Denyse O'Leary

Here’s an interesting reflection on the accelerating collapse of legacy mainstream media: A curious fact emerged from the frenzied search through U.S. politician Sarah Palin’s e-mails (which turned up nothing much), that the Big Media had enlisted their readers’ help in goingthrough the boxes of administrivia. In which case:

One embarrassing aspect of this episode, among several, is that major newspapers like the Times and the Post don’t seem to have the resources to review a few boxes of emails to determine whether there is anything there of interest. Otherwise, why would they solicit help from hundreds of readers? In my business, litigation, it is not unusual for parties to produce tens of millions of documents. A production of 13,000 emails would be considered minuscule. That our major newspapers evidently don’t have staff to do this minimal amount of work speaks volumes about their decline. – “Another embarrassment for the legacy media,” (Powerline June 10, 2011)

It’s not only people who vote for Palin’s party who have noticed. This story flew in Canada.

In the past, that level of reader collaboration with a story was usually impossible, quite apart from the fact that, to former media culture, it would be unthinkable. While these measures may stave off a specific stage of decline, they mostly demonstrate why the decline must proceed.

How will this stage of the decline of nanny media affect the design controversy? Read More ›

In The Guardian (25 May 2011), Mark Vernon reports on Princeton’s Peter Singer’s gradual coming round to the view that, if there is no objective truth, morality – and specifically the immorality of ignoring climate change – cannot be grounded in anything. Speaking to a group of Christian ethicists at Oxford, Singer said that his current focus is climate change, but he sees that the “preference utilitarianism” he was previously comfortable with,

… runs into problems because climate change requires that we consider the preferences not only of existing human beings, but of those yet to come. And we can have no confidence about that, when it comes to generations far into the future. Perhaps they won’t much care about Earth because the consumptive delights of life on other planets will be even greater. Perhaps they won’t much care because a virtual life, with its brilliant fantasies, will seem far more preferable than a real one. What this adds up to is that preference utilitarianism can provide good arguments not to worry about climate change, as well as arguments to do so.

Worse, some would add,

(See also: “Ed Feser on Peter Singer’s shift, and “Objective morality and Peter Singer.”)

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In an effort to discredit a group hosting climate change skeptics, along with the skeptics themselves, the The Guardian‘s Leo Haig, an environment blogger charges,

That these characters are meeting up once again to thrash out these issues is no great revelation or surprise. After all, they wear their agenda with pride and promulgate it in the media and on the internet week in week out.What is more surprising, perhaps, is that some of them are happy to accept the invitation of an organisation that has promoted intelligent design and seems to tread a very fine line indeed between fighting “Islamic fascism” and outright Islamophobia. Are these speakers happy – or even aware – of the company they will be keeping this weekend? Is it fair to assume they did their homework on this group before accepting their invitation to be flown to LA to participate in the event? (10 June 2011)

Promoted intelligent design? Maybe so, if you consider that one of the current topics is Read More ›

In Nature News (8 June 2011), Emma Marris recounts how evolutionary biologist D. S. Wilson is trying to apply  his theories to once-prosperous Binghamton, New York (pop 47,000). In “Evolution: Darwin’s city,” she explains that he has focused much of his research on “the long-standing puzzle of altruism,” (“why organisms sometimes do things for others at a cost to themselves”).

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The challenge Wilson has undertaken is to turn bad neighbours into good ones, and unwilling students into willing ones, using evolutionary psychology (though puzzled colleagues doubt that he is really doing EP). The problem is that he simply doesn’t have the needed grasp of human nature. Evolutionary psychology makes that impossible, as we shall see.

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Some wonder why that’s even a puzzle, where humans are concerned. Darwinian social theory dictates that the default switch must be set to selfishness, because then the awesome power of natural selection can be shown. From an ID perspective,  the human default switch is not in fact set to selfishness exclusively and natural selection plays a limited role in human history. So Wilson’s “puzzle” disappears in favour of innumerable conflicting motivations, many of which do not happen to be especially selfish.   Read More ›

A reason captured in photos: Here, Barry Arrington notes, “Natural Selection Defies the Odds,” As in

Recently the management of a casino hired Professor Hannum to investigate a roulette player whom they suspected might be cheating. The house has a huge mathematical advantage in roulette, which is why the casino suspected something other than random chance was involved when the player parlayed a few thousand dollars into over $1.4 million.

Professor Hannum crunched the numbers, however, and told the casino that while the player’s run was very unlikely (about an 80:1 shot), it was not so unlikely as to suggest cheating. And sure enough, over the next few gaming sessions the player blew his entire $1.4 million stack.

Yes, that’s just the trouble. We are forever being told, as he goes on to note, how the magic of natural selection bests the odds, when in fact no natural force can do so.

