GilDodgen

See here. No commentary should be required.

In a piece at Time Online, More Spin from the Anti-Evolutionists, senior writer Michael Lemonick attacks ID, the Discovery Institute, the signatories of the Dissent From Darwin list, and Michael Egnor in particular.

Dr. Michael Egnor (a professor of neurosurgery and pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook, and an award-winning brain surgeon named one of New York’s best doctors by New York Magazine) is quoted: “Darwinism is a trivial idea that has been elevated to the status of the scientific theory that governs modern biology.” You can imagine the ire this comment would provoke from a Time science journalist.

The comments section is very illuminating as Dr. Egnor replies to and challenges Lemonick.

On another forum, ID colleague John Calvert of the Intelligent Design Network posted the following letter concerning the recent actions of the Kansas State Board of Education. With his kind permission I reproduce it here for the edification of UD readers. The behind-the-scenes details are rather disturbing. It is clear to me that the anti-ID crowd is in defensive meltdown mode.

Before reading John’s letter check out Phillip Johnson’s rather prophetic words from Darwin On Trial, first published in 1991:

Darwinian evolution with its blind watchmaker thesis makes me think of a great battleship on the ocean of reality. Its sides are heavily armored with philosophical barriers to criticism, and its decks are stacked with big rhetorical guns ready to intimidate any would-be attackers. In appearance, it is as impregnable as the Soviet Union seemed to be only a few years ago. But the ship has sprung a metaphysical leak, and the more perceptive of the ship’s officers have begun to sense that all the ship’s firepower cannot save it if the leak is not plugged.

Read More ›

I’ve enjoyed following the ID debate in the UK, and especially David Anderson’s BCSE Revealed blog. The BCSE is the British Centre for Science Education, whose role in the UK appears to be analogous to that of the NCSE in the US.

David recently posted the comment below the fold concerning BCSE’s portrayal of him, his blog, and fundamentalists. I particularly enjoyed the sewer rat comment.
Read More ›

Over at Larry Moran’s blog, where I am identified as one of the ID movement’s stellar idiots, there is a picture of Darwin’s tombstone with the caption: “Here’s a photo of Darwin’s final resting place in Westminster Abbey.” I posted the following comment: Darwin doesn’t have a resting place. When he died he entered eternal oblivion. Nothing he did, and nothing that any of us do, has any lasting significance or meaning. One day our sun will turn into a red giant. When that happens its corona will expand beyond the orbit of the earth. The earth’s atmosphere will be stripped away, the seas will boil away, the sands will fuse into glass, and all life will be exterminated. There Read More ›

Click here first, then click on the javascript link: Click here to view your video, “‘Blasphemy Challenge’” Check it out. Gil

I just pulled out my 1972 edition of Jacques Monod’s “classic” work, Chance and Necessity, subtitled A Philosophy for a Universe without Causality. From the back cover: The outstanding French biochemist, winner of the Nobel Prize, here explains to the layman his revolutionary approach to genetics and its far-reaching ethical and philosophical implications. For some time now, the unpleasant idea has been dawning on mankind that it may owe its existence to nothing but a roll of some cosmological set of dice. But until recently hard proof has been missing and the larger philosophical implications have remained obscure. What Jacques Monod is here to say in his difficult but important book is that the proof is now available and the Read More ›

On another forum I wrote:

It seems to me that the arts, and music in particular, present a real problem for Darwinism. How would such an ability come about in a step-by-tiny-step fashion and what would be the survival value of the transitional intermediates, or even the end product? (Never mind what mutations would be required to rewire the central nervous system for musical ability, and the probability of those mutations occurring.) Of course, for Darwinists, Darwinism must explain everything, so they will invent stories about how ancient jungle drummers got the girls, just like rock stars get the groupies. But everyone enjoys music with absolutely no evidence that it offers any survival or reproductive advantage. It just seems to be programmed into us at a very fundamental level.

It turns out that my comment about jungle drums and rock stars was prophetic.

Read More ›

In the Haldane thread, DaveScot responded to a comment I made with this: On Haldane’s Dilemma, I’ve determined the evolutionist argument goes like this: Orthodox evolution theory is a fact, not a theory. Therefore Haldane’s Dilemma must be wrong. I propose a corollary to DaveScot’s proposition: Orthodox evolution theory is a fact, not a theory. Therefore the fossil record, common sense, and simple statistical reasoning must be wrong. Common sense and a little elementary arithmetic suggest that: 1) given a few million years (the proposed timeframe for the mechanism of random mutation and natural selection to evolve humans from a primitive ape-like ancestor); 2) a generous assumption about generation time (let’s say, 10 years); and 3) a generous assumption about Read More ›

In another forum, Denyse wrote: Bear with a simple lay hack here a moment: Why must we know a designer’s intentions in order to detect design? If the fire marshall’s office suspects arson, do the investigators worry much about WHY? Surely they investigate, confirm their finding, and turn the information over to other authorities and interested parties, without having the least idea why someone torched the joint. ALL they need to be sure of is that the joint did not torch itself, via natural causes. The observation Denyse makes is so obvious that one would need a Ph.D. in obfuscation not to see it. Common sense is not so common, at least among those with a foundational commitment to materialism.

In this, Part 3 in a series of posts based on the Q&A section of the recently released DVD, The Case for a Creator, I offer Jonathan Wells’ comments in response to the question, How do you explain the Cambrian explosion of life? How did it happen? We don’t have the foggiest idea how it happened. Assuming a jellyfish was the common ancestor — I don’t believe that — but how do you turn a jellyfish into a trilobite? How do you turn a jellyfish into a fish with a backbone? How do you do it? I don’t just mean taking a scalpel and rearranging the parts like you’re doing a collage in third-grade art class. We’re talking about a Read More ›

Over at Telic Thoughts there is a quote from Ian Lowe of the British Centre For Science Education. The quote originated at David Anderson’s BCSE Revealed blog.

At the BCSE website, under the subheading “What BCSE is not” we read:

We do not object to or support religion or atheism.

But David Anderson provides some interesting insights into two of BCSE’s major players.

Read More ›

In this, Part 2 in a series of posts based on the Q&A section in the recently released DVD, Case for a Creator, I offer the text of Meyer’s response to the question, Why are many engineers intrigued by intelligent design theory? As a software engineer — in both the artificial-intelligence and aerospace research and development fields — I recognized that there were huge problems with the thesis that natural selection and random variation could produce complex information-processing systems, because designing such systems is what I do. Here are Meyer’s comments in answer to the question posed to him above: The origin of a new structure, of a miniature machine, or an information-processing system, or a circuit, is an engineering Read More ›

Dawkins on enlightenment: I am optimistic that the physicists of our species will complete Einstein’s dream and discover the final theory of everything before superior creatures, evolved on another world, make contact and tell us the answer. I am optimistic that, although the theory of everything will bring fundamental physics to a convincing closure, the enterprise of physics itself will continue to flourish, just as biology went on growing after Darwin solved its deep problem. I am optimistic that the two theories together will furnish a totally satisfying naturalistic explanation for the existence of the universe and everything that’s in it including ourselves. And I am optimistic that this final scientific enlightenment will deal an overdue deathblow to religion and Read More ›

I’m a big fan of the Telic Thoughts blog, and I would encourage UD readers to visit TT.

For me, one of the great joys of visiting TT is Joy, one of my favorite TT authors and commentators. In a recent TT post, Orr Fisks Dawkins, Joy makes the following comment:
Read More ›