2009

Interesting brief article in the Dallas Morning News about Don McLeroy, head of the Texas State Board of Education: Texas Senate rejects confirmation of conservative education board chief Don McLeroy 12:00 AM CDT on Friday, May 29, 2009 By TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News tstutz+@dallasnews.com AUSTIN – The Senate rejected Republican Don McLeroy’s nomination as chairman of the State Board of Education on Thursday after Democrats decried his lack of leadership and “endless culture wars” over evolution and other volatile topics. Sen. Leticia Van de Putte said that the State Board of Education has become a ‘laughingstock of the nation’ under nearly two years of Don McLeroy’s leadership. Along strict party lines, the Senate voted 19-11 for McLeroy, Read More ›

This Sunday, May 30, Wilberforce Forum will feature a special online radio program featuring Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, Director and Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture. He’ll be discussing his new book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, demonstrating that the digital code embedded in DNA points to a designing intelligence and brings into focus an issue that Darwin did not address. Go to www.blogtalkradio.com/wilberforceforum at 6 pm EST, 3 pm PST this Sunday to listen, and ask Dr. Meyer a question by calling in or by posting in the conference forum online.

In Probability’s nature and nature’s probability: A call to scientific integrity, information scientist Donald E. Johnson tackles, among other things, the origin of life.

Johnson takes on the aimless speculation that characterizes so much consensus science today on such issues:

… one should not be able to get away with stating “it is possible that life arose from non-life by …” without first demonstrating that it is indeed possible (defined in the nature of probability) using known science. One could, of course, state “it may be speculated that …,” but such a statement wouldn’t have the believability that its author intends to convey by the pseudo-scientific pronouncement.”(p. 5)

I am so fed up with pseudoscientific pronouncements on the origin of life that I decided to cover all such stories at my Colliding Universes blog, along with speculations about the end of the universe – rather than at Post-Darwinist, where many claims – whether well-supported or not – have at least some basis in fact.

This is a great book for scientists with a background in probability who want to understand why there is a controversy over design in the universe.

Also today at Colliding Universes: Read More ›

I just picked up this article at PhysOrg.com. The kinds of things that scientists are up to these days are quite interesting. Here’s a sample: Researchers design and build networks of genes, splicing them into bacterial genomes to run specific tasks or manufacture desired molecules – a process akin to installing biological computer software. Though the field is rapidly advancing, the gene-based tools available to synthetic biologists remain limited. I found the allusion to “installing computer software” quite compelling. Will these ‘synthetic biologists’ be the ones to settle for us the question of whether intelligence is present in the genome? This work is in the May 29th issue of Science, for those who have online access.

Normally one would expect a story such as this one to be in the National Enquirer. However, in this case, the story presents some interesting features which may have ramifications for the scientific application of ID.
In this case, the Russian scientist is claiming that back in 1908 an ET deliberately flew their spacecraft into a large meteorite to protect our planet. The crash took place in what is called the Tunguska site, somewhere in Siberia. According to Wikipedia, the impact was probably equivalent to a 10-15 megaton nuke. Pretty powerful for 1908. You can see a photo in the Wiki link. Read More ›

[This just in:]

New Website on Faith and Evolution Explores
if the Two are Friends or Foes?

Find out at FaithandEvolution.Org

SEATTLE – In recent years, debates over faith and evolution have continued to intensify. On the one hand, “new atheists” like Richard Dawkins have insisted that Darwinian evolution makes it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. On the other hand, “new theistic evolutionists” like Francis Collins have assured people that Darwin’s theory is perfectly compatible with faith and need have no damaging cultural consequences.

Who is right? And why does it matter? A new website being launched today at www.faithandevolution.org by the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute explores the issue in-depth.

“FaithandEvolution.Org is for anyone who wants to dig deeper into the scientific, social, and spiritual issues raised by Darwin’s theory, but who is tired of the limited options they are currently being offered by the media,” says Dr. John West, Associate Director of the Center.

“Increasingly, the only voices being heard in the faith and evolution conversation come from two wings of the evolution lobby: atheist evolutionists like Richard Dawkins, and a handful of theistic evolutionists like Francis Collins. But there are a lot of thoughtful scientists and scholars who are skeptical of Darwin’s theory whose views aren’t being heard.” Read More ›

This from a course to be taught in the fall at Rutgers. I’m a big fan of the Scottish common sense realists (especially Thomas Reid) and will be publishing an anthology later this year collecting together writings of Hume, Reid, and Paley on natural theology. Professor Gregory Jackson Seminar: The Anglo-American Enlightenment (350:629) Tuesdays – 9:50am to 12:50pm Bishop House, Room 211 In this course we’re going to take an extended look at the origins of “intelligent design,” a phrase coined not in our own time but in the context of the debates over science and religion in the eighteenth century. Far from believing that the two were irreconcilable, many of the Enlightenment’s influential thinkers worked tirelessly to integrate the Read More ›

Well, the Canadian Science Writers’ Association conference at Science North in Sudbury wrapped up yesterday, and today I got a chance to tour SNOLAB, the underground neutrino detector in the active Creighton Mine, which is currently retooling for SNO Plus, the hunt for dark matter. Just for now: The Solar Neutrino Observatory (SNO) Lab is 2 kilometres underground, and then about two kilometres walk through an active nickel mine, followed by a serious shower and change into clean room gear. SNO’s main recent experiment is now finished, and the lab is being retooled. But 16 science writers were allowed to tour Sno Plus, Canada’s entry in the race to find a dark matter particle. More on all this great stuff Read More ›

Particle physicist Lawrence M. Krauss* addressed the gathering at the Canadian Science Writers’ Association conference at Science North in Sudbury, May 24, 2009.

