Clive Hayden

Dr. William Dembski was recently interviewed by Casey Luskin at Intelligent Design The Future. The Design of Life: What the Evidence of Biological Syste… Intelligent Design The Future Dembski’s The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems is discussed, which he coauthored with biologist Dr. Jonathan Wells. The question discussed is whether the appearance of design in biological systems is an illusion, as Richard Dawkins contends, or whether it is real. Dembski and Wells’ informative book give evidence that design in biological systems is indeed real. Biological systems appear designed because they actually are designed.

The Russians apparently don’t know when to just play ball with these Climatologists who manipulate data attempting to evidence Global Warming. It seems that the tribalism of Climatologists, the political motivation desperate to prove Anthropogenic Global Warming,  is lost on them. An article at RIONOVOSTI rep0rts that the Russians are also claiming that UK Climatologists have manipulated their climate data.

Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.

The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory.

Analysts say Russian meteorological stations cover most of the country’s territory, and that the Hadley Center had used data submitted by only 25% of such stations in its reports.

Over 40% of Russian territory was not included in global-temperature calculations for some other reasons, rather than the lack of meteorological stations and observations.

The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

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There’s an interesting article by Melanie Phillips at Spectator about why the emails from East Anglia, which sparked “Climategate,” really do change things. This is, of course, contrary to the assertion of folks like Al Gore who claim that the matter is settled and that these emails aren’t important to the whole situation. In reality these findings do change things, so one must wonder who is the denier now? Who is denying reality? It doesn’t seem to be the folks that deny Anthropic Global Warming, rather it is the scientists that steadfastly hold to AGW when it cannot be evidenced to be occurring. I would much rather deny AGW than deny reality and change reality to fit my notion of AGW, as these scientists have done. This is what comes to light in these emails. Changing reality.

In the Mail on Sunday, David Rose has dug into the email correspondence at the heart of the East Anglia CRU ‘Climate-gate’ scandal and found that, far from being a few carelessly written messages taken out of context, they are – surprise, surprise — a game-changer. He writes correctly that they strike at the very heart of anthropogenic global warming theory by showing that the ‘evidence’ that post-industrial revolution temperatures are unprecedented is a manufactured fiction – and that at least some of these scientists, themselves at the very heart of promulgating AGW theory, knew perfectly well that the evidence did not support their claims.

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Here is actor Ed Begley Jr. being interviewed by Stuart Varney on Fox News:

Ed Begley Jr. remarks “I don’t think geologists should write papers about being an actor or newscaster…nor should uh…Don’t get your information from me folks or any newscaster, get it from people with PhD after their name.”

So, if geologists cannot discuss acting, why should we listen to an actor discussing PhD scientists? Wouldn’t we have to listen to Ed Begley Jr. in order to know that we should only listen to PhD scientists? By his own admission we shouldn’t listen to him about who we should listen to because he is not a PhD scientist.

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William Dembski was interviewed recently by the Evangelical Philosophical Society, which can be read at their blog, about his new book The End of Christianity, Finding a Good God in an Evil World. This book is the long anticipated refutation of the “new atheists” position, such as that of the Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens vein. But it is also a theodicy worthy of reading in its own right, regardless of the prominence of new or old atheists. Here’s an excerpt of the interview: What’s the main point that you are trying to communicate in this book? What is the “end of Christianity” that you speak of in your title? My book attempts to resolve how the Fall of Adam Read More ›

There’s an interesting article about the prevalence of atheist college groups, and their slow but rising numbers, here. The article focuses on Iowa State University’s resident atheist group, the ISU Atheist and Agnostic Society, and how they go about conducting themselves.

At Iowa State, most of the club’s roughly 30 members are “former” somethings, mostly Christians. Many stress that their lives are guided not by anti-religiousness, but belief in science, logic and reason.

“The goal,” said Andrew Severin, a post-doctoral researcher in bioinformatics, “should be to obtain inner peace for yourself and do random acts of kindness for strangers.”

Severin calls himself a “spiritual atheist.” He doesn’t believe in God or the supernatural but thinks experiences like meditation or brushes with nature can produce biochemical reactions that feel spiritual.

When the ISU club began in 1999, it was mostly a discussion group. But it soon became clear that young people who leave organized religion miss something: a sense of community. So the group added movie and board-game nights and, more recently, twice-monthly Sunday brunches to the calendar.

This passes for logic and reason? How can something feel spiritual is there is no such thing as spirit? What basis of comparison is used if spirituality is an illusion? What is being maintained, by materialists such as this, is that biochemical reactions cause illusory feelings. But if biochemical reactions cause these feelings, then they also cause all other feelings, and there would be no getting outside of the explanation of biochemical reactions causing all feelings. So why trust biochemical reactions in other feelings like love or happiness? None of them need have any basis in reality.

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Anika Smith, of the Discovery Institute, brings us exciting new information: SEATTLE, WA – Despite Darwinist’s attempts to suppress the debate over evolution, a new book about the controversial theory of intelligent design made Amazon.com’s list of the year’s Top 10 bestselling books in science, just as the world marks 150 years since Charles Darwin published his own theory in his landmark book On the Origin of Species. Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne) by Dr. Stephen C. Meyer is entering its fifth printing in as many months, and continues to sell strongly both online and in stores, reports the book’s publisher. According to Amazon.com, books on its 2009 list of best sellers are Read More ›

Here is a video of Robert Wright’s lecture on the evolution of compassion. I’ve written on this recently at UD here.

