Sigmund Freud had immeasurable impact on modern culture.  Along with Marx and Darwin, he was one of the great modern thinkers, whose “science” of psychology and treatment, psychoanalysis, defined modern concepts of human nature for generations.  His theories (based largely on Darwinism) brought new words into popular vocabulary–id, ego, super-ego, the unconscious.  His ideas influenced education, law, religion and medicine.  People began to think about their actions being determined by dreams, sexual repression and mysterious forces deep in their unconscious minds.  They worried about Oedipus complexes, anal retention, penis envy and all kinds of causal concepts Freud introduced.  They spent fortunes lying on couches undergoing psychoanalysis by their shrinks, under the impression they were getting “scientific” treatment because, after all, Read More ›

Paul L. Williams is a name I first heard two years ago when I saw him interviewed on television about terrorist ambitions to create havoc in the United States. I hoped that he was exaggerating the threats, but after following some of his leads and reading two of his books I concluded that he was at least 90 percent correct and needed to be taken seriously. Nuclear-Biological-Chemical terrorism has been an interest of mine over the years. The first book I read that addressed this topic was TERRORISM: HOW THE WEST CAN WIN (1986), edited by then Israeli representative to the U.N. Benjamin Netanyahu (it seems I’ve heard his name since then). The essay by Alan Cranston in it, “The Nuclear Terrorist State,” still sounds surprisingly relevant to our present situation: “Does anyone doubt that if the Shah of Iran had succeeded in developing a full-fledged nuclear program in Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini would have used a nuclear weapon against Iraq? Does anyone now doubt that if Iraq had been permitted to make swift progress toward a nuclear-weapons capability, Saddam Hussein would have used a nuclear bomb against Iran? Or that either of them might have resorted subsequently to a nuclear strike in a jihad, a ‘holy war,’ against Israel?” (pp. 177-78)

Williams’ interview and books were in this vein, sounding a warning siren, along with many others, that the terrorist threats likely to materialize in the future promise to dwarf anything we’ve seen in the past. It’s one reason that, last I checked, survivalist James Wesley Rawles’ HOW TO SURVIVE THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: TACTICS, TECHNIQUES AND TECHNOLOGIES FOR UNCERTAIN TIMES was doing better on Amazon.com than Richard Dawkins’ THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH: THE EVIDENCE FOR EVOLUTION (other reasons no doubt include that Dawkins’ book is sheer dreck from the standpoint of current evolutionary theory — see here). In any case, after a brief email exchange with Williams two years ago, I didn’t expect to hear much about him again except as a modern-day Cassandra, whose predictions would be ignored until too late. It was therefore with some dismay that I saw him appear in the press on a matter at once related and yet quite different.

Williams works as a journalist and it’s in this capacity that he is being forced, as an American citizen, to submit to a lawsuit in Canada. Specifically, for charging McMaster University with abetting terrorists and allowing radioactive materials to be stolen, McMaster is suing him for millions of dollars. How could he be tried in a Canadian court given that he broke no U.S. law and did everything that McMaster University is upset about on U.S. soil? Read More ›

Logos Research Associates are hosting a ‘Darwin Was Wrong’ conference and webcast 13-14 November 09. Darwin Was Wrong Speakers include, John Sandford, John Baumgardner, Jerry Bergman and Pastor Chuck Smith. For those unable to attend a live webcast will be available. Venue, Calvery Chapel of Costa Mesa

My second post on Darwinian censorship today pertains to Illustra Media’s film Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record. It was slated to be shown at the California Science Center, as Anika Smith of the Discovery Institute has noted:

[T]he Los Angeles Daily News reports that the California Science Center, a “ department of the State of California,” cancelled the screening of Darwin’s Dilemma after the screening became public knowledge and the Center came under intense pressure to cancel, possibly from the Smithsonian Institution, with which they are affiliated.  The Center’s IMAX Theater had been rented by a private group, the American Freedom Alliance, to hold the Los Angeles premiere of the film as part of a series of activities commemorating the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

The Smithsonian Institution was clearly upset by publicity promoting the screening that mentioned the true fact that the Science Center is an official “ Smithsonian Affiliate.” The President of the Science Center’s Foundation is now claiming that it canceled the event “because of issues related to the contract,” issues he conveniently refuses to identify.

