Here’s an interesting piece on science-based alarmism, from Pajamas Media: Take the alarm over mercury in fish: in 2004, an Environmental Protection Agency employee warned that 630,000 babies per year were born at risk of brain and nervous system damage due to “unsafe” levels of mercury in their mothers’ blood. Expectant mothers were discouraged from eating fish. Japan consumes a lot of fish, and the supposedly unsafe levels cited by the EPA are exceeded by 74% of women of childbearing age there. Yet there is no evidence that their children are mentally deficient. In fact, only benefits have been reported from high levels of fish consumption, including good brain function and improved intelligence at age four. The alarming forecast of Read More ›

In Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science Hillel Ofek explores why the Arabic world went from dominating scientific inquiry as late as the 13th century to a scientific backwater: Given that Arabic science was the most advanced in the world up until about the thirteenth century, it is tempting to ask what went wrong — why it is that modern science did not arise from Baghdad or Cairo or Córdoba. . . . [The] civilization’s geopolitical decline . . . can be traced back to the rise of the anti-philosophical Ash’arism school among Sunni Muslims, who comprise the vast majority of the Muslim world. . . Put simply, it suggests natural necessity cannot exist because God’s will is Read More ›

Joe Felsenstein (Zoologist) at Panda’s Thumb responded [1] to my previous article [2] showing that a couple critics, Wolpert in particular who created the NFL, actually agree with Dembski.

He refers me to a paper he wrote [3] where he explains that the problem with Dembski’s argument is the relevant fitness landscape for evolution is not under the domain of the NFL.  While he may be right, I’m skeptical since Wolpert explicitly denies this in his paper. Read More ›