DLH

At the Beyond Expelled worldview conference, Nancy Pearcey explored the impact of evolution vs ID. She describes skeptic Michael Shermer’s conversion to evolution & Scarlett Johansson’s acting on belief in evolution.
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The intelligent design of life

Nancy Pearcey tells crowd that Darwinism has evolved into more than just a theory (with VIDEO)
Rachel Kyler, Thursday May 8th, 2008

NICEVILLE — Not religion pitted against science, but philosophy against philosophy.

In a truly liberal education system, that’s how academic Nancy Pearcey says educators would approach intelligent design and the theory of evolution.

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Robert Meyer provides thought provoking insight into the major issues surrounding Expelled.
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Ben Stein’s Dangerous Idea
Robert Meyer, May 6, 2008, New Media Alliance – Robert E. Meyer

Ben Stein has a dangerous idea. His idea is that professors and teachers who express skepticism about Darwinism are likely to find themselves not granted tenure, castigated and ridiculed, and disqualified from the opportunity to have research papers published.
. . .
Having reviewed the movie myself, it appeared that Stein was trying to make the case for academic freedom, not attempted to convert anyone to a particular ideological position.

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Nancy Pearcey will be addressing After Expelled, on NewsTalk 1260 WFTW 9:30 AM EST Friday April 25th, 2008 Then on May 5th Events at the Mattie Kelly Fine & Performing Arts Center Okaloosa-Walton College Mattie Kelly Fine & Performing Arts Center 100 College Boulevard, Niceville, FL 32578

(In his review of Expelled, Dinesh D’Souza appears to be using arguments from Intelligent Design – despite his previous apparent opposition.)—————-

Ben Stein Exposes Richard Dawkins
By Dinesh D’Souza, Monday, April 21, 2008

. . .So Stein puts to Dawkins a simple question, “How did life begin?” One would think that this is a question that could be easily answered. Dawkins, however, frankly admits that he has no idea. . . . Franklin Harold writes in The Way of the Cell that even the simplest cells are more ingeniously complicated than man’s most elaborate inventions: the factory system or the computer. Read More ›

After being denied tenure at ISU after publishing The Privileged Planet, Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez has formally accepted a position at Grove City College, PA. (Informally announced on April 4 at Biola)
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ISU Intelligent design proponent finds new job
By: William Dillon, 04/18/2008
Guillermo Gonzalez, an assistant professor at Iowa State University who argues for the use of intelligent design in science, has accepted a new position at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. Read More ›

Here is an uncommon review by Mayer – who has the courage not to bow to Darwinian orthodoxy.
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Expelled – Ben Stein’s Brilliant And Subversive Documentary

By William Mayer
April 19, 2008 – San Francisco, CA – PipeLineNews.org – Darwin…Darwin…Darwin…you can almost hear Ben Stein muttering to himself as this subversive little documentary, “Expelled – No Intelligence Allowed,” unfolds. Having opened only yesterday it has already left the piggies that feed at the trough of big science foaming at the mouth and staggering about in near apoplexia. Read More ›

Research often shows no apparent effect (phenotype) of deleting most genes. Hillenmeyer et al now find that 97% of yeast genes have an important biological function. Optimal growth requires nearly all genes in absence of “rich” medium in the lab. Sounds like robust design. Read More ›

Per recommendations, here is a separate thread on:

Michael Le Page weighing in at New Scientist with:

Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions

18:00 16 April 2008
He provides the mother pie statement that:

Darwin presented compelling evidence for evolution in On the Origin and, since his time, the case has become overwhelming. . . . Evolution is as firmly established a scientific fact as the roundness of the Earth.

This might be tolerable if “evolution” is limited to microevolution defined as mutations and heritable variations in populations. e.g., to “fast-changing viruses such as HIV and H5N1 bird flu” — except that he gives equal weight to the controversial “pollution-matching pepper moth”. Read More ›

Bruce Chapman, president of Discovery Institute, published :

An Intelligent Discussion about Life

in The Seattle Times, April 17, 2008
Chapman posted the following extensively footnoted version of this article at www.discovery.org/a/4522.
“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is a trenchant new film by actor/economist Ben Stein, the man first made famous in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” He’s now tackling with humorous dudgeon the classic example of ideological science, Darwinian evolution. Stein shows Darwinists insistently misrepresenting the scientific case against their theory. Where facts and reason might fail to persuade, personal attacks are employed, sometimes even by organizations supposedly committed to civil discourse.

