This short essay was inspired by Denyse here. She appears to have an inspirational effect on me. Older scientists are still stuck in the past. Richard Dawkins is a prime example, although I don’t consider him to be a “scientist” who has demonstrated any devotion to legitimate scientific rigor throughout his career. He is essentially nothing more than a relatively eloquent storyteller with a very creative imagination, who has no experience in the real world with designing or engineering anything that can be demonstrated to actually work. With the discovery of the fine-tuning of the laws of physics for life, and the discovery that living systems are fundamentally based on the most sophisticated nano-technological, information-processing system ever devised, the Darwinian Read More ›

In “Getting Over the Code Delusion” (The New Atlantis, Summer 2010), Steve Talbott muses on the mystique around the genetic code in past decades, especially in the light of modern findings: Meanwhile, the epigenetic revolution is slowly but surely making its way into the popular media — witness the recent Time magazine cover story, “Why DNA Isn’t Your Destiny.” The shame of it is that most of the significance of the current research is still being missed. Judging from much that is being written, one might think the main thing is simply that we’re gaining new, more complex insights into how to treat the living organism as a manipulable machine.The one decisive lesson I think we can draw from the work Read More ›

At  Christian thinkmag CARDUS, we learn, via Point of view author Milton Friesen (January 21, 2011), “What scientists believe.” Some interesting observations emerge from his review of Elaine Ecklund,’s, Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think: Younger scientists are more religious than older scientists—the inverse of the general population, where older people tend to be more religious than younger people. [ … ] There is indeed a very real clash of cultures born of different ideas, different ideologies, and different practices. While these variances are deep and persistent, Ecklund argues that the tone and nature of the exchange must change. Scientists need to understand far more about how people experience and practice religion and spirituality. They need to be much more Read More ›

Though historians tell us that the warfare thesis—the idea that the relationship between science and religion has been mostly one of conflict—is discredited, there seems to be a great many who have not yet learned of its demise. Not only is the warfare thesis alive and well in popular culture, it is also promoted by those who probably should know better. In fact in the origins debate each side has its own version. Why is the warfare thesis so enduring? One reason is that, like any good lie, there is some truth to it. Probably a better reason is its rhetorical power. But perhaps the main reason is that we need it—our religion demands it.  Read more

Can you spot the common theme in these historic statements?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” – Excerpt from the American Declaration of Independence, which was ratified on July 4, 1776.

“Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.” – Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), article 1. The Declaration was approved by the National Constituent Assembly of France, on August 26, 1789.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” – Excerpt from President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered on November 19, 1863.

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” – Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), article 1. The Declaration was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 at the Palais de Chaillot, Paris.

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.‘”- Excerpt from the famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered on 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

(Emphases mine – VJT.)

Belief in human equality is a vital part of our democratic heritage. Take this belief away, and the moral foundations of Western civilization immediately collapse, like a house of cards.

Atheists divided

Sad to say, many (perhaps most) of the world’s 25 most influential living atheists don’t seem to share this belief. Specifically, many of these atheists don’t believe that newborn babies have the same moral worth as human adults.
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Phillip Johnson’s classic with a beautiful new foreword by Mike Behe is hot off the press: Amazon link to this book.

Tom Woodward, author of DOUBTS ABOUT DARWIN and DARWIN STRIKES BACK, interviewed Robert J. Marks about his work at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab. For the podcast, go here: “Darwin or Design?” (program starts at 5:08 | actual interview starts at 7:52)

Robin Lloyd explains in “Woman science bloggers discuss pros and cons of online exposure” (Jan 18, 2011),

Blogging and other Web activities have allowed members of many marginalized communities to open previously locked media doors. But women still rely more on back channels and ask for less help than men do in the digital realm. This tendency and other issues of concern for women bloggers were discussed Sunday at the ScienceOnline2011 conference in Durham, N.C., primarily in a session called “Perils of blogging as a woman under a real name.”

Huh?

Experiences varied among attendees on whether blogging under a real name did indeed present perils. Miriam Goldstein (@oystersgarter), a doctoral student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and blogger at Deep-Sea News says she has never had a negative experience. But stories surfaced regarding inappropriate comments by male readers. And one attendee voiced concerns about being emailed by a reader who said he was near her campus and about to stop by her office. Christie Wilcox (@NerdyChristie), a doctoral student at the University of Hawaii-Manoa who blogs at Observations of Nerd, said she only received nasty comments when she blogged on the science of make-up—and the anger came from women. Tribalism takes many forms.

Well, if you have dealt with minor Darwinists, as I have, and are not one of their companions, you get to hear how some of them talk about women. But God or nature or the guardian angel of marriages – or somebody or other anyway – invented a back browser button and a delete key.

I guess the big time Darwinists approve of all that stuff. I’ve never heard of them telling those dudes to smarten up, or slide their keesters to the low class boozehole down the road. I once had a problem with a guy who professed support for ID who behaved like that, but I heard vaguely that he had his can kicked six ways to Sunday over it. Nothing to do with me.