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Some evolutionists are thoughtful and measured, willing to admit the anomalies that evolutionary theory must still explain. Richard Dawkins is not one of them. Instead, he seems to inhabit a la-la land where all the conceptual difficulties connected with the evolutionary theory are resolved or swept under the rug. As one colleague who wishes to remain out of the limelight wrote to a list I moderate:

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In the MSNBC interview with Richard Dawkins, titled “The Not-So-Angry Evolutionist,” Dawkins says the following:

“You can actually plot a picture of the pattern of resemblances and differences between every animal and plant and every other animal and plant, and you find out that it fits on a beautiful, hierarchical, branching tree, which can only sensibly be interpreted as a family tree. When you do the same thing with a different gene, you get the same tree. Do the same thing with a third gene, and you get the same tree. It’s overwhelmingly powerful evidence.”

It’s also overwhelmingly false. No molecular systematist would make this claim.

Now, either Dawkins knows this, and therefore is lying to his audience, or he doesn’t know, and has been cribbing from erroneous Talk.origins FAQs. Either option is bad news. One should not accuse someone of lying without solid evidence, so let’s just say that Dawkins is wildly irresponsible.

The incongruence of gene and species trees is a standing obstacle, or research problem, in molecular phylogenetics. Read More ›

Christianity Today has weighed in on the bloggingheads’ controversy involving the disappearing and reappearing discussion between John McWhorter and Michael Behe. An online clearinghouse for intellectual debate has discovered the apparent boundary for its controversial conversations: Intelligent Design. Bloggingheads.tv posted a video interview between journalist John McWhorter and Intelligent Design proponent Michael Behe in late August focused on the Lehigh University biochemistry professor’s 2007 book The Edge of Evolution. It was taken down the same day after the website received a barrage of online criticism for not asking tougher questions of Behe and for hosting him at all. The video was re-posted later, but as Dr. Behe  explains, the initial removal is indicative of a larger issue: “Reposting the interview Read More ›

Time Magazine addresses the problem that neuroscientists who think the mind is real often discuss (John Cloud, October 13, 2009):

How people react to a medication depends in large part on how they think about it.

Exactly why the placebo and nocebo responses arise is a puzzle, but a fascinating article in Wired magazine noted earlier this year that the positive placebo response to drugs has increased during clinical trials over the past few years. The article speculated that drug advertising – which exploded after 1997, when the Food and Drug Administration began allowing direct-to-consumer ads – has led us to expect more from drugs. Those expectations, in turn, have made us feel better just for popping a pill. (Placebo responses can also occur simply when you book appointments with doctors[*] or psychotherapists[**].)

No surprise, really. If your problem is,

– *Why should I pay $159.95 plus tax for a medication? Dunno. Maybe some consumer research would pay off.

But if the question is Read More ›

Although its official release date is not until November 1, THE END OF CHRISTIANITY is now in stock and being sold at Amazon.com (go here). Even though argument in this book is compatible with both intelligent design and theistic evolution, it helps bring clarity to the controversy over design and evolution. In particular, it resolves the problem of dysteleology and natural evil by introducing a conception of the Fall that is theologically sound and also compatible with modern science (i.e., with standard astrophysical and geological dating that places the earth and universe at billions of years old).

I am sure glad someone is writing about this, though glad it isn’t my own job.

The problem is that judges and jurors will mistakenly assume that technologies that are demonstrably valid medical diagnostic tools yield equally valid conclusions when they are used to map the neural correlates of deception and other forms of cognition.

I think what this person is trying to say is this (though he sure can’t just come right out and say it): Neuroscience can tell you if an elderly person’s brain problems are the likely cause of serious cognitive deficits. That’s very useful; one can make better decisions for that person’s care, decisions that respect his dignity too.

If neuroscience claims to tell us whether Jimmy “the jimslamm” is lying, well, yes of course he is. If his lips are moving and intelligible sounds are coming out of his mouth, he is lying. I’ve dealt with lots of people like him so I can tell you for free and save you trouble.

But what is he lying about this time? I don’t like this new neurolaw craze for a number of reasons. I think Jimmy should just take his chances with a skilled Crown*. A fair fight.

*In Canada, a prosecution attorney

[The abstract] Read More ›

There are a number of articles on the Science and Values blog about climate change. I was at a Cardiff university conference over the summer where the question of what action to take to tackle climate change was discussed along side questions about poverty reduction. The fear was that major action to tackle climate change, with CO2 levels reduced to 80% of today’s level, will lead to a massive increase in global poverty. Even though it was recognised that there is a problem, the effect of actions to reduce CO2 levels may cause greater problems. Both James Lovelock and Mike Hulme have proposed different solutions.

