2009

Mark Steyn, invincible Canadian humourist, writes that in Illinois,

Like some sort of rulers of the universe, state lawmakers are considering restoring little Pluto’s planetary status, casting aside the scientific community’s 2006 decision downgrading the distant ice ball.

An Illinois Senate committee on Thursday unanimously supported planet Pluto and declaring March 13 “Pluto Day…” The push for a state decree on Pluto comes from state Sen. Gary Dahl, a Republican whose downstate district includes Streator, birthplace of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh. Dahl told colleagues Pluto is important to the local community, which considers the vote to downgrade Pluto to “dwarf” planet was unfair…

Maybe they could vote to downgrade Blago to dwarf planet instead.

More from Betsy Newmark here:

OH, yes. I’m sure that state Senator Dahl has truly helped his constituents with this resolution. It’s a platform that I’m sure will send him to the stratosphere in politics. Just what we need – more politicians who think that they can solve every question by political resolutions.

In case you want to know what I think? Read More ›

At Britain’s Daily Telegraph, Christopher Booker assures us that he is familiar with “the unabashed bigotry of staunch Darwinists.”

Lots of us are. They glory in their ignorance.

Mr. Booker writes,

As an old hand at tangling with Darwinists, I was well aware that a howl of furious protests would greet my item last week describing their curious inability to recognise just how much of the story of evolution Darwin’s theory cannot explain, For pointing out that they rely on no more than an unscientific leap of faith to believe that an infinite series of minute variations could bring about all those extraordinary leaps in the evolutionary story, such as the emergence of the eye and countless others, I was derided as “stupid”, “idiotic” and “scientifically illiterate”. Clearly I was unaware all these riddles had been solved by genetics and the decoding of the human genome.

The trouble is that, as my colleague Dr James Le Fanu has lucidly set out in his admirable new book Why Us? How Science Rediscovered The Mystery Of Ourselves (Harper Press, £18.99), the unravelling of the genome has done nothing of the kind. When mice, men and chimpanzees all turn out to be made of almost identical genetic material, the unknown factor which determines why the same building blocks should give rise to such an astonishing variety of different life-forms leaves the Darwinian thesis as full of holes as ever. To believe that genetics have solved the riddle relies as much on a leap of faith as that Biblical ‘Creationism’ which causes the more fanatical Darwinians to foam at the mouth.

But the difference is that the Darwinists have the law on their side = in a corrupt administration, the right to persecute whomever they please.

Meanwhile a bunch of well-meaning idiots has written to the Daily Telegraph advising us that Read More ›

According to some, our galaxy has billions of Earths.

Think what that will do for the slumping real estate market …

So far, telescopes have been able to detect just over 300 planets outside our Solar System.

Very few of these would be capable of supporting life, however. Most are gas giants like our Jupiter, and many orbit so close to their parent stars that any microbes would have to survive roasting temperatures.

But, based on the limited numbers of planets found so far, Dr Boss has estimated that each Sun-like star has on average one “Earth-like” planet.

This simple calculation means there would be huge numbers capable of supporting life.

Oh wait … what’s the market reach for extraterrestrial bacteria?

A key question, obviously, is why would a planet only have unicellular, and not multicellular life?

Also, today at Colliding Universes, my blog about competing materialist and non-materialist theories about our universe: Read More ›

Nothing much for me to add since I entirely agree with Skell. I note that the comments following the Forbes article fail to include any substantive dispute – just the usual ad hominem and hand waving.

The Dangers Of Overselling Evolution

Philip S. Skell, 02.23.09, 01:47 PM EST

Focusing on Darwin and his theory doesn’t further scientific progress.

Last week, University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne criticized Forbes (See “Why Evolution Is True”) for including views skeptical of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in its forum on the 200th anniversary of his birth. As a member of the National Academy of Sciences, I beg to differ with Professor Coyne.

Read More ›

My newest book, co-edited with Thomas Schirrmacher, has just been published and is now available for immediate shipping from Amazon.com (go here). It is an extensive collection of essays in honor of John Warwick Montgomery. JWM’s no-nonsense brand of apologetics, in which he was willing to put everything on the table for discussion and to consider all evidence pro and con on any topic, has certainly been an inspiration to me in the ID movement. If Phillip Johnson is the father of the ID movement, then JWM is its godfather.

To take the quiz — or to play along — here’s your background information, and no cheating by looking into cell biology textbooks or using Google or PubMed. 1. Topoisomerases are essential enzymes, found in all organisms, which solve topological problems arising from the double-helical structure of DNA. Now, assume: 2. All organisms on Earth share a common ancestor, the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA). OK — quiz time. Given (1) and (2), what should we expect to find, with respect to the homology of topoisomerases, when we examine organisms descended from LUCA in different parts of the Tree of Life? Multiple choice: A) Homologous topoisomerases B) Non-homologous topoisomerases C) Can’t say. Make your best guess, and then go here: Read More ›

A recent bill introduced into the Iowa State Legislature has prompted the defenders of Darwinian Dogma to issue the following statement:

STATEMENT BY IOWA FACULTY ON HF 183: THE EVOLUTION ACADEMIC FREEDOM ACT

We, the undersigned members of institutions of higher learning in Iowa, urge our legislators to reject passage of “The Evolution Academic Freedom Act” (HF 183) introduced by Rod Roberts (R-Carroll). The language of this bill comes primarily from the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which has conducted lobbying efforts and political activism against the teaching of evolution since 1994.