A friend writes to tell us a remarkable story from Kenya about a moment when natural selection fails: Three cheetahs spare tiny antelope’s life, … and play with him instead” (Daily Mail, 5th February 2010) Read More ›

Recently, we noted Baylor College of Medicine neuroscientist David Eagleman’s new “neurolaw” book, Incognito. The basic idea, driven by evolutionary psychology, is that criminal law would improve if we dropped the illusion that people are responsible for their behaviour. Perhaps social justice minded supporters hope it will bring about prison reform, an end to capital punishment, or such.

They hope in vain. Here’s my MercatorNet article in which a defense lawyer who specializes in capital punishment explains why that probably won’t happen:

This is not a controversy between the String ‘Em Up Gang and the Prison Reform Society. All parties want a just and humane system; they differ fundamentally as to whether they think that personal responsibility is an illusion. Read More ›

It wasn’t like this years ago. I remember Rick Sternberg writing to me mid-decade, about how the Smithsonian honchoes were, at that time, holding meetings to decide his fate. The problem was: They had to get rid of him because he doubted the Darwin lobby’ theories, but had broken no rules. They did, of course, get rid of him, and that time with impunity.  When a film, Expelled, was made, pulling a number of such incidents together, some of the very people who helped engineer the witch hunts loudly denied that they had taken place.

I remember the gifted young astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, a specialist in habitable planetary zones, denied tenure at Iowa State. It was probably due  in large part to the attacks of an atheist religion prof. Gonzalez just couldn’t believe what had happened to him.

So, when I was talking to Granville Sewell recently, and saw that he  was radiantly confident that he would receive an apology, because there was a legal agreement, I was a bit concerned. Having – from years of covering this beat – much more experience than hope, I warned him: The Masters of the Universe are “science,” and as such, are above the law and exempt from common decency. Read More ›

Noticing what Steno did here, that animal rights activist philosopher Peter Singer is moving toward the idea that morality has an objective basis, anti-ID Catholic philosopher Ed Feser responds. Noting that Singer is looking for an “intuitive” basis for morality, he writes,

Moral intuitions track objective moral truth in only a very rough, general, and mutable way. Practically they are useful – that is why nature put them into us – and they might provide a useful heuristic when philosophically investigating this or that specific moral question. But intuition does not ground moral truth, it is not an infallible guide to moral truth, and it should never form the basis of a philosophical argument for a controversial moral position.

But that won’t work. Read More ›

Some were surprised when I linked Christianity Today’s new semi-simian Adam and Eve with involuntary euthanasia. But the link is much more direct than some suppose.

There is, first, the whole, huge question of adjusting our thinking from the idea that we are descended from Adam and Eve to the idea that we are ascended from them. That is essentially a different religion from Christianity, and I was indeed surprised that Christianity Today failed to observe the fact. Would they have given over their pages to the proposition that perhaps Christians should be Buddhists? It would make more sense. Buddhism is not a dishonorable creed; far from it. Christians don’t think that Buddhism reflects ultimate reality. But there is world of difference between, say, Buddhism and Darwinism. Darwinism not only doesn’t reflect ultimate reality, it defaces it.

But here I want to focus on the argument for euthanasia. It was succinctly captured in the title of a movie some years back: They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

I rarely meet a convinced Darwinist who does not support euthanasia (and abortion, and human embryonic stem cell research).

I rarely meet Read More ›

Naomi Schaefer Riley, a former editor at the Wall Street Journal, is the author of the forthcoming The Faculty Lounges .?.?. And Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get the College Education You Paid For” complains about high-price, low-impact education here, and says something interesting about legacy media journalism along the way:

Think about it this way: Suppose I start a print newspaper tomorrow. I might think I’m selling excellent journalism, while my “readers” are actually using my product to line their birdcages. It might work out fine for a while. But the imbalance in this transaction would make it difficult to talk in general terms about improving the product or whether the product is worth what I’m charging. I might think I should improve my grammar and hire more reporters. My customers might want me to make the paper thicker.- “What is a college education really worth?” (Washington Post, June 3, 2011).

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Yes, this, one, on why there is no Adam or Eve. Just ancestral primates who happened to become us  (and a key editor is mad at me (?) for complaining about the new spin.)

Meanwhile, Canadian Christian Darwinist Denis Lamoureux pffftt!! At BioLogos. No, really.

Here’s president Darrel Falk:

In general, our experience has been that theologians are in one of two camps. Either they work within the framework of a non-historical Adam and Eve or they believe the scientific conclusions will eventually prove to be deeply flawed and humans were not created through an evolutionary process after all.

