Would it not be strange if a universe without purpose accidentally created humans who are so obsessed with purpose? – Sir John Templeton, The Humble Approach: Scientists Discover God (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation, 1998) Some of wouldn’t recognize that Templeton Foundation today. Curious to know what has changed.
Month: December 2010
Speciation Reduced To Little More Than A ‘Gut Feeling’
Buried in the most recent scientific literature there is a story of love, sex, and intrigue that has all the makings of a hearty Mills & Boon novel. The central characters of this plot are not lovers wrapped in each others arms but fruit flies that choose their sexual partners according to the microbiota that […]
Neuro-politico-nonsense
Well, it seems that the silly season is upon us. A study conducted earlier this month by the University College of London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (directed by Professor Geraint Rees) reveals a startling correlation between between people’s political beliefs and the size of two specific regions of their brains: the amygdala and the anterior […]
New Peer-Reviewed Paper Challenges Darwinian Evolution
Over recent months, papers challenging key elements of Darwinian theory — the kind of papers which are supposed not to exist — have increasingly been slipping through the net and finding their way into the peer-reviewed literature. One such paper, “Is gene duplication a viable explanation for the origination of biological information and complexity?,” authored […]
Peeking through the Forrest to look at the trees …
Christian Darwinists are fond of reassuring us all that Christianity and Darwinism are a natural fit. They don’t seem to have taught the chant to everyone yet. Old Earth creationist Stephen E. Jones has noted, Barbara Forrest, has explored what she believes are the religious implications of neo-Darwinism and astronomy in her article, “The Possibility […]
ID – Predicton or accommodation?
Alister McGrath makes some interesting comments on the need for prediction in science, noting that a natural theology may be possible on the basis of accommodation within an ‘inference to the best explanation.’ He writes; ‘…some theories concern entities or situations in which predictions may seem inappropriate or simply impossible. If natural theology rests primarily […]
A better kind of beauty, or: Why some people mistakenly reject Intelligent Design as unaesthetic
This post is intended as a follow-up on the post, Children of a better god? by idnet.com.au. I would like to suggest that the real reason why some people (including many Christians) dislike Intelligent Design is an aesthetic one. Their notion of beauty is overly influenced by mathematics: they define beauty as a delicate and […]
Has the growth in interest in design helped to chase blatant philosophical materialism out of textbooks?
Wanted: Examples from recent textbooks that match these examples from the 1990s through 2001?: From Joseph S. Levine and Kenneth R. Miller, Biology: Discovering Life (D.C. Heath and Co., 1st ed. 1992, p. 152: Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence […]
Hello World! – An Introductory Post
Greetings all. Since I’m going to be contributing some posts here at Uncommon Descent, it’s been suggested I explain to everyone just where I’m coming from intellectually and in the context of the Intelligent Design discussion. Before I do that, I just want to express my thanks to the powers that be on this site […]
Do you have to be an American liberal to believe in extraterrestrials?
Yes, folks, I thought this was Hoax News at work too. But Michael Medved reports, These clashing opinions on extraterrestrials amount to more than a trivial split on an arcane topic; they connect, in fact, both logically and emotionally to big conflicts over worldview, culture, politics and America’s role in history.In Colorado, these conflicts erupted […]
First cup of coffee!! At last – a man for Misshelver!
A friend has unearthed another Darwin troll “reshelving” books: Reshelving antievolution books in the name of science Every time I go into the Hastings bookstore here in Butte, Montana, I get annoyed to see antievolution books in the science section, especially since these books are not scientific in their antievolutionism, but motivated by the intelligent […]
James Bradley disses Dembski’s The Design Inference — 12 years after its publication!
It looks as though the folks at BioLogos are targeting all the main works of design theorists, and the flavor of the month this time is William Dembski’s The Design Inference. Retired Calvin College mathematics professor James Bradley has been called in to do the demolition. His “scholarly” take-down of Dembski’s book is here: http://biologos.org/uploads/projects/bradley_scholarly_essay.pdf […]
Children of a better god?
I have been listening to a few lectures by Christians who are convinced that the standard models of evolution explain all of biology including life’s origin. They say that evolution also explains all of cosmology. For them, this gives them, the evolutionary creationists, “a better god” than any model that requires a lesser form of “interventionist god”. […]
Coffee!! But the fake past was so much more FUN!!
In Science , we read: Altering the Past: China’s Faked Fossils Problem Richard Stone Specialists and collectors around the world have long decried the flood of sham fossils pouring out of China. But Science has learned that many composites and fakes are now finding their way into Chinese museums, especially local museums. One paleontologist estimates […]
Professor: God Would Not Create the Giraffe’s Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve
One thing evolutionists agree on is that their theory is also a scientific fact. It is a curious point of consensus given that, of all the many, many evolutionary claims, it is the one that is most obviously and undeniably false. It is not that evolutionists fail to prove their theory to be a fact. […]