Evolution is as established a scientific theory as any other theory in science. It is misleading to claim that there is any controversy or dissent within the vast majority of the scientific community regarding the scientific validity of evolutionary theory. Since there is no real dissent within the scientific community, then “academic freedom” for alternative theories is simply a mechanism to introduce religious or non-scientific doctrines into our science curriculum.

Similar efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution in schools repeatedly have been found to be unconstitutional, something witnessed most recently in Kitzmiller v. Dover (2005) in Pennsylvania.

We, therefore, urge our legislators to recognize HF183 as part of a long history of creationist assaults on science education, and reject passage of this bill.

Read More ›

Southern Methodist University is doing its share to celebrate Darwin’s bicentennial. Look here and note especially the offering in late September: http://smu.edu/smunews/darwin/events.asp

ID often seems to be a perspective that is associated with science, philosophy, academics, and people who deal in ideas for a living. For its supporters it can sometimes feel like a lonely road, and for its opponents it can appear as an irritating, but minority view. But is it possible that ID is breaking out of these confines and becoming an idea that is being echoed elsewhere in the popular culture? By the term “popular culture”, I do not mean the entertainment industry, or opinions propagated via media outlets. I mean the real, serious, fabric of our civilization. Here are a couple of straws in the wind. I am not sure how many readers of UD work on Wall Read More ›

‘He Who Can Learn Things that are Difficult, and Not Easy for Man to Know, is Wise:’ An Address to the Students in MIT 10-250, Caltech 201 E. Bridge, and Similar Lecture Halls: Minds that are the Greatest Natural Resource in the World Edward H. Sisson papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1328666 January 15, 2009 Abstract: How human beings came to exist in this physical world is a question that has preoccupied mankind for as long as history records; every religion offers an answer, and so too have philosophers of natural history from Aristotle and before. The year 2009 will see celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, progenitor of the theory – or fact, as its adherents see it – Read More ›

Christopher Booker, writing in last week’s Sunday Telegraph, highlights some of the abuse he received for questioning the validity of Darwin’s theory in an earlier article. Christopher Booker – Why do people think Darwinism is a perfect creation 14/02/09. He writes; “As an old hand at tangling with Darwinists, I was well aware that a howl of furious protests would greet my item last week describing their curious inability to recognise just how much of the story of evolution Darwin’s theory cannot explain.” For point this out he claims he was “…derided as “stupid”, “idiotic” and “scientifically illiterate”. Clearly I was unaware all these riddles had been solved by genetics and the decoding of the human genome.” “…as my colleague Read More ›

A criticism which neo-Darwinists have frequently made of Intelligent Design is that it is not a “scientific” theory. ID, they say, explains the bacterial flagellum by saying “God [sic] made it”. However, they complain, it doesn’t say when God made it, how God made it, what material substrate God was acting on when he made it, etc. It therefore gives scientists nothing to go on, nothing to work with, nothing on which they can base experiments which could confirm or disconfirm the explanation. In contrast, they believe, Darwinian explanations give scientists something to work on. The hypothesis that the flagellum slowly evolved, through a series of intermediate, functional steps, allows for testing. One can look for possible intermediate steps, e.g., Read More ›

The National Snow and Ice Data Center had to pull down its January and February arctic ice extent data because a deteriorating sensor on a satellite was slowly changing ice to water. By mid-February when someone noticed the readings were off by a half-million square kilometers. That’s a lot of ice when you consider that the all-time low (at least since 1980 when measurement started) in 2006 was down by less than 1.5 million square kilometers from the average. Read more at NSIDC: Satellite sensor errors cause data outage In other “global warming” news, the NSIDC reports that antarctic sea ice is at a record high (at least since 1980 when measurement started). The new high is REALLY high. It’s Read More ›

Welcome to the age of information.

Given enough time, inanimate matter — through the laws of chemistry and physics, and with enough random trials, filtered by natural selection which throws out stuff that doesn’t work — will self-organize into highly sophisticated information-processing machinery that produces the human mind. How could this ultimate truth not be obvious, except to those who have been indoctrinated with silly anti-scientific beliefs, like that there might be “design” in this whole process? How could anyone with an IQ above room temperature deny such an obvious truth? Science has proven it. The debate is over. The mechanism described above can explain everything. All real scientists accept it. All you ID guys should get a life and admit that your lives have no Read More ›