Special invitation for Richard Dawkins – but any civil person is entitled to enter. There’s been some discussion here and elsewhere whether the the recent IEEE article by Dembski and Marks correctly characterizes Richard Dawkins’ famous METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL program. Does the program ratchet correct letters or does it let them vary? […]
Month: August 2009
Hunter Baker’s THE END OF SECULARISM
Hunter Baker, formerly a colleague of mine at Baylor and now associate provost at Houston Baptist University, has just published a book with Crossway titled THE END OF SECULARISM (go here for the Amazon.com listing). It provides a far-sweeping historical analysis of secularism within western culture. His critique of secularism is solid: Secularism is not […]
The argument just keeps rumbling on …
A curious piece was posted a few days back by Ewen Callaway at the New Scientist (go here). Its focus was on the recent IEEE paper by Robert Marks and me on conservation of information (for the paper, go here). Callaway remarks: “Even if a paper supporting ID has made it past peer review — […]
A Bogey Moment: The Human Chromosome Count
In the 1954 movie The Caine Mutiny, Humphrey Bogart plays the compulsive-paranoid Captain Queeg who is relieved of duty when unable to deal with a dangerous storm at sea. Upon return to port two officers face a court-martial for mutiny. The trial goes badly for them and they appear to be destined for prison until […]
Is Richard Dawkins a stage magician?
Richard Dawkins has a new book out soon; ‘The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.’ An unfortunate title perhaps, bearing in mind the type of acts that have performed under that banner headline in the past. So is Dawkins no more than a travelling conjurer pulling bunnies out of hats in the name […]
Uncommon Descent Contest Question 9: Is accidental origin of life a doctrine that holds back science?
For a free copy of Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009), help me understand the following: Accidental origin of life is the basic thesis of origin of life researchers. Life all just somehow sort of happened one day, billions of years ago, under the right conditions – which we may be able […]
Peter Strawson and soft naturalism
I have recently come across Peter Strawson’s argument for soft naturalism in his book Skepticism and Naturalism 1985. Also as a chapter Skepticism, Naturalism and Transcendental Arguments in Epistemology: an anthology pp.33-41 What strikes me from this is that proponents of hard forms of naturalism are trying to have it both ways, in that they allow naturalism a […]
Evolutionary Informatics as Intelligent Design and not as Theistic Evolution
The paper on evolutionary informatics by Robert Marks and me that was recently published in an IEEE journal (go here for the paper) continues to generate discussion on the Internet. One criticism is that it at best is consistent with theistic evolution but does not support ID. I think this is a mistake. I’ve said […]
Functional Interdependencies Tighten The Noose On Darwinists’ ‘Received Wisdom’
Synopsis Of The Fourth Chapter Of Nature’s IQ By Balazs Hornyanszky and Istvan Tasi As an avid participant of the compass-based sport of orienteering in the 1980s, one of the roles I was frequently assigned to was that of ‘course designer’. Meeting the needs of the many orienteering enthusiasts who turned up on competition day […]
Biosemiotics and Intelligent Design
Semiotix – Stephen Pain The distinction between “theorising” and “belief” is extremely important because our attitude differs towards them. In a theory the reified concept of the sign does not have an ontological status but an epistemological one. While in belief, the concept has often a clear ontological one. Uexküll believed in his concept of […]
Robert Wright and the New Pragmatism
In recent years evolutionists have been trying to pin down the theological implications of evolution. If evolution is true–and of course evolutionists believe it is true–then what does this tell us about god? From blogs to books to conferences at the Vatican, the “fact” of evolution is being integrated with our theology. The latest example […]
And there you have it!
Janna Levin, Columbia astrophysicist, gives us the cutting-edge science on the origin of the universe: there was nothing, really nothing, nothing at all … but the potential to exist. Was it Aristotle who said that nothing admits no predicates? So where did nothing get the potential to exist and then bring the universe into existence? […]
Szostak on Abiogenesis: Just Add Water
This month’s Scientific American is another example of evolution’s influence on science. Read more
[Off-topic:] School Answering Machine
I’m told that the Maroochydore High School, Queensland, Australia, staff voted unanimously to record the following message on their school telephone answering machine, prompted by a school policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for their children’s absences and missing homework. Apparently, the school and teachers are being sued by parents who want their […]
If and when The New York Times finally tanks … what will it mean for intelligent design?
Here’s my MercatorNet column about the decline of traditional media (known to bloggers as “legacy mainstream media”). Anyone interested in the intelligent design controversy should think carefully about how the media are changing. Hint: Imagine a world in which media went to someone other than the Darwin lobby to find out what might be wrong […]