Richard Weikart summarizes his devastating research into the Darwinian foundations of Nazis – and the continuation of those themes by modern evolutionists.
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Darwin and the Nazis
By Richard Weikart Published 4/16/2008 12:07:03 AM American Spectator

Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, and some other Darwinists are horrified that the forthcoming documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, will promote Intelligent Design to a large audience when it opens at over a thousand theaters nationwide on April 18. Ironically, their campaign to discredit Ben Stein and the film confirms its main point, which is to expose the persecution meted out by Darwinists to those daring to criticize Darwinian theory.

One aspect of Expelled that troubles Dawkins and some of his colleagues is its treatment of the ethical implications of Darwinism, especially its discussion of the historical connections between Darwinism and Nazism. Isn’t this a bit over-the-top, suggesting that Darwinism has something to do with Nazism? After all, Darwinists today are not Nazis, and Darwinism has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Read More ›

Researchers have discovered two proteins essential for reproductive cells to latch onto each other and then to fuse. Changing at least one of these proteins appears to prevent species from interbreeding. This appears to open up a way to stop malaria. A new species would appear to require at least two changed genes, one for the protein change and the other for the matching protein docking change. What is the probability of these simultaneous changes occurring by random mutation & natural selection – versus – this being a key/lock design with complex specified information? Such simultaneous changes appear to be pushing Behe’s limits of Darwinism. See Edge of Evolution
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Gene blocking could help quash malaria
April 1, 2008

International investigations of an organism that one Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center researcher calls a “silly little green scum” have led to key insights into the basic mechanisms of reproduction.

The findings may help explain why species can almost never interbreed, and also point to a possible way to thwart the spread of malaria, a disease that kills about 1 million people each year, primarily children in sub-Saharan Africa. Read More ›

Are there parallels between the effects of “Big Science” Darwinism severe job discrimination against non-Darwinists as shown in Expelled, and recent terrorism by Jihadists?

The very controversial film Fitna offers a view on radical Islam and the Qur’an by by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV). It was just released today March 27th on the Internet, and already has over one million downloads each in English and Dutch. Wilders alternates verses from the Qur’an with terrorist events and statements by radical jihadists. Blogpulse of Fitna already lists 2110 messages or 0.1% of messages, compared to 1618 for Blogpulse Expelled Stein.

Compare prominent Darwinist PZ Myers Insisting:

“Don’t tell me to be dispassionate or less unreasonable about it all because because 65% of the American population think creationism should be taught alongside evolution,. . .
I say, screw the polite words and careful rhetoric. It’s time for scientists to break out the steel-toed boots and brass knuckles, and get out there and hammer on the lunatics and idiots. If you don’t care enough for the truth to fight for it, then get out of the way.”

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Can science ever stop being skeptical of the dominant theory?

Ferenc Miskolczi may have discovered an upper bound to Greenhouse Effect. He found a “simplifying” assumption of an optically infinite atmospheric thickness in the original climate models. Modeling an optically finite atmospheric thickness clamped the “runaway greenhouse” projections.

Could similar “simplifying” assumptions be discovered in neo-Darwinian evolution’s random mutation with natural selection” that invalidate conventional wisdom?
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New derivation of equations governing the greenhouse effect reveals “runaway warming” impossible

Miklós Zágoni isn’t just a physicist and environmental researcher. He is also a global warming activist and Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was. That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA’s Langley Research Center. Read More ›

Darwinians objecting to Michael Behe’s Irreducible Complexity appeal to indirect “scaffolding” or Roman Arch routes that support the assembly and are later discarded. Now research shows cancer is caused by mutations in the CARD11 gene that forms a cytoplasmic scaffolding docking site for a signaling molecule.

If mutations in genes forming known scaffolding lead to cancer, why should we believe that numerous mutations needed to form genes to make hypothetical scaffolding will create properly functioning irreducible complex systems?

While cleric Michael Heller disparages Intelligent Design, Chuck Colson observes: “John Scotus Eriugena is considered perhaps the first proponent of “intelligent design.” See: Learning from the Irish, Chuck Colson

“Observe the forms and beauties of sensible things,” he wrote, “and comprehend the Word of God in them. If you do so, the truth will reveal to you in all such things only He who made them.” . . .

See Colson’s full “Breakpoint” 3/17/2008
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