Shrine gate at Itsukushima shrine, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. Photo by Dan Smith.

One of Paul Gauguin’s most famous paintings is entitled: “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” Historically, the world’s great civilizations have offered very different answers to these three questions. In this post, I’d like to draw readers’ attention to a fascinating lecture given by Kagefumi Ueno, entitled “Culture and Religiosity in Modern Japan.” Ueno is a “cultural thinker,” who has published several books and spoken at various congresses. Currently, he is Japan’s ambassador to the Holy See in Rome.

As someone who lives in Japan, I found Ueno’s talk deeply insightful and very perceptive. It’s a must-read for people who are interested in Intelligent Design: although Ueno focuses on the profound differences between Japanese religiosity and Christianity, the implications for ID are obvious. To explain why, I’d like to quote a short passage from Ueno’s speech:
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For some time now, I’ve been threatening to publish an expose of the pretentious claims of self-styled “Thomists” who have argued that Intelligent Design is completely at odds with St. Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy. Well, this is it. The Big One. Get ready, and hold on to your hats. In today’s post, I’m going to comprehensively rebut a paper by a leading “Thomistic” critic of Intelligent Design, who contends that Thomists have nothing to fear from the scientific claims of Darwinism. I’m going to show that this ID critic actually contradicts what St. Thomas Aquinas wrote on the topic of origins, on no less than fifteen specific points (yes, fifteen!), which I shall call Aquinas’ “fifteen smoking guns.” I think my Read More ›

Natural Selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good. C.DARWIN sixth edition Origin of Species — Ch#4 Natural Selection NOT! Newly appearing good traits in a single individual will rarely get infused (or “fixed” ) into a population. To understand theoretically why this is false, visit: Gambler’s Ruin is Darwin’s Ruin. And now we have some poignant experimental confirmation of my theoretical prediction! In a paper published by the prestigious scientific journal Nature September 30,2010 we read: Our work provides a new perspective on the genetic basis of adaptation. Despite decades of sustained selection in relatively small, sexually reproducing laboratory populations, selection did Read More ›

For the full program, go here.

In Foresight and Understanding (Indiana University Press, 1961), physicist and philosopher of science Stephen Toulmin rejected set “rules” for science. He argued that no single criterion (e.g., falsifiablity, prediction, etc.) encompasses the entire scientific endeavor. Toulmin advocated a Darwinian conception of science pursuant to which scientific theories succeed because they are better adapted at explaining the data than their rivals. How deliciously ironic it would be if Darwinism were dethroned as the paradigm of origins through a Darwinian process.