You might have a hard time explaining your interest to “new atheist” Sam Harris. Having just received a courtesy hard cover copy of his The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (Free Press, 2010), I looked at the index and noted that the reader seeking information about intelligent design theory is referred to: Creationist “science.” Harris may well have written the index himself (?).

Well, following the page references, on p. 34, in the midst of a discussion of why it is wrong to think there is moral equivalence between typical human views of murder and Jeffrey Dahmer’s*, we read, Read More ›

In reviews and private correspondence, scientists like Lyell and Hooker questioned the extravagant claims that Darwin made for natural selection. Darwin himself was increasingly plagued by doubts after the first edition of the Origin. In subsequent editions, he kept backing off from natural selection as the explanation for all natural phenomena. Loren Eiseley writes in Darwin’s Century that a “close examination of the last edition of the Origin reveals that in attempting on scattered pages to meet the objections being launched against his theory the much-laboured-upon volume had become contradictory. … The last repairs to the Origin reveal … how very shaky Darwin’s theoretical structure had become.” – George Sim Johnston, Did Darwin Get It Right?: Catholics and the Theory Read More ›

It is important to remember that as far as science knows, the law of biogenesis, life only arises from life, is valid. Any statement that begins, “It’s possible that life originated from non-life by … ” is misstated from a probability point of view since non-zero probability has never been proved. (p. 38) – Donald E. Johnson, author of Probability’s Nature And Nature’s Probability – Lite (2009) Alternatively: Pasteur was wrong. Spontaneous generation happens, so that “pasteurized” milk you buy isn’t safe. Note: Dr. Johnson has agreed to send 10 copies of his book for future contests. Details to follow.

In New Scientist, Ken Croswell tells us that “Alien life may huddle under hydrogen blankets” (12 May 2011): OUR planet seems to be in just the right spot to sport a mild climate. Not too near the sun’s heat, not too far from its warmth, in a narrow habitable zone in which water is liquid and life can thrive. But Earth could still support life even if it were as far from the sun as Saturn, claim two scientists in the US, as long as the air abounded with hydrogen. If they are right, then billions of life-bearing planets may exist much further from their host stars than astronomers had thought possible.  Not everyone agrees, of course: “It’s a clever Read More ›

Here’s Discovery Institute’s trailer for the film on the life of Darwin’s forgotten/sneered at co-theorist Alfred Russel Wallace, illustrating the work of science historian Michael Flannery: “He’s been called a biological Indiana Jones. He explored the Amazon. He lived with headhunters … “ But wait. This isn’t Indiana Jones. It really happened. Next time you hear a Darwinist sneer at Wallace, ask yourself, could he do what that guy did? (Okay, she?) Darwin would never have published his atheist-happy theory, if Wallace hadn’t written to tell him about natural selection as a mechanism, and not as “the best idea anyone ever had” (key pop philosopher Daniel Dennett’s summation). Enjoy.

I offer up this great 2007 op-ed by Paul Davies, in part because it remains very relevant and likely will remain so for a very long time. Submitted with minimal comment for now, though here is an excerpt: When I was a student, the laws of physics were regarded as completely off limits. The job of the scientist, we were told, is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance. The laws were treated as “given” — imprinted on the universe like a maker’s mark at the moment of cosmic birth — and fixed forevermore. Therefore, to be a scientist, you had to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical Read More ›

File under: “Wrong shakeup sought”

Here, Laura J. Snyder (“Wanted: Another Scientific Revolution”, The Scientist , 2011-05-01) wants a new Breakfast Club of scientist philosophers:

Each of the four men was brilliant, self-assured, and possessed of the optimism of the age: Whewell, who later created the fields of mathematical economics and the science of the tides; Charles Babbage, a mathematical genius who would invent the prototype of the first modern computer; John Herschel, who mapped the skies of the Southern hemisphere and coinvented photography; and Richard Jones, a curate who went on to shape economic science. The four composed what I call the “Philosophical Breakfast Club,” also the title of my latest book, which chronicles the way they transformed the “man of science” into the professional scientist.

The thesis (and book, excerpt here) sounds very interesting. She flags one outcome:

One of the unintended consequences of the revolution wrought by the Philosophical Breakfast Club has been that the professional scientist is now less interested in, and perhaps less capable of, connecting with the broader public, sharing the new discoveries and theories that most excite the scientific community.