I made some notes of his remarks in a darkened cave, the Inco Cave at Science North, though I do not have a transcript.

His talk was billed Star Trek Physics, and the PowerPoint revealed physics bloopers spotted in Star Trek, the X-files, and other film resources.

It was certainly entertaining, but not riveting, at least for me. Anyone who gets their physics from sources clearly labelled science fiction or UFOlogy, well …

But Dr. Krauss had advice for science communicators:

1. Don’t assume your audience is interested. “Don’t expect interest, create it.”

2. Science is dull, hard, and unrelated to the real world. Communicators must work against that. (“Remember how boring science can seem.”)

3. “Most people perceive themselves as fundamentally uninterested in science.”

4. Confront misconceptions: it’s the only way people remember.

Now, I have reservations about career academic scientists advising journalists how to communicate, or high school science teachers how to teach. They tend to emit platitudes that are too general to be put into practice, and therefore too general to fail.

Take the advice offered above, for example:

Read More ›

Sometimes we seek to infer from a design what its requirements might have been, and in ID thought this question comes up. As a practitioner in the architecture of large scale computer environments (the composite set of applications, databases, and communications networks) in major enterprises, I wonder if some of the principles my profession uses in design could be useful in understanding what is going on in biology. First a little background. What I am describing applies, in my opinion, to architecture and I would submit there is a rather considerable tension between architecture and design. But I am not going to get into that now, so let’s assume they are the same and call them “architecture”. Next, in my Read More ›

The  winner of the # 2 Question: “Why does Earth’s unique situation for science discovery threaten many?” is  Bruce David. For a free copy of The Privileged Planet DVD, Bruce David needs to send a snail address to me at oleary@sympatico.ca. He will not be added to a mailing list. I do not have a mailing list. Sorry I am a bit late judging; I was rushing off to a conference. Here is his entry: To vastly over simplify the actual state of affairs, there are two kinds of people in the world: those whose highest value is truth, and those for whom being right is more important than anything else. <!–more–> Imagine that you have grown up into a Read More ›

Darwinian “Scientists have called it “junk DNA.” They have long been perplexed by these extensive strands of genetic material that dominate the genome but seem to lack specific functions. Why would nature (or an Intelligent Designer) force the genome to carry so much excess baggage?” As predicted by Intelligent Design theorists “researchers from Princeton and Indiana University have found that junk DNA may not be so junky after all. They have discovered that DNA sequences from regions of what had been viewed as the “dispensable genome” are actually performing functions that are central for the organism. They have concluded that Darwinian theory was incorrect the genes spur an almost acrobatic rearrangement of the entire genome that is necessary for the Read More ›

Best news I’ve heard all year, actually. Also the worst.

Bear with me.

A friend writes to tell me that

Jared Diamond, geography prof at UCLA, ornithologist and popular science writer, is in hot water for writing a story in the New Yorker last year that described “vengeance wars” among tribes in Papua New Guinea that apparently has angered the tribes. The convoluted episode has resulted in his being vilified by anthropologists and by Stephen Jay Gould’s widow, who runs Art Science Research Laboratory.

He is being sued for defamation by his New Guinea subjects. Read More ›

 Time’s verdict regarding Ida:  “Most paleontologists will roll their eyes at that sort of overhyped nonsense, especially given that there’s real science lurking underneath. After wading through the false advertising, though, most people might have a hard time finding it.”Full story here. Then there is this gem:  “‘Most of what we understand about primate evolution is pieced together from bits of teeth and jaws,’ says Michael Novacek, curator of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History.” Teeth and jaws.  Seems to me that leaves an awful lot of room for interpretation, which, of course, is influenced by worldview (or “metaphysical prejudices if you like) as much as anything else.  

Ida the Lemur-like creature, has had some high praise from leading Darwinists. David Attenborough announced with confidence that the missing link ‘is no longer missing,’ but the way the evidence has been presented and handled has raised questions about media manipulation, especially from the London Times science correspondent Mark Henderson; he seems quite miffed. 

More on Ida: overblown claims and a worrying precedent

Mark Henderson reports that doubts have arisen now that others have finally been given access to the fossil and suggests that Ida is related to ‘nothing that exists today.’ Although Ida is an important fossil, he writes that ‘she isn’t all that’ and complains that the researchers haven’t provided sufficient evidence to justify their claims. He argues that this is… 

‘…especially serious given the publicity blitz behind Ida…a popular book, a documentary, a website and an exhibition have been launched on the back of this find, before it has received full scientific scrutiny.’  Read More ›