July 2011

At New Oxford Review, Tom Bethell considers the Darwinists’ attempt to suppress any an all criticism a turning point in the Evolution Wars: “The Cell Declares His Handiwork” (July/August 2011)

At the political level, they have mounted a furious response to the ID challenge. They try to identify it with creationism because ridiculing those who accept Genesis seems simple. Unless I am much mistaken, the Darwinists today increasingly look back to the creationist wars of the 1980s with nostalgia. Read More ›

In “For Moral Guidance, Look to Religion — Not Neuroscience” (Huffington Post, 7/21/11) Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie advises ,

The current star in the neuroscience firmament is Patricia Churchland, a retired professor at UC San Diego. Churchland has written on the subject for years, but her recent book, “Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tell Us About Morality,” has garnered considerable attention. Christopher Shea, drawing on interviews with Churchland and others, has written a fascinating article on her ideas in the June 12 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The article is worth reading because Churchland’s thinking is a moral mess. It reminds us why religion is the best and indispensable guide to moral behavior. Read More ›

One of the comments on the previous post caused me to do some further analysis, which I had said I wouldn’t post, but have reconsidered. The comment was: This seems like an odd tact on Dennis’ part and I don’t understand the point. If, Dennis’ position (I’m going to call it “Agnostigner” – someone who is agnostic about the Designer) is correct and the Designer is irrelevant, then what does ID bring to any table scientifically? If the Designer is irrelevant, what does the explanation of design tell us about the world/universe? Does it impact any other scientific explanation in anyway and if so, how? So let’s start by analyzing the “odd tact” of Dennis, which seemed odd to me Read More ›

In “First Person: The Bible as a Source of Testable Hypotheses”(Biblical Archaeology Review (Jul/Aug 2011) Hershel Shanks tells a story from Biblical arachaeology that explains more than I ever could about how materialism stifles science: In his new book Excavating the City of David, Ronny Reich of Haifa University treats archaeologist Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University “dismissively” and accuses her of acting “unethically.” What did she do? She used the Bible as a guide to where to excavate.

Let me unpack this: As Eilat read the Bible, it seemed to indicate just where King David’s palace might be buried in the City of David—at least, it did to her. On this basis, she decided to dig there.

This was highly improper and unscientific, according to Ronny. When he heard that Eilat was using reasoning like this to find King David’s palace, he knew immediately that, proceeding in this way, “she would certainly find that building” (emphasis in original).

If she found the building, using the Bible, she did wrong. Shanks adds, Read More ›

That’s Dennis Jones’s challenge to those who insist, “You can’t talk about design unless you say who the designer is”:

1. ID Theory has nothing to do with creationism or a designer. There is no philosophical contemplation as to a designer any more than the Big Bang theory has anything to say about a banger.

It is impossible to complain about the “designer” of Intelligent Design Theory without resolving the “banger” inferred by the Big Bang Theory. One cannot deny there is a “banger” if they insist there is a designer, and vice versa. Read More ›

Here, philosopher Ed Feser offers a flyswatter for weak cosmological arguments against the existence of God:

Most people who comment on the cosmological argument demonstrably do not know what they are talking about. This includes all the prominent New Atheist writers. It very definitely includes most of the people who hang out in Jerry Coyne’s comboxes. It also includes most scientists. And it even includes many theologians and philosophers, or at least those who have not devoted much study to the issue. This may sound arrogant, but it is not. You might think I am saying “I, Edward Feser, have special knowledge about this subject that has somehow eluded everyone else.” But that is NOT what I am saying. The point has nothing to do with me. What I am saying is pretty much common knowledge among professional philosophers of religion (including atheist philosophers of religion), who – naturally, given the subject matter of their particular philosophical sub-discipline – are the people who know more about the cosmological argument than anyone else does.

Presumably, he is talking about people like Victor Stenger’s young new atheists. Here’s a sample claim and a suggested response: Read More ›

Darwinism is a trivial idea that has been elevated to the status of the scientific theory that governs modern biology. – Michael Egnor, Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook Also: Egnor on Why Darwinian medicine is a dead loss

I recently found a very nice blog post on the definition of “Intelligent Design” by non-theist Dennis Jones. If you have ever wondered what Intelligent Design is about, or whether ID is a scientific enterprise, or even if ID is making any headway in the scientific establishment, then read this blog. It’s better written than anything I’ve ever blogged about on the subject (yeah, faint praise.) Dennis, however, wants to go beyond ID, and talk about some of the other implications of ID. For example, does ID have something to say about cosmology, or thermodynamics or quantum mechanics? The thread that connects all these other scientific disciplines with ID is “information”. ID purports to discover information, the kind made by Read More ›

In panel form.