Denyse O'Leary

No, we don’t know why, but neither does this person. Not short of an opinion about Uncommon Descent, though:

In typical fashion, Uncommon Descent are hoping for the worst: The “Darwinism” killed his faith. (Must. Control. Rage. Must not stoop to their level…) Let’s hope their just being despicable and there’s nothing to their speculation other than malice. Giberson is a good man and we need him in this fight.

Hard to say why “public theology” student Arni Zachariassen, who is supposed to favour “Thoughtful Theological Reflection” (blog’s title), should be in a barely controlled rage. Did Uncommon Descenters say that Darwinism had killed Giberson’s faith? The consensus here is that he was “a bridge too far” for – that is, not a good fit with – the BioLogos organization.

(Note: – AZ has since clarified his position. See this comment.)

Put another way: Giberson was way better for us than for them. Read More ›

So junk DNA turns out to be “junque” DNA? You know the scenario – it was junk to the guy cleaning out his attic, but the dealer he sold it to for $3.00 got $10K from a collector. And all legal too. A perfect snapshot of the theistic evolutionist.

Over at ENV, Casey Luskin reflects on how Francis Collin’s slam dunk arguement for Darwinism (junk DNA) is “pushed Into Increasingly Small Gaps in Scientific Knowledge” (May 2, 2011), observing: Read More ›

Some wonder. A friend of Uncommon Descent wrote recently to say that

In a lecture (November 2008) at Case Western University, prominent origin of life researcher Robert Hazen, author of Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life’s Origin, essentially admits that the burden of proof is on those who oppose ID, not those who propose it.

Some attribute such admissions to the dead stall of origin of life research for 150 years – except that popular media perpetually conflate bright ideas with concrete findings.

Here are some quotations from the transcript: Read More ›

It really depends on how much care has been taken to preserve them.

Recently, Barry Arrington posted on how we can be sure of something (for example, that bin Laden is dead). The burden of proof is on any who might claim otherwise.

For some, the question has arisen whether the oral transmission of the Torah (the books of Moses in Jewish tradition) could be reliable. What about memory lapses, deliberate alterations, etc., especially during the time when oral memory and transmission were normal, alongside scrolls (which were expensive and time-consuming to produce).

Well, I asked the ID community reb, Moshe Averick, author of Nonsense of a High Order: The confused and illusory world of the atheist, how do you know that the Torah goes back to the time of Moses? Here is what he says, Read More ›

This was the question: For a copy of The Nature of Nature , explain why either Richard Dawkins or Francis Collins is the cuter poster boy for selling Darwinism.

The question was first asked (that I ever heard of) by a prominent Canadian cosmologist, who wrote to a number of peers asking for feedback. He wanted a pollster to do a study too, but surely that would be a waste: We should only poll people on matters that will lead somewhere. Essentially, both these men are going to go away and do what they want, no matter what the tally, so why bother?

The winner is StephenB at 21, for clarity of analysis and precision of expression:

So, who is the better con man? In terms of gaining new recruits, I think Dawkins inspires more passion, but Collins probably gets better numbers. So, I give a slight edge to Collins. Whenever possible he avoids clarity of expression and practices the crafty art of “strategic ambiguity,” allowing potential supporters with widely divergent world views to read their own convictions into his message. Notice how, with maddening imprecision, he informs his listeners that there is “no conflict between religion and science,” prompting them to fill in the missing spaces with Christ and Darwin.

StephenB, write me at denyseoleary@gmail.com.

Incidentally, among those who cast a definite vote, it was a tie (not just Dawkins’ “nicer tie”). More below, but watch for the next contest. Read More ›

It builds on you because he makes his key point last.