Actually, we had a problem with Darwinmouth here in Canada, but Read More ›

Remember when, as sociologist Dorothy Nelkin tells it,

The language used by geneticists to describe the genes is permeated with biblical imagery. Geneticists call the genome the “Bible,” the “Book of Man”and the “Holy Grail.” They convey an image of this molecular structure as more than a powerful biological entity: it is also a mystical force that defines the natural and moral order. And they project an idea of genetic essentialism, suggesting that by deciphering and decoding the molecular text they will be able to reconstruct the essence of human beings, unlock the key to human nature. As geneticist Walter Gilbert put it, understanding our genetic composition is the ultimate answer to the commandment “know thyself.” Gilbert introduces his lectures on gene sequencing by pulling a compact disk from his pocket and announcing to his audience, “This is you.”*

At ScienceDaily (Jan. 14, 2011), we learn that after the complete draft of the human genome was released in 2003, of the growing focus on is on the epigenome:

Whereas the genome is the same in every cell of an organism, the epigenome of every cell type is different. It is because of the epigenome that a liver cell is not a brain cell is not a bone cell.

From the genome, we learned? …

“We learned many things from the Human Genome Project,” Elgin says, “but of course it didn’t answer every question we had!

“Including one of the oldest: We all start life as a single cell. That cell divides into many cells, each of which carries the same DNA. So why are we poor, bare, forked creatures, as Shakespeare put it, instead of ever-expanding balls of identical cells?

“This [epigenome] work,” says Elgin, “will help us learn the answer to this question and to many others. It will help us to put meat on the bones of the DNA sequences.”

You, know, it almost makes one go all religious and say: Re the “Bible,” the “Book of Man”and the “Holy Grail,” worship the creator not the creation. And recycle your CDs. Read More ›

Moths not only see well in the night, they also keep a low profile and that technology is now making its way into solar cell design. As one report explains:  read more

Recently, historian of medicine Michael Flannery, author of World of Life, remarked on the lack of informational value of “99% of biological community disagrees with ID”: Cotton Mather (1663-1728), the New England divine, actually proposed a germ theory of medicine when 99.9% of the medical community disagreed with him. Conversely, Georg Ernst Stahl (1660-1734) proposed a “phlogiston” theory to explain combustion (burning) and rusting that nearly every scientist of the day (including Joseph Priestly [1733-1804]), hailed. More recently, when Joseph Goldberger (1874-1929) suggested that pellagra was a nutritional deficiency disease he was dismissed because the Thompson-McFadden Commission had “proven” pellagra to be infectious. History is replete with such examples. In fact, I would suggest that history indicates that consensus per Read More ›

Of the 25 most influential atheists featured at a student homework help site, it’s curious how many are best known or widely known for pushing Darwinism.

(I’m sure Larry Krauss, at #11, is as solid a brass-footed fish as you could hope for. But he is best known for preaching the end of all things, including science, so he’s not in tonight’s lineup.)

How about, instead:

#1 Richard Dawkins (“Darwin’s Rottweiler”, ‘nuff said)

#4 Daniel Dennett (winner of Darwin look-alike contest) and the Darwinist education award: “If you insist on teaching your children falsehoods- that the earth is flat, that “Man” is not a product of evolution by natural selection-then you must expect, at the very least, that those of us who have freedom of speech will feel free to describe your teachings as the spreading of falsehoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your children at our earliest opportunity.”)*

#7 Michael Shermer (skeptical of everything except Darwinism, I gather, but as Dennett would assure him, Darwin answers all needs)

#12 Edwin O. Wilson, prophet of Social Darwinism, oops, make that sociobiology, no wait, “evolutionary psychology”is the new brand name. To see the reason for continual rebranding, see #4 above.

Note: Wilson apparently describes himself as a provisional deist. I’d call it “true agnostic”, but see the combox below for a discussion of terms.

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The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) has an official position on the nature of “science” here. For the reasons set forth below, ID proponents should have no problem with the NSTA conceptualization. The NSTA position emphasizes the following characteristics of science: Scientific knowledge is simultaneously reliable and tentative. Having confidence in scientific knowledge is reasonable while realizing that such knowledge may be abandoned or modified in light of new evidence or reconceptualization of prior evidence and knowledge. Although no single universal step-by-step scientific method captures the complexity of doing science, a number of shared values and perspectives characterize a scientific approach to understanding nature. Among these are a demand for naturalistic explanations supported by empirical evidence that are, at least Read More ›

antikythera, main hub (Wiki Commons) Here we learn, A mechanical instrument made from bronze and wood in ancient Greece was a calendar for predicting solar eclipses and the dates of the Olympic Games, scientists have discovered. X-ray analysis of the device, known as the Antikythera Mechanism, has revealed that it marked the timing of sporting events around Greece – including at Olympia. It was made in the 2nd century BC. The device was found by sponge divers in 1900 off the island of Antikythera. [ … ] The mechanism ran on a complicated set of dials and bronze gears and was decorated with elaborate but indiscernible inscriptions. – Steve Connor, “Ancient device was used to predict solar eclipses and Olympic Read More ›