subjective motives of a policy maker are simply irrelevant in determining whether the policy violates the Establishment Clause.

Read More ›

I blogged on this almost a year ago here: Front loading passes peer review in Cell Cycle Cell Cycle has a policy of making articles availabe without subscription after one year passes from initial publication. It’s been just over a year. The full paper is at: http://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/cc/article/shermanCC6-15.pdf

Yes, Calgary Herald columnist Rob Breakenridge has felt the need to respond to my response to his abuse of anyone who does not worship Darwin. Could anyone here help Breakenridge’s readers understand better why the world in general does not worship Darwin?

My op-ed piece published in The Calgary Herald, Saturday, August 16, 2008, responding to radio host and commentator Rob Breakenridge, with links to sources:

In rebuttal – Theory needs a paramedic, not more cheerleaders

Denyse O’Leary

Re “What is it about evolution theory that Albertans don’t get?” (August 12, 2008), Rob Breakenridge has cobbled together key talking points of the American Darwin lobby. The resulting column is an excellent illustration of why one should not write about big topics without basic research.

The 2005 Judge Jones decision in Pennsylvania, to which Breakenridge devotes much of his column, has not crimped the worldwide growth of interest in intelligent design. That is no surprise. A judge is not a scientist, and Jones cannot plug gaping holes in Darwin’s theory of evolution. Evolution is—contrary to its (largely) publicly funded zealots— in deep trouble, for a number of reasons.

The history of life has not been the long, slow “survival of the fittest” transition that classical evolution theory requires. Life got started on Earth soon after the planet cooled. All the basic divisions of animal life took shape rather suddenly in the Cambrian seas, about 550 million years ago. Later, there was, for example, the “Big Bang” of flowers and the Big Bang of birds, where many life forms appear quite suddenly.

Modern human consciousness is one of these leaps, judging from the superb cave paintings from recent millenniums. The creationists whom Breakenridge derides may be wrong on their dates, but not on much else.

Breakenridge hopes that we can enlighten backward Albertans by teaching more “evolution” in Alberta schools. But that won’t help. Textbook examples of evolution often evaporate when researchers actually study them (instead of just assuming they are true). Read More ›