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That’ll be dogma as post-modernism sinks in. Yesterday, we were discussing an extraordinary declaration of war on measurement from a dean of “engineering education”. Lawyer and impresario Edward Sisson offers some thoughts: Engineering is, of course, intelligent design grounded on accurate knowledge of the material world. First, for example, regarding the journal that published the paper, Riley states that “the Journal of Education Engineering [the Journal New Criterion said had published this] pre-emptively passed on publishing this work because it is not an empirical study.” As to the focus of her paper, “rigor,” she says “rigor in this context seems to refer to formal research questions, theoretical grounding, appropriate methodology (narrowly empirical and too often viewed as exclusively quantitative). In Read More ›

Philosopher Jerry Fodor attracted attention in recent years by Incorrect criticism of Darwinism. During the news flurry around his recent passing, we learned of a free pdf from Rutgers, Against Darwinism, which provides an introduction to his thought on the subject. From the conclusion: From the viewpoint of the philosopher of science, perhaps the bottom line of all this is the importance of keeping clear the difference between historical explanations and covering law explanations. Just as there is nothing obviously wrong with historical explanations, there is likewise nothing obviously wrong with covering law explanations. Roughly, they start with a world in which the initial conditions and the natural laws are specified, and they deduce predictions about what situations will transpire Read More ›

From Soul of Science co-author (with Charles Thaxton) Nancy R. Pearcey at Fox News, Silicon Valley’s drug-fueled, secret sex parties — One more reason to hate the hookup culture Before reaching campus, students are primed by high school sex education courses that typically focus on the physical: on the mechanics of sex and the avoidance of disease and pregnancy. These courses reduce the meaning of sex to a how-to manual. Many students even say the programs make them feel pressured into having sex. In one study, teens reported that they felt more pressure from their sex education classes than from their girlfriends or boyfriends. Other segments of adult culture are complicit in sexualizing children at ever-younger ages. Dolls for little Read More ›

From a study reported by political science prof Benjamin Knoll at HuffPost: – 37% reject God-guided evolution and believe in a literal Adam and Eve who were not the process of biological evolution. These Mormons have a more literalist/fundamentalist view. – 37% accept God-guided evolution as the origin of life on Earth but also believe in a literal Adam and Eve created by God and not the result of evolution. Perhaps many in this group believe Adam and Eve to be a special exception to the evolutionary process while accepting evolution as the most persuasive explanation for all other life. — 13% accept God-guided evolution and reject the idea that Adam and Eve were separately created by God outside of Read More ›

From Stephanie Hertzenberg at Beliefnet:  Are Islam and Evolution Compatible? The question is controversial and hotly debated. Helpful information but some well-meaning misdirection: Some Muslims hold that evolution is partially compatible with Islam. At “Have Muslims Misunderstood Evolution,” a London event organized by the Deen Institute in 2013, Shaykh Yasir Qadhi argued that Islam is compatible with all of Darwin’s theory of evolution except in the case of humans. He claimed that, from an Islamic theological perspective, a Muslim can say that Allah inserted a created Adam into the natural order. This would be, he explained, as if Adam were the last domino placed in a line by Allah. Non-believers would see Adam’s domino as a casual connection or continuation from all Read More ›

From Notes and Comments at The New Criterion: If you are thinking of building a bridge, be careful if your engineer went to Purdue University. Donna Riley, the head of the engineering department at Purdue, has put the world on notice that “rigor” is a dirty word. In an article for Engineering Education called “Rigor/Us: Building Boundaries and Disciplining Diversity with Standards of Merit,” Professor Riley, who is also the author of Engineering and Social Justice, argues that academic “rigor” is merely a blind for “white male heterosexual privilege.” Yes, really. “The term,” she writes, “has a historical lineage of being about hardness, stiffness, and erectness; its sexual connotations—and links to masculinity in particular—are undeniable.” There follows a truly surreal Read More ›

From Evolution News and Science Today: Due to the tradition of professional scientific writing, major developments in scientific literature often arrive muffled in language so bland or technical as to be totally missed by a general reader. This, along with the media’s habit of covering up for evolution, is how large cracks in the foundation of Darwinism spread unnoticed by the public, which goes on assuming that the science is all settled and will ever remain so. A case in point is a recent article in the Journal of Mathematical Biology, a significant peer-reviewed publication from the influential publisher Springer. The title of the article announces, “The fundamental theorem of natural selection with mutations.” … Fisher’s theorem, offered as what Read More ›

