From a review of Richard Weikart’s The Death of Humanity by Mike Keas at Christian Post: Many things are striking about Weikart’s powerful treatment of his subject, but I noted, in particular, his discussion of some statements from atheist biologist Richard Dawkins. These statements have a curious, persistent, and revealing inconsistency to them. Here is Weikart, for example, on a 2007 interview with Dawkins: [C]onsider how Richard Dawkins responded when Larry Taunton asked in an interview if his rejection of external moral standards meant that Islamic extremists might not be wrong. Dawkins replied, “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question.” Taunton admitted that he was stupefied by Dawkins’s answer — Read More ›

Wow. Nicholas Baumard here: Christianity’s success is often attributed to its supposedly unique message. Unlike earlier religions, it exhorted people to be good and promised to reward them for their goodness in the afterlife. That is still how most people conceptualise the Christian message: helping others, working hard, controlling one’s sexuality and believing that people who don’t do so will be punished. In other words, a moralising religion. More (paywall) . If Baumard and NS got everything about Christianity so wrong in the second free paragraph (and the topic was their choice), one can hardly recommend paying to read the rest and finding out what “evolution” has to do with it. The main selling point of Christianity through the ages Read More ›

Robbert Dijkgraaf muses on the barbarians at the gates of science at Nautilus: What does the evolving frontier of knowledge mean for society’s relationship with science? Long borders are difficult to patrol. Professional gatekeepers of scientific knowledge can no longer control the flow of information as they used to. In an age of the “University of Google,” people no longer rely on established, peer-reviewed literature but rather seek out manifold sources on the Internet. Fragments of scientific knowledge get absorbed into society this way, as do some scientific values and thinking—which by itself is good. But many of these fragmented bits of knowledge are also invalidated, politicized, and of dubious quality. Actually, a lot of what us rubes found has Read More ›

Dr. Michael Behe is going to be presenting an interactive online webinar on May 7th (8pm GMT / 3pm Eastern / 2pm Central / 12noon Pacific) to my group, the Apologetics Academy (http://www.apologetics-academy.org). Behe will present on the biochemical evidence for design for approximately 1 hour and then field questions from the floor. I run these sessions every week with different speakers. You can engage the speaker with live audio and video, submit questions anonymously, participate in the chatbox, or simply watch and listen anonymously. Be aware that the sessions are normally recorded for later upload to YouTube. We can accommodate up to 100 participants. The currently confirmed speaker lineup can be viewed here. To participate in next Saturday’s Webinar, click Read More ›

Another ntry inth “why the Neanderthals died out” science talk show, from ScienceDaily: Neandertals adapted their diet to the resources that were most readily available and easily accessible, while modern humans seemed to have invested more effort in accessing food resources. Modern humans’ changes in diet were possibly more strongly marked by the use of new technologies in obtaining food. The researchers concluded that Upper Paleolithic modern humans’ differing dietary strategies may have given them an advantage over the Neandertals. “Actually, one would expect that the Neandertals would be better adapted to the occasionally very harsh climatic conditions in Ice Age Europe,” says Sireen El Zaatari. “They developed there, while anatomically modern humans evolved in Africa and only migrated to Read More ›

Professor James Tour’s recent video, The Origin of Life – An Inside Story, managed to accomplish three things at once: it shattered the credibility of abiogenesis as a theory; it provided American high school science teachers with an excellent classroom resource for countering evolutionary propaganda; and (perhaps unintentionally), it set a new research agenda for the Intelligent Design movement, which will transform it into a bona fide scientific discipline: the task of reverse-engineering life itself. Readers who wish to view the talk may do so here: Why Tour’s talk is the perfect resource for American high school science teachers who want to counteract evolutionary propaganda At the beginning of his talk, Tour explicitly declared that he would make no reference Read More ›