Two years ago a group booked the California Science Center’s IMAX theater, in downtown Los Angeles, for a screening of Darwin’s Dilemma, a film that questions evolutionary theory. Furious evolutionists quickly censored the showing and canceled the event.  Read more

After a fruitful discussion with StephenB, I have updated my recent post —What was the alleged “Dominionist” theologian, Francis Schaeffer, doing back in the 1950′s – 80′s?  — especially in light of evidence he has brought to bear from Aquinas’ corpus.

Note especially how I have adjusted Sawyer’s summary to highlight the points of correction, and how I have added a diagram that adjusts Schaeffer’s famous Line of Despair Diagram in a way that illustrates, extends and adjusts Schaeffer’s vision of the key worldview shaping trends that have framed our civilisation over the past millennium. Read More ›

In this essay Denyse comments: Intelligent design will prevail when engineers rule. A woman after my own heart. Engineers know design when they see it. Darwinists can’t see design when it flashes a strobe light in their eyes at increasingly close range (only because they desire not to see it — they hate the light — certain people on this forum will know where that phrase comes from). Since I am a software/aerodynamics/mechanical/artificial-intelligence/information-processing/integrating-all-of-these-engineering-disciplines engineer, I realize that I have a prejudice. But I also have impeccable credentials concerning discerning design in software, aerodynamics, functionally integrated mechanical systems, AI information-processing systems… Hey, guess what? All that stuff describes living systems. But what do I know? I’m just an IDiot. Darwinists are Read More ›

From “Woolly Rhino Fossil Discovery in Tibet Provides Important Clues to Evolution of Ice Age Giants” (ScienceDaily, Sep. 2, 2011), we learn: A new paper published in the journal Science reveals the discovery of a primitive woolly rhino fossil in the Himalayas, which suggests some giant mammals first evolved in present-day Tibet before the beginning of the Ice Age. The extinction of Ice Age giants such as woolly mammoths and rhinos, giant sloths, and saber-tooth cats has been widely studied, but much less is known about where these giants came from, and how they acquired their adaptations for living in a cold environment. The new rhino is 3.6 million years old (middle Pliocene), much older and more primitive than its Read More ›

In “Genetics Paper Retracted: Due to statistical errors, a Science paper claiming that mutation is responsible for genetic variation is retracted” (The Scientist September 2, 2011), Jessica P. Johnson reports, A May 2010 Science paper showing that the most genetically fit cow-pea weevils have fewer deleterious genetic mutations in their genomes than their less fit counterparts was retracted yesterday (September 1) by the authors because of flaws in their statistical analysis. The results apparently supported the hypothesis that individuals with the fewest bad mutations will produce the most fit offspring. The revised data analysis, which shows little effect on fitness due to mutation, suggests that some other mechanism may instead be responsible for maintaining genetic variation in weevil populations. Wonder Read More ›

Taxonomy is a truly fascinating subject. It used to bore me, but precisely because I was too close to it. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight, can we go play video games now? It never occurred to me how amazing these patterns that surround us actually are. They are with us so often, they can easily fade into the background.

Interestingly, as argued in a fascinating book, Naming Nature, putting the world into a natural order is actually an intrinsic part of being human.
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… Apollo 18 is set to launch in theatres: “There’s a reason we’ve never gone back to the moon.” (Yes. Speculation is cheaper, and the public doesn’t care any more. But that’s no thriller plot.) Here’s Mark on Apollo 13 (02 September 2011): The scenes in space are great, simultaneously claustrophobic and panoramic: a pokey module with a vast, silent blackness pressing against the windscreen. Better still are the earthbound moments at Cape Kennedy, with Ed Harris in superb form hustling the boffins to improvise DIY oxygen kits for the astronauts, made from the polythene wrappers of their spaceship manuals. Is Hanks really Lovell or Bacon Swigert? Who cares? The film works as a tense techno-thriller pitting a crew of Read More ›