May 2011

While writing “New York Times reports on Darwinist’s article disowned by philosophy journal,” I got the sense there was a similar case way back when that went unheralded.

(Note: Times writer Mark Oppenheimer linked to this blog from his blog, for clarification on the fact that the ID community was not conspiring against Forrest to vindicate Beckwith. He deserves much credit for wanting to know what is going on rather than punching out the usual snooze nooz.)

Suddenly, I remembered. In 2005 California lawyer named Larry Caldwell was active in education issues around teaching Darwinism in publicly funded schools. For example, he tried (but failed) to get some legal action against a university-sponsored Darwin promotion site that fronted Christian Darwinism – on the grounds that telling students which orientations of faith were compatible with Darwinism (and by implication which others were less so or not at all) violated the US Constitution’s Establishment clause. His case never went anywhere*

At any rate, here’s the story: Read More ›

For talking about God? “No one should be talking about God in a science classroom“. Agreed.

As discussed here, Darwin does.

See this article. Read More ›

Wintery Knight reminds us of ID “godfather” Phillip Johnson’s view of theistic evolution (sometimes called Christian evolution or Christian Darwinism): Read More ›

A friend insists that this song by Oklahoma’s Carrie Underwood underscores and responds to design in the universe: This performance occurred several weeks ago, and then went viral. Five and a half million hits on YouTube; I’m sure some of you must have seen and heard it. The lyrics in the first stanza are certainly relevant to the design inference. Your mileage may vary. Check it out. One response was “I am not religous at all…but it is impossible after hearing this song? not to feel something… truly unbelievable.” Song’s history here. A classic, very influential rendition here. Lyrics here.

Around the Arctic Circle.

In this latest episode of history’s longest running soap, human evolution, we learn that remains of Mousterian (Neanderthal) culture have been found in Polar Urals in northern Russia, dated at over 28,500 years old (more than 8,000 years later than Neanderthals are thought to have died out), challenging previous theories.

From ScienceDaily, we learn:

The distinguishing feature of Mousterian culture, which developed during the Middle Palaeolithic (-300,000 to -33,000 years), is the use of a very wide range of flint tools, mainly by Neanderthal Man in Eurasia, but also by Homo sapiens in the Near East. – “Last Neanderthals Near the Arctic Circle?” (May 13, 2011)

The theory had been Read More ›

Recently, I made a post regarding what I thought was an encouraging moment at Biologos, where a guest writer frankly speculated about how God could work through evolution. In the comments section, some discussion was had about just how rare or common such views are among  TEs. Since I’ve already made the call for non-theists and agnostics who are ID sympathetic to speak up on here (and was very happy to see the resident ID proponents respond positively to that), I’d like to introduce a similar opportunity. I’d like any theistic evolutionists who are reading this to speak up and share their views. In particular, I’m interested in… * How you think design is reflected in the natural world, in Read More ›

but by Oxford “philosophy lecturer and fellow atheist” Daniel Came:

… for refusing to debate William Lane Craig, who has debated many “new atheists”.

Prof Dawkins maintains that Prof Craig is not a figure worthy of his attention and has reportedly said that such a contest would “look good” on his opponent’s CV but not on his own.

[ … ]

Prof Craig is a research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, in California, and the author of 30 books and hundreds of scholarly articles on Christianity.

He has debated with leading thinkers including Daniel Dennett, A.C.Grayling, Christopher Hitchens, Lewis Wolpert and Sam Harris.

[]

In a letter to Prof Dawkins, Dr Came said: “The absence of a debate with the foremost apologist for Christian theism is a glaring omission on your CV and is of course apt to be interpreted as cowardice on your part.

“I notice that, by contrast, you are happy to discuss theological matters with television and radio presenters and other intellectual heavyweights ….”

– Tim Ross, “Richard Dawkins accused of cowardice for refusing to debate existence of God,” The Telegraph (14 May 2011)

Toldjah. When Dawkins was riding high, he could get away with this. Not any more: Read More ›

In the New York Times, Mark Oppenheimer recounts how “Debate Over Intelligent Design Ensnares a Journal” (May 13, 2011). He means the Beckwith-Forrest-Synthese controversy where Southeastern Louisiana U philosopher (and supposed expert in intelligent design) Barbara Forrest misrepresented Baylor philosopher Frank Beckwith (who is not a design supporter). The print version of the journal disowned the paper, and the Darwin lobby, in which Forrest is a key player, has been carrying a torch ever since, demanding that the hit paper be reinstated as respectable.

Reporter Oppenheimer gets it mostly  right, for example,

Dr. Forrest said this week that she suspected that intelligent design theorist William A. Dembski “was involved in this, because his work was mentioned” in her article, too. Reached by phone, Dr. Dembski said that he had not contacted Synthese and knew of no specific campaign to influence the journal.