We feared this would happen. From Sabine Hossenfelder at BackRe(action): Sometimes I believe in string theory. Then I wake up. But then I got distracted by a disturbing question: Do we actually have evidence that elegance is a good guide to the laws of nature? The brief answer is no, we have no evidence. The long answer is in my book and, yes, I will mention the-damned-book until everyone is sick of it. The summary is: Beautiful ideas sometimes work, sometimes they don’t. It’s just that many physicists prefer to recall the beautiful ideas which did work. And not only is there no historical evidence that beauty and elegance are good guides to find correct theories, there isn’t even a Read More ›

A friend writes to draw our attention to this 2014 book: by James Stroud, The Philosophy of History: Naturalism and Religion: What is philosophy? What is history? Is much of what we have been taught false concerning these two? Author James Stroud not only breaks down the often neglected field of philosophy of history but shows why much of what we have taken for granted in the subject of “”Origins”” belongs just as much in the field of history as it does in science. Supporting an open-philosophy of history versus the current closed-philosophy in place, Stroud systematically shows why the paradigm of Naturalism is most likely false and should therefore not influence the way the historian is forced to interpret Read More ›

Fisher’s theorem, reportedly proving Darwinism, is currently disputed in mathematical literature by William Basener and John Sanford.   (Paper.) The controversy is attracting quite some attention. Dr. Basener has kindly offered an explanation for one of the questions raised in a comment and, for reader convenience, we reproduce both the question and the response as a post: Question: Erasmus Wiffball at 7: William Basener (Bill B): Do you agree that ID proponents commonly mistake mathematical models of evolution as attempts to prove that evolution works? Would you please tell everyone here what Fisher’s objective was in formulating his model? What was he attempting to model? To what degree did he succeed or fail in what he was attempting to do? (Surely Read More ›

“The mission of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry is to promote scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims. … some of the founding members of CSI include scientists, academics, and science writers such as Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Philip Klass, Paul Kurtz, Ray Hyman, James Randi, Martin Gardner, Sidney Hook, and others.” Those people should weep. Maybe. Read this: 8. With the current administration, how do you think science education, mainly evolution, will change? Americans are becoming more accepting of evolution. The people President Donald Trump has hired and the decisions being made (see for example Florida SB 989) will slow down this positive trend. Darwin said, “Ignorance begets confidence more often Read More ›

From Neuroskeptic at Discover: In a new paper in the Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, Chris Drummond takes aim at the ‘reproducibility movement’ which has lately risen to prominence in science. … If we have multiple pieces of evidence for a hypothesis, but none of those pieces of evidence are reproducible, the hypothesis would have no support. Reproducibility of the primary evidence must be there first, before we can marshal the evidence to support our models. A model supported by lots of unreproducible evidence is a house built on sand. So I agree with Drummond that reproducibility, alone, is not sufficient to make strong science (I’m not sure if anyone thinks it is), but I stand by my Read More ›

From Evolution News & Views: Here we are in 2018, and we still don’t know who, when, or why ancient people left their marks in the Arabian desert in the form of large stone structures, some of them hundreds of meters long. But as we observed back in November, “All we know is that they were designed.” It’s a good example of intelligent design in action — the design science of archaeology. It’s one of many active areas of design-based research that clearly are propelling science forward. … What’s interesting is that there are very stunning natural structures in the same area: perfectly round volcanic craters that stand out vividly from their surroundings. So what’s the difference? We all know Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: To make the iconic, twisted double helix that accounts for the diversity of life, DNA rules specify that G always pairs with C, and A with T. But, when it’s all added up, the amount of G+C vs A+T content among species is not a simple fixed percentage or, standard one-to-one ratio. For example, within single-celled organisms, the amount of G+C content can vary from 72 percent in a bacteria like Streptomyces coelicolor while the protozoan parasite that causes malaria, Plasmondium falciparum, has as little as 20 percent. In single-celled eukaryotes, yeast contain 38 percent G+C content, plants like corn have 47 percent, and humans contain about 41 percent. The big question is, why? … Now that they’ve Read More ›

From Richard Gunderman at The Conversation: Wells, one of the founders of science fiction, was a staunch believer in science’s potential. Orwell, on the other hand, cast a much more skeptical eye on science, pointing to its limitations as a guide to human affairs. … Wells’ enthusiasm for science had political implications. Having contemplated in his novels the self-destruction of mankind, Wells believed that humanity’s best hope lay in the creation of a single world government overseen by scientists and engineers. Human beings, he argued, need to set aside religion and nationalism and put their faith in the power of scientifically trained, rational experts. … Orwell was not bashful about criticizing the scientific and political views of his friend Wells. Read More ›