Isn’t the situation more like this? Read More ›

Here’s a piece by Michael Moseley (“Anatomical clues to human evolution from fish,” BBC News,, 5 May 2011) offering quirks of human anatomy to point to a common ancestor with fish:

The top lip along with the jaw and palate started life as gill-like structures on your neck. Your nostrils and the middle part of your lip come down from the top of your head.

Which requires great “precision.” Read More ›

In “Why don’t we love our intellectuals?,” John Naughton (The Observer, 8 May 2011) exemplarily misses a critical distinction:

While France celebrates its intelligentsia, you have to go back to Orwell and Huxley to find British intellectuals at the heart of national public debate. Why did we stop caring about ideas? When did ‘braininess’ become a laughing matter?

Perhaps it happened about the time many people were well-informed enough to assess the results of listening to people who live by and for fashionable ideas.

Here, in his perception of modern Britain, the confusion becomes evident: Read More ›

Intelligent Design is often accused of being entirely driven by religious motivations. I don’t think there’s anything about ID itself that warrants this conclusion, but I do think it’s obvious that ID’s supporters by and large tend to be religious. Even I’m a religious theist (Catholic, though a poor one by most standards), and some, though not all, of my ID interest is spurred by metaphysical considerations. At the same time, I see nothing in ID that mandates a person being religious, even theistic in the common sense of the term.

Which brings me to this thread. I’d like to invite an agnostics or non-theists who are either ID proponents, or are ID sympathetic, to speak up here. In fact, I’m going to lay out a few ground rules that I hope all will follow, in the hopes of keeping this thread particularly on-target.

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Live streamed here: Known for such landmark discoveries as “Lucy” (Johanson) and “Turkana Boy” (Leakey), the work of these two scientists has produced much of the fossil evidence which forms our understanding of human evolution.  (May 5, 2011). Don’t forget about the contest: For a free copy of The Nature of Nature mailed to your home: Do you think we understand the human-Neanderthal relationship better than we did twenty-five years ago? In what ways?

According to Ian Stewart (“The formula of life,” New Statesman, 27 April 2011),

Biology is undergoing a renaissance as scientists apply mathematical ideas to old theory. Welcome to the discipline of biomathematics, with its visions of spherical cows, football-shaped viruses and equations that can predict the pattern of a zebra’s stripes.

Biology used to be about plants, animals and insects, but five great revolutions have changed the way that scientists think about life: the invention of the microscope, the systematic classification of the planet’s living creatures, evolution, the discovery of the gene and the structure of DNA. Now, a sixth is on its way – mathematics.

What will this mean? That math will get upgraded from a “bit player” to “centre stage” in biology, says Stewart: Read More ›

(That’s how Moshe Averick, rabbi and author of Nonsense of a High Order:The Confused, Illusory World of the Atheist explains the difficulty with many Darwinists’ arguments.)

Logic is not science. Logic is a commodity which cannot be hoarded or monopolized by any particular occupation or profession. Logic is an intellectual tool available equally to both scientist and non-scientist. If the issue at hand is not a question of scientific data or knowledge itself, but a logical comparison, deduction, or conclusion involving scientific data or knowledge, scientific credentials are for the most part irrelevant. At that juncture, the scientist, historian, plumber, and taxi-driver are all on equal footing, providing their logic is sound. No one made the point better than Nobel prize winning physicist, Richard Feynman, indisputably a genius of the highest order and one of the greatest scientific minds of the 20th century: “I believe that a scientist looking at non-scientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.”

It is my contention that many of the hottest areas of dispute in the so called “battle” between science and religion have relatively little to do with the actual science involved. They are to a great extent problems of logic.

Along the way, he wonders whether PZ Myers has “gone mad,” but read it for yourself to see why. He has somewhat to say about Myers audience as well … and Jerry Coyne … (Note: UD News does not think Myers has gone mad. Much depends on the emphasis … )

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Submitted without further comment, for now, is this quote from Part 2 of a review of Jerry Coyne’s “Why Evolution Is True”. With emphasis added: Later, he claims “Darwinism tells us that, like all species, human beings arose from the working of blind, purposeless forces over eons of time” (p. 224). There are at least two problems with this line of argument. First, given what Coyne said earlier about evolution’s agnosticism regarding sources of variations in organisms (see Part 1), it’s rather striking that he so clearly rules God out as a possible source. What biologists mean by random variations is that the underlying causes are left open by the theory because mechanisms like natural selection can work with any Read More ›

CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) – you know, those stupid squiggly meaningless letters you’re supposed to interpret before you can post a polite comment- besides being the fourth most annoying thing on the Internet, in a list that includes trolls, spammers, and uranazis – don’t actually work that well. Alert spammers can

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