My point in the other blog was to note that if compassion has an evolutionary explanation for its existence, then so does not being compassionate, and so does every other aspect of our entire humanity by being the product of the same process. This leaves one with no more ultimate standard to use to judge whether we should or shouldn’t be compassionate, for whatever we try to use for the standard is itself subject to the trial. And of course this includes all thoughts, not just ones we call compassion and being in-compassionate. The explanation of our thinking resulting from evolution necessitates that all thoughts, even contradictory ones, have the same grounds in evolution. And this brings us to the difficulty: On this premise, there could be no escape from evolution to find a more solid ground on which to make judgments about any other thoughts that are, themselves, also the result of evolution. Evolutionary Psychologists like Robert Wright, very contradictorily, contends that evolution has given us false beliefs, not seeing that the judgment he is using also comes from the same process as the one he claims produced the false belief. If evolution gives us false beliefs, what grounds have we to trust it in any other regard? This excerpt from C. S. Lewis’s essay The Abolition of Man may help to clarify the matter; and let’s say that our evolved capacities of thought (including compassion) are called Instincts for the sake of argument:

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Robert Wright is seen here in a video presentation giving a lecture about the evolution of compassion.

He begins by saying that compassion, love and sympathy had earned their way into the gene pool. Regardless of how any gene could “earn” it’s way into a gene pool before it is a gene (because all genes, by being genes, are in the gene pool), the question that seems taken for granted is Do we have genes for compassion, love and sympathy? These are metaphysical things, so, notice that what he’s doing is taking metaphysical reality and making it material. But in the same way logic and reason are metaphysical, that is, there are laws of logic and reason that are not reducible to laws of physics or chemistry. Do these owe their existence to genes earning their way into the gene pool also? If so, then we have ruled out logic and reason existing on their own, and are subject to an evolutionary process that constantly changes, otherwise it isn’t an evolutionary process. I cannot see how, on the premise of evolution of metaphysics, which includes all mental capacities, all of our metaphysical judgments, to talk of the evolution of compassion and at the same time understand that the ability to reason to this conclusion is just as subject to evolution.

Jason Rosenhouse has written a blog about Michael Ruse and William Dembski. His complaint against Ruse, among other things, is that Ruse is too cordial, too civil with ID supporters, Dembski especially.

And while I may dislike and disagree with Ruse’s thinking, it is his actions over the last several years that I loathe and detest. I hate the way he has been doing everything in his power to prop up the ID folks. I hate that he persuaded a presitgious university press to publish a book co-edited by William Dembski, which featured four essays defending “Darwinism” that seemed tailor made to make evolution look bad. I hate that he contributes essays to anthologies designed to celebrate ID promoters and that he tells debate audiences that Dembski has made valuable contributions to science. Go here for relevant links and further details.

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Anika Smith has reported at Evolution News and Views an attack which appears to be original to Darwinists. Although the attackers are, as yet, anonymous, the apparent motivation was to obfuscate a conference featuring leading Intelligent Design proponents scheduled this weekend at Douglas County Event Center in Castle Rock, Colorado. Earlier this month the Shepherd Project Ministries’ website was breached using a “brute force attack” to break the password. The hackers then deleted webpages containing information about an upcoming conference featuring Discovery Institute speakers Stephen Meyer, Michael Behe, David Berlinski, and John West. “No question whatsoever about [what] they were targeting,” said Shepherd Project Executive Director Craig Smith. “That was brazen. We were a little stunned, to be perfectly honest. Read More ›

David Berlinski will be giving a lecture tour around the States this fall. Here are the dates:

October 23 — lecture at King’s College, New York
October 25 — Darwin’s Dilemma screening, USC, Los Angeles
October 27 — lecture and discussion, Beverly Hills Library, Beverly Hills
October 31 — lecture at ID conference, Colorado Springs
November 3 — lecture at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio
November 4 — lecture at Ohio University, Athens, Ohio
November 5 — lecture at University of Akron, Akron, Ohio

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So let’s take a look around and see what passes for science today. One article comes to mind as an example of the peculiar, and it’s from The New York Times. This article explains how some scientists, probably considered mainstream, have posited that tiny particles are abhorred by nature, so nature, knowing that physicists will discover these tiny particles in the future, sabotages the equipment the  that the physicists intend on using. More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again… I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged Read More ›

My second post on Darwinian censorship today pertains to Illustra Media’s film Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record. It was slated to be shown at the California Science Center, as Anika Smith of the Discovery Institute has noted:

[T]he Los Angeles Daily News reports that the California Science Center, a “ department of the State of California,” cancelled the screening of Darwin’s Dilemma after the screening became public knowledge and the Center came under intense pressure to cancel, possibly from the Smithsonian Institution, with which they are affiliated.  The Center’s IMAX Theater had been rented by a private group, the American Freedom Alliance, to hold the Los Angeles premiere of the film as part of a series of activities commemorating the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

The Smithsonian Institution was clearly upset by publicity promoting the screening that mentioned the true fact that the Science Center is an official “ Smithsonian Affiliate.” The President of the Science Center’s Foundation is now claiming that it canceled the event “because of issues related to the contract,” issues he conveniently refuses to identify.

Christianity Today has weighed in on the bloggingheads’ controversy involving the disappearing and reappearing discussion between John McWhorter and Michael Behe. An online clearinghouse for intellectual debate has discovered the apparent boundary for its controversial conversations: Intelligent Design. Bloggingheads.tv posted a video interview between journalist John McWhorter and Intelligent Design proponent Michael Behe in late August focused on the Lehigh University biochemistry professor’s 2007 book The Edge of Evolution. It was taken down the same day after the website received a barrage of online criticism for not asking tougher questions of Behe and for hosting him at all. The video was re-posted later, but as Dr. Behe  explains, the initial removal is indicative of a larger issue: “Reposting the interview Read More ›