2011

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 ›

In the popular media, ID is often portrayed as Creationism in new clothes.  And indeed, even among ID proponents, the creation implications tend to be predominantly emphasized.  Yet the theory underpinning Intelligent Design has implications beyond the realm of biological history, perhaps it is a much broader theory than most realize at first.  In fact, it may even describe a comprehensive worldview.  The primary reason that ID has such an impact is because materialism underlies many areas of modern thought, and ID is an alternative hypothesis to materialism. To understand the insights that ID brings, it is important to have a bit of philosophical background to begin with.  There are two basic concepts that are important to know: efficient and Read More ›

The concept was commonly used for centuries to represent order in nature, but it is dying.  Except in school, where your kid is forced to learn it. From Nathalie Gontier’s “Depicting the Tree of Life: the Philosophical and Historical Roots of Evolutionary Tree Diagrams” (Evolution: Education and Outreach, 19 August, 2011 ), we learn, It is a popularly held view that Darwin was the first author to draw a phylogenetic tree diagram. However, as is the case with most popular beliefs, this one also does not hold true. Firstly, Darwin never called his diagram of common descent a tree. Secondly, even before Darwin, tree diagrams were used by a variety of philosophical, religious, and secular scholars to depict phenomena such Read More ›

Calling Peter “Not Even Wrong” Woit, right this minute: In “Morgan Freeman Goes From God to Science” ( New York Times, August 26, 2011) Alex Pappademas writes what sounds like a parody of pop science TV – but takes it seriously: In the hands of a goofier host — and let’s face it, anyone other than Freeman would by definition be a goofier host — the series could have been “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” with string theory, or a bottomless can of mind-Pringles for freshman-dorm Castanedas. (Representative episode titles include “Does Time Really Exist?” and “Beyond the Darkness”; presumably, the producers are saving “Have You Ever Looked at Your Hand — I Mean, Really Looked at It?” and “No, Read More ›