No, Dembski didn’t know. There was no campaign. Read More ›

Discussion continues apace at “Agnostic & Non-Theistic ID Proponents/Sympathizers– Speak Up. One person wanted to know why “nullasalus” does not solicit the views of non-theist critics of ID: Because that’s not what the thread is about. This is “non-theist sympathizers week” here at UD. Next week will be too, if you want to talk more. Also, one non-theist who came to doubt Darwin – who might have been missed in the discussion at – Speak Up – is British science broadcaster David Rattray Taylor (d. 1981), author of posthumously published The Great Evolution Mystery. Here’s the kind of thing that he noted. Book much recommended.

Oh, call them “Christian evolutionists” if you want. Terminology wars are fun but let’s talk about facts.

In “Karl Giberson Has a Problem With Bill Dembski’s “View of Science”, Anika Smith (ENV, May 13, 2011) responds to Giberson’s article at Patheos,

When he finally does get around to addressing Dembski himself [after a side trip into young earth creationism], Giberson objects to Dembski’s use of marketing metaphors as an ad hominem attack, which is strange considering that Dembski wrote that this is something that scientists and people with ideas generally ought to communicate and advance them, with nothing cynical or slimy about it. Either Giberson is hypersensitive and looking for an excuse to display his lofty umbrage, or he is working to avoid the actual questions raised by Dembski’s review. Most likely it’s both.He does, however, give us a nice quote for giggles:

The scientific literature is not filled with growing concerns about the viability of the theory; scientific meetings do not have sessions devoted to alternative explanations for origins; and leading scientists are not on record objecting to the continuous and blinkered embrace of evolution by their colleagues.

Has he never heard of Jerry Fodor? Lynn Margulis? The Altenberg 16?

That’s a question I too have wrestled with, while writing a book, and here’s my assessment. Read More ›

This point is apparently made in Cameron M. Smith’s The Fact of Evolution: Walking the reader through the steps in the evolutionary process, Cameron uses plenty of real-world examples to show that not only does evolution happen, it must happen. Cameron analyzes evolution as the unintended consequence of three independent facts of the natural world that we can observe every day: (1) the fact of the replication of life forms (producing offspring); (2) the fact that offspring are not identical (variation); and (3) the fact that not all offspring survive (selection). Viewed in terms of this analysis, evolution is no longer debatable; in fact it has to occur. It is simply the inevitable consequence of three obvious, observable, factual natural Read More ›

It’s called entropy, and it applies to everything. If you’re a pianist and don’t practice on a regular basis you don’t stay the same, you get worse, and it takes extra discipline, effort, and dedication to get better. Natural selection is a buffer against decay that is constantly operating in nature. Natural selection throws out bad stuff in a competitive environment but has no creative powers. Since decay is the norm, and random errors, statistically speaking, essentially always result in decay, a creature living underground will lose its eyes because the informational cost of producing eyes is high. Thus, a crippled, decayed creature in a pathologically hostile environment will have a survival advantage. This is devolution, not evolution. This phenomenon Read More ›

… just so some tenured airhead can prove common ancestry of humans with apes? What did I ever do to you folks anyway?” Here Casey Luskin summarizes the growing recognition that Neanderthals were just us, with nutcracker jaws: In fact, Neanderthals buried their dead, and they had an average brain size which was slightly larger than that of modern humans. Perhaps it’s time to stop seeing Neanderthals as a primitive species–a popular icon of evolution–but rather as a sub-race of our own species. To Giberson and Collins’s credit, they recognize this point. But they do not recognize that it therefore prevents Neanderthals from demonstrating that humans share ancestry with something that isn’t human.If Giberson and Collins want to make the Read More ›

Looks like a worm. Here: The blind reptile looks like a snake, but it is actually a lizard that has evolved to live underground – losing its legs to enable it to push through the soil by wriggling its body.[ … ] “Also most lizards are able to blink and snakes can’t,” Dr Daltry continued. “Although this new [underground] lizard has no eyes at all.” – Victoria Gill, “blind legless lizard species discovered in Cambodia” BBC News, May 10, 2011 Rube’s kid: My science teacher pinned up a picture of this new lizard on the tackboard and said, There! Darwin was right! New species form all the time, acquiring new traits through natural selection … Rube: Just a minute, son. Read More ›

Forgotten, that is, in this current discussion of atheist/agnostic sympathizers with ID?

Scruton seems to be of no fixed religious views, has a great aversion to the “new atheists” (based on the sharp contrast between their street thug culture and the civilized atheism of his youth), and has written thus about their “artistic Darwinism”:

Over the last two decades, however, Darwinism has invaded the field of the humanities, in a way that Darwin himself would scarcely have predicted. Doubt and hesitation have given way to certainty, interpretation has been subsumed into explanation, and the whole realm of aesthetic experience and literary judgement has been brought to heel as an “adaptation,” a part of human biology which exists because of the benefit that it confers on our genes. No need now to puzzle over the meaning of music or the nature of beauty in art. The meaning of art and music reside in what they do for our genes. Once we see that these features of the human condition are “adaptations,” acquired perhaps many thousands of years ago, during the time of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, we will be able to explain them. We will know what art and music essentially are by discovering what they do.- “Only Adapt: Can science explain art, music and literature?” (Big Questions Online, December 9, 2010)

Problem is, Read More ›