In Sulawesi, Indonesia. Wallace, Darwin’s ignored co-discoverer, had explored a good deal in that area: A very impressive 1.5 meter tall bust of Wallace on a 2.6 meter high plinth was inaugurated on the 21st February 2019 at the well known Tangkoko Nature Reserve in north-east Sulawesi, Indonesia. It is certainly the largest and most imposing monument to Wallace in the world so far. It is also the first bust or 3D likeness of him outside the UK and the first monument to him in Wallacea, the biogeographical region which is named in his honour. George Beccaloni, “Impressive New Monument to Alfred Russel Wallace in Sulawesi, Indonesia” at The Alfred Russel Wallace Website Interesting coincidence with finding Wallace’s (thought-extinct) bee. Read More ›

There is a creeping scientism in our intellectual climate. We have been led to think that Science is the gold standard of reliable, substantial knowledge and that institutional science and its leaders are the curators of knowledge. This is of course deeply connected to the wider domination of evolutionary materialistic scientism, which compounds the above with the notion that the stuff studied by the physical and chemical sciences is effectively the limit of credibly, reliably knowable reality. Where, let us note that scientism is a part of the defining cluster of naturalism, in both its metaphysical and “methodological” guises. We can readily see that in that ever so humble source, Wikipedia, speaking confidently and comfortably on its own philosophical bent: Read More ›

As Michael Egnor tells us, scientism is not a cure for stupidity. But never mind, quite a few science savants have rushed in fearlessly: Evolutionary biologist David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute, told Nautilus, “Stupidity is using a rule where adding more data doesn’t improve your chances of getting [a problem] right. In fact, it makes it more likely you’ll get it wrong.” I won’t contradict an evolutionary biologist on the topic of stupidity. In any event, Italian economic historian Carlo M. Cipolla (1922–2000) argued that “A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses” (his Third Basic Law Read More ›

Yes, if you believe the mirror test proves it: The bluestreak cleaner wrasse has passed the famous mirror test for self-recognition (originally intended for primate apes and monkeys). According to a recent paper (open access), three out of four fish tested by researchers from Osaka City University in Japan were able to learn to identify the object in a mirror as their own images. But what does that mean? When chimpanzees, dolphins, elephants, and magpies passed the test1, researchers theorized that these animals, recognized as intelligent, were demonstrating a concept of “self.” Now they are not so sure. Is the cleaner wrasse, which grooms other fish for parasites, really self-aware? Are fish much smarter than we think? More. But what Read More ›

In an essay on Paul Gosselin ’s Flight from the Absolute: Cynical Observations on the Postmodern West, Volume II, we are told, Over two and a half decades have passed since Phillip E. Johnson kick-started the intelligent design (ID) movement in America with the publication of his path-breaking book, Darwin on Trial (1991). In this book, he exposed the numerous flaws in Darwinian evolution and the near irrationality of those who continued to defend it in the face of mounting evidence against it. In the intervening years, two seemingly contradictory things have happened: the evidence against macro-evolution has continued to mount up; and the defenders of macro-evolution have gotten increasingly shrill and censorious, asserting more and more loudly the false Read More ›

Here: In “Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island,” the gang encounters real zombies and ghosts for the first time. But Fred explains away the evidence by appealing to increasingly absurd naturalistic explanations. In the end, even Fred recognizes that his explanations simply can’t account for the facts. Atheists often call themselves “skeptics.” But when we consider the methodology they apply when questioning God’s existence, we find that the atheist’s methodology rules out all evidence for God’s existence even before considering what the evidence is. In this video, David Wood uses some clips from “Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island” and some clips from his recent debate with Dr. Michael Shermer to show why it’s becoming impossible to take atheists seriously when they demand evidence Read More ›