News

Here. Ryan Schaffer interviews Leo Behe, who hopes to study philosophy in the fall term: I’m going to a university this fall to study philosophy. In the future, I hope to write on the subject of religion and why I believe it is both harmful and false. – (“The Humanist Interview: The son of intelligent design heavyweight Michael Behe discusses his journey to atheism” The Humanist, September/October 2011) That said, he does not claim that his father forced religion on him. Rather, I would like everyone to realize that he doesn’t have any sort of religious agenda and he’s not trying to denigrate science in any way. And so … Long-held beliefs, especially beliefs developed during childhood, operate on a Read More ›

At BBC News (August 27, 2011), Pallab Ghosh reports “LHC results put supersymmetry theory ‘on the spot’” : Results from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have all but killed the simplest version of an enticing theory of sub-atomic physics. Researchers failed to find evidence of so-called “supersymmetric” particles, which many physicists had hoped would plug holes in the current theory. Promising: “The fact that we haven’t seen any evidence of it tells us that either our understanding of it is incomplete, or it’s a little different to what we thought – or maybe it doesn’t exist at all,” he said. Relax, Nash. If you’re willing to admit that maybe it doesn’t exist at all, you know you are doing physics. Read More ›

From “Mysterious Fossils Provide New Clues to Insect Evolution” (ScienceDaily, Aug. 15, 2011) , we learn: Scientists at the Stuttgart Natural History Museum and colleagues have discovered a new insect order from the Lower Cretaceous of South America. Though thought to be mayflies, Coxoplectoptera, however, significantly differ from both mayflies and all other known insects in anatomy and mode of life. The peculiar larvae, however, are reminiscent of freshwater shrimps. Their lifestyle turned out to be a major enigma: their mode of embedding and certain other characteristics clearly suggest a fluvial habitat. Their unique anatomy indicates that these animals were ambush predators living partly dug in the river bed. If so, all this raises another evolution conundrum: Darwinism (natural selection Read More ›

A while back, I wrote a note on how a government can gain control of the Internet (by criminalizing the hyperlink). Here’s another way: By making new rules that discriminate against blogs, vs. other sources of news. That’ exactly what the Canadian province of Quebec proposes, according to Franklin Carter at the Book and Periodical Council’s Freedom of Expression Committee: In Quebec, Culture Minister Christine St-Pierre is proposing to create “a new model of regulation of Quebec media.” Public consultations will be held across Quebec this fall. She wishes to distinguish in law between “professional journalists” who are committed to “serving the public interest” and “amateur bloggers.” State-recognized professional journalists would enjoy unspecified “advantages or privileges” over other writers and Read More ›

This Spiked interview by Tim Black with Raymond Tallis might be useful reading: This sense that our minds are not what we thought they were, that it’s our brains, and the natural-physical causal network of which they are part, that is really calling the shots has been lovingly embraced by politicos on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s a development that worries Tallis: ‘That’s when [neuromania] gets dangerous rather than merely irritating – when people start invoking brain science as a guide to social policy, as a guide to understanding criminal behaviour and so on. You’re then in the same territory as Cesare Lombroso [a nineteenth-century criminologist who believed criminality was physically inherited] and other characters who have since been Read More ›

Leaving ID theorists with a blank slate to deal with, instead of a horde of bawling trolls? In “Of Course: NYT Editor Suddenly Very Interested in Candidates’ Churches” (Townhall , August 25, 2011 ), Guy Benson notes, We have an unusually large number of candidates, including putative front-runners, who belong to churches that are mysterious or suspect to many Americans. Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons, a faith that many conservative Christians have been taught is a “cult” and that many others think is just weird. (Huntsman says he is not “overly religious.”) Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are all affiliated with fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity, which has raised concerns about their respect for the separation Read More ›