Good strategy that. Backtrack after the damage is done.

Sources tell me Lamoureux wasn’t having any of that reasonable doubt stuff. Can’t reproduce what he wrote, as it has been sponged. Read More ›

A guy who has been a hack, a flack, and a prof tells us what we suspected …

Journalists, on the other hand, usually treat anything as true if someone in a position of ostensible authority is willing to say it, even anonymously (and if no one is going to sue over it). The accuracy of anyone’s statement, particularly if that person is a public official, is often deemed irrelevant. If no evidence is available for an argument a journalist wishes to include in a story, then up pop weasel words such as “it seems” or “some claim” to enable inclusion of the argument, no matter how shaky its foundation in reality. What’s more, too many journalists believe that their job description does not require them to adjudicate between competing claims of truth. Sure, there are “two sides”—and only two sides—to every story, according to the rules of objectivity. But if both sides wish to deploy lies and other forms of deliberate deception for their own purposes, well, that’s somebody else’s problem.- Eric Alterman, “The Professors, The Press, The Think Tanks—And Their Problems,” Academe Online, (May/June 2011)

more here

Reflection: Read More ›

Here, we meet Baylor College of Medicine neuroscientist David Eagleman, described by a dean as ““a rock star in so many ways,” who wants to do for neuroscience “what Carl Sagan did for astrophysics.”

Which is what?

A fan of “possibilianism” (which writer Lewis describes as “a kind of anything-goes agnosticism”), Eagleman has focused on neurolaw, the idea that people are not responsible for their actions, but are the victims of their brain processes. For such a man he is oddly deficient in normal intuitions,as Lewis notes:

He thinks a lot, and he thinks hard, but for a man whose father was a New York psychiatrist (his mother was a high school biology teacher), he’s surprisingly unreflective. When the family moved to New Mexico, his father kept busy by dealing guns, serving in the Army Reserve, and volunteering in the police force mounted patrol. Musing out loud that such a man presumably had a law-and-order mentality, I asked Eagleman how his dad felt about his son’s latest research, which encourages the justice system to focus more on rehabilitation and less on punishing criminals. “You’re right,” he said. “I think he’s closer to the retributivist side of the argument.” Then he stopped, nonplussed, as if I’d made an uncannily accurate conjecture. “How did you guess that? That’s interesting . . .” Which left me, in turn, nonplussed that he thought it was a guess.- Jim Lewis, “Mind Games,” Texas Monthly (June 2011).

Which has left many people, of all persuasions, wondering why Read More ›

And not even just a different story read backwards, like I thought?

Liberty University biology prof David A. DeWitt, author of Unraveling the Origins Controversy, commented on my characterization of the overlapping codes of the genome. Seeing that Christianity Today is actually taking BioLogos and yesterday’s science seriously, I had written,

A friend, a faithful Christian in science, was dismayed by the story. He is an information theorist. … The genome, to take one small point, is full over overlapping codes. (It’s as if a short story read backwards is a flawless different short story, and sections of it, read letter by letter down the right hand side are a flawless paragraph.)

and DeWitt replies,

In the mitochondrial genome the overlapping codes are for different subunits of the same protein complex (ATP Synthase). So it is not even that “backwards is a flawless different short story” it is another volume in a series of short stories involving the same characters!

which all happened, of course, merely by the magic of Darwin’s natural selection acting on random mutations. But presumably Christian Darwinists are free to dress it their unbelievable scenario in God talk as long as they feel like it.  Only,  Read More ›

Here’s my Salvo “Deprogram” column, on atheists who are not Darwinists:

To hear it from the New Atheists, Darwinism is the atheist’s creation story, the Genesis from which no Exodus follows. As Richard Dawkins is often quoted as saying, Darwinism enables an atheist to be intellectually fulfilled. If so, there are a number of atheist and agnostic thinkers out there who are intellectually deprived. Or are they?[ … ]

Other atheists get off the train to nowhere at the origin of life or the origin of the human mind. In his famous essay, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, Thomas Nagel provides a sensitive account of the limits of human understanding of animals’ minds.5 Less well known is the fact that he named Steven Meyer’s ID-friendly Signature in the Cell (Harper One) a Book of the Year for 20096 and that he questions whether human intellect is explicable on Darwinian principles.7 Yet this is a man who also says, “I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”8

– “Neither God Nor Darwin? Atheists & Agnostics Who Dare to Doubt,” (Salvo 17, Summer 2011)

I offer a suggestion about what an atheist or agnostic needs to make it work.

Also: Non-profit Salvo has just received a matching grant of $50,000, so if you donate a bit, thanks to the magic of a wealthy donor, your dollar becomes two – but only until June 30. Be magical this summer.

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