In the OOL post below a commenter named Okfanriffic writes: Hi guys. I work as a biochemist and like most biochemists we are concerned with understanding biology so that we can combat disease. An important part of science is understanding the underlying processes. Think about quantum electrodynamics,that advance in understanding spawned all of electronics including the computers we are communicating on! Science works, guys! Understanding origins and fundamentals has always proved productive and as such research into life’s origins is reasonable.Remember most people who call themselves christian accept the bible as metaphorical and accept that their god creates using natural processes (the entire catholic and anglican communion of 1.3 billion christians)So all science is doing is uncovering how your god Read More ›

I have created a video which makes my June 2013 Biocomplexity paper “Entropy and Evolution” even easier to understand. The extent to which materialism has corrupted science today will be clear to anyone who reads this paper or views the video, and readers will wonder, why would smart people like Asimov, Styer and others make arguments so transparently bad that a child can see the problems? The answer is, they have to, their commitment to materialism leaves them no choice. [youtube 2Ea5s1pnigk]

the department chair took me aside and shared with me the results from the latest standardized testing of the senior biology majors. The test splits up their scores in four categories: cell, organismal, genetics, and evolution. To my absolute delight, Bryan College students scored in the 99th percentile – in the evolution category! That was their highest category too. Uh oh! Who’s been teaching them evolution? Well, that would be me. The class I’m teaching this semester is called “History of Life,” which is just a euphemism for evolutionary biology. I teach straight from Freeman and Herron’s Evolutionary Analysis, and we read Darwin’s Origin of Species during the class. The students know my position on origins, and when appropriate, I Read More ›

In the course of two short posts littered with no less than ten erroneous, misleading or doubtful claims, Professor PZ Myers argues his case that science and religion are incompatible: (i) science can only flourish in an atmosphere where dangerous or eccentric ideas can be freely discussed; (ii) religion, by its very nature, tends to suppress those ideas that run counter to orthodox doctrines; hence (iii) religion is fundamentally inimical to the progress of science. What Professor Myers’ thesis overlooks, however, is that: (a) it was sixteenth- and seventeenth-century thinkers, writing from religious, theological, and philosophical perspectives, who did more than anyone to advance the cause of religious toleration and free speech, which enabled science to flourish, as Perez Zagorin’s Read More ›

My eyes popped out with this headline from none other than Darwin-loving, ID-despising, creationist-hating New Scientist: Tree of Bird Life Could Solve Noah’s Ark Problem 😯 GENETICS could help solve the Noah’s Ark problem: faced with limited space, which species do you save? Focusing on the most evolutionarily unique and ancient species could allow us to save more branches of the tree of life, at the lowest cost and effort. Now a genetic analysis has found the most unique birds and identified 113 locations that hold more than half the global avian evolutionary diversity. The findings will be used to focus conservation efforts where they will have the biggest impact. Conservationists tend to focus on a few big-name species, like Read More ›

UD commenter, ayearningforpublius [AYP], has his own blog where he has many interesting posts informed by a lifetime of varied experiences. He is also an advocate for the idea that nature shows compelling observable signs of design, and in “dialog with folks at and surrounding the National Center for Science Education (NCSE)” has encountered a typical challenge, which he noted on in a March 27, 2014 comment in a current OOL thread, i.e.: “Mac: Wrong question, since as a YECist IDiot you cannot conceive of undesigned systems like all life forms have proven to be to the point where evolution is a scientifically acknowledged fact. Show me just one life form that was designed top down, with the evidence, process Read More ›