James Lovelock calls for mitigation strategies

James Lovelock commented to an audience at the ‘Ways With Words’ literary festival at Dartington Hall, near Totnes in Devon that; “It’s not going to take much of a sea-surge to knock out London. We should be spending money strengthening defences there rather than vain efforts to improve renewable energy.”

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“Big Environment,” “Big Government,” “Big Business,” “Big Science” — all involve huge sums of money, leave a money trail, and require independent watchdogs to ask the tough questions. We noted the upcoming documentary NOT EVIL JUST WRONG here at UD last week. Here’s the latest (it made the top of Drudge): www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf-fzVH6v_U

Since in my last post a commenter put on the table thermodynamics to support evolution I decided to offer my personal answer in a specific post, although UD already dealt with this issue. As known, 2nd law of thermodynamics (SLOT, also called “entropy law”) states that in a closed system the overall energy entropy ΔS never decreases spontaneously (i.e. without an external intervention). Example: in a room (considered a closed system) a hot cup of coffee on a tabletop, loosing heat, decreases in energy entropy –ΔSc (neghentropy). Around the table the environment, absorbing heat, increases energy entropy ΔSe, in such manner that the overall energy entropy of the room ΔSr doesn’t decrease. In this example SLOT can be expressed with this formula: Read More ›

In “God vs. Science Isn’t the Issue”, William McGurn (Wall Street Journal, October 12, 2009) notes,

In contrast to the majority of scientists whose wondrous discoveries seem to inspire humility, today’s advocates of scientism can be every bit as dogmatic as the William Jennings Bryans of yesteryear. We saw an example a week ago, when the New York Times reported that many scientists view “outspoken religious commitment as a sign of mild dementia.”

The reporter was Gardiner Harris, and the object of his snark was Francis Collins—the new director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Collins is perhaps best noted for his leadership on the Human Genome Project, an effort to map the genetic makeup of man. But he is also well known for his unapologetic talk about his Christian faith and how he came to it.

Mr. Harris’s aside about dementia, of course, is less a proposition open to debate than the kind of putdown you tell at a private cocktail party where you know everyone in the room shares your orthodoxies. In this room, there are those who hold that God cannot be reconciled with what science has discovered about the human body, the origin of the species, and the beginnings of the universe. The more honest ones do not flinch before the implications of their materialist principles on our understanding of human dignity and human rights and human freedom—as well as on religion.

A couple of thoughts:

– Whoever said God vs. science was an issue? The whole idea was invented and is kept alive by materialist atheists, whose comments about “dementia” tell you something worth knowing.

– I have noticed that working scientists tend to be humble in the face of the facts, which is a good place to begin any type of true knowledge. The practitioners of scientism, by contrast, behave like cult members.* Recently, I was listening to one of them hold forth as an after-dinner speaker, proclaiming that on many science stories there is only one side. Well, that’s all right then; we can all just mindlessly shout in unison. Oh wait. Cue the pop science press on any subject to do with neuroscience. It is genuinely hard to imagine a neuroscience story so stupid they wouldn’t run with it. Read More ›

According to Michael Brooks (New Scientist, 06 October 2009), in Don’t be such a scientist, Randy “Flock of Dodos” Olson advises DID you spot James Cameron’s mistake in Titanic? Leo DiCaprio is about to drown in the north Atlantic ocean, yet the constellations of the southern hemisphere are aglow in the sky above. Who cares? Scientists, apparently. The mistake “ruined” the movie for Neil de Grasse Tyson, director of New York’s Hayden Planetarium, Randy Olson says. It’s the kind of reaction that gets scientists a bad rap, and Olson – himself a scientist and film-maker – suggests it pays to skip the pedantry and concentrate on the bigger picture. While small factual errors can be irksome, they are not life-threatening, Read More ›

O’Reilly told Dawkins”

you insist you can’t even mention it, that is fascism, sir.

Was he right? Is it constitutional/scientific to insist that only materialistic evolution can be taught?
See: O’Reilly vs. Atheist Author Richard Dawkins

O’REILLY: . . . It’s not fair to leave it out of the science class if the science class is incomplete. And you, by your own admission, say we don’t know how it all began. So if the science class is going to say evolution only, but I really don’t know how it started, that gap has got to be explored. Read More ›