Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Year

2013

Endowed Chair at Johns Hopkins named after ID proponent

Philanthropist, world-renowned eye surgeon James Gills co-authored two ID-friendly books Darwin under the microscope and The Mysterious Epigenome and spearheaded an ID-friendly project related to the epigenome. Named after him is the James P. Gills Professorship in Opthalmology at Johns Hopkins University. Here is a nice narrative of Dr. Gills: TARPON SPRINGS – The blue-masked man bends forward in his rolling chair, back stiff, eyes pressed to microscope. On his surgical table lies a woman wrapped in blue like a package, except for naked right eye, lid peeled back, pupil widely dilated, bathed in light. ¶ He is busy with two slender instruments. One obliterates a lens, opaque as butter. The other suctions out milky debris. He slips a tube Read More ›

FYI-FTR: TSZ post, Sept 12, 2013 describes “creationists” — ENEMIES OF HUMANITY

Sometimes, it is necessary to shine a spotlight on behaviour that is beyond the pale of reasonable civil discourse. Especially if, after repeated attempts to call for correction, we see instead the blog owner — here, EL of TSZ — and others insistently pretending that such falls within the circle of reasonable freedom of expression. Here, then, are relevant excerpts from davehooke in his post: Sure, ID proponents are passionate about the tenets of their faith . . . As Kierkegaard noted, there is always an unbridgeable emptiness for the theist, the “leap of faith.” So no matter how much reason one applies to religion, religious belief is at heart irrational. Those who attempt to trowel reason over the gap Read More ›

Commentator Ed Driscoll on Popular Science’s “No Comments” editorial tantrum …

He’s got a point. If they weren’t treating their theories about global warming and evolution as a religion, they’d hardly care so much about the fact that their combox is not a total fan club. Read More ›

New study: Oxygenic photosynthesis goes back three billion years

An international team of scientists has published an article in Nature magazine, suggesting that oxygen began accumulating in the atmosphere at least three billion years ago. The team’s findings raise a troubling question for Darwinian evolutionists: how did the exquisitely complex metabolism of oxygenic photosynthesis arise so soon after the dawn of life? The team arrived at its conclusions by studying the ratios of two isotopes of chromium – chromium-52 and chromium-53 – in the world’s oldest soils: former soils preserved by burial under rocks in Kwazulu-Natal Province, South Africa, dating back to 2.95 billion years before the present. Because chromium-53 is slightly more soluble when oxidized than chromium-52, the team was able to infer the composition of oxygen in Read More ›