In “Same Old New Atheism: On Sam Harris,” (The Nation May18, 2011), Jackson Lears critiques new atheist Sam Harris’s view of morality, beginning with an account of evolutionary psychology that could have come from this desk,  and then…  Read More ›

ID friendly philosophers Tim McGrew (of Western Michigan University) and Lydia McGrew offer some thoughts on “undesigned coincidences” as evidence for the reliability of documentary evidence. Using a passage in the Gospel of John, Lydia argues,

… as John is telling the story about the feeding of the five thousand, it would be quite natural for him to say that Jesus asked Philip where they could buy bread if he were really an eyewitness–that is, because he remembered that Jesus did ask Philip. (Tim talks about why it was Philip in the interview.) But John himself might have had to stop and think for a moment if someone had asked him, “Why did Jesus ask Philip rather than any of the other disciples?” Presumably when John told the story, he wasn’t particularly thinking about some special reason for Jesus to select Philip for the question.But if someone were forging the story as fiction, he would have a reason for choosing to use a given disciple as a character at that point in his fictional narrative, and therefore he would be unlikely to choose that character without making the reason clearer to his readers.

Interesting observation. A commenter notes that Read More ›

Of course, it was put there by a Canadian poet.

Recently we learned that “An original piece of “living poetry” has been created in a lab in Canada.” Christian Bok encoded some of his verse into a DNA strip and got it inserted into an E.coli bacterium:

Dr Bok used cryptography to embed his poem into the genetics of the bacterium, devising a chemical alphabet in which each letter is represented by a specific triplet of nucleotides. So, for example, the nucleotide sequence “ATA” codes for the letter “y” and GTG stands for the letter “n”.

– Rachael Buchanan, “Poet writes verse in bug’s genes and receives reply”, BBC News (28 April 2011).

Better: Read More ›

Interesting discussion at “Don’t defund SETI, science broadcaster pleads.” Could SETI just merge with ID and study evidence of intelligence in signals along those lines? Otherwise, it could merge with astrobiology units at various universities and restrict itself to looking for evidence of bacterial life in outer space. SETI has always been handicapped by the Saganesque silliness about space aliens, which made it vulnerable to any politician looking for a program he can trim or cut, by making it sound ridiculous. Put another way, the unemployed don’t care if there are space aliens or not. But that would cut the heart out of the mission of a project that, through SETI@home, has assembled vast volunteer computational resources. What a waste. Read More ›

Yes, really.

Recently, in a guest edited issue of philosophy journal Synthese, anti-ID Louisiana U prof Barbara Forrest broomsticked – of all people – Baylor prof Frank Beckwith, framed as an ID supporter. And anyone who keeps up with the issues knows he isn’t. The scandal here is that Forrest is supposed to be a big expert on ID (testified at the Dover show trial), but didn’t seem to know that easily found fact. Synthesedisowned her article, putting a disclaimer on it. Meanwhile, another far better known philosophy prof, Larry Laudan, is outraged at being broomsticked in the same issue of Synthese by Robert Pennock, another anti-ID-for-a-living prof.

A friend just whisked this under my nose:

There is a discussion online about the close dates between Francis Beckwith’s submission to Synthese [in response
to Forrest] and its acceptance. What has not been brought up—if the right information was given—is the submission and acceptance dates of the articles in the evolution/ID issue. It turns out all of the articles in that issue of the journal (except one), including Forrest’s, had the exact same turn-around time as Beckwith’s. So, if Beckwith’s article is problematic for a quick turnaround, then so is virtually the entire issue. Here are the submission and acceptance dates for the articles in question: Read More ›

Why are they

?? fronting Darwinism to Christians “You can have Jesus and Darwin too”, apparently unaware of the fact that many once-virtuous, still faithful evolutionists  are checking out of Darwinism into the great unknown, due to evidence? Why doesn’t the evidence that Darwinian mechanism probably doesn’t work as  advertised mean anything?

= Why do Christians need to be the last people on the planet to believe in and defend the big Darwindunit? Read More ›

In “The Middle East is ripe for a scientific revolution”, (New Scientist 27 April 2011) Ahmed Zewail offers, I see three essential ingredients for progress. First is the building of human resources by promoting literacy, ensuring participation of women in society and improving education. Second, there is a need to reform national constitutions to allow freedom of thought, minimise bureaucracy, reward merit, and create credible- and enforceable- legal codes. Few would argue with that; it’s an essential foundation for intellectual civilization. But many sources question whether the actual state of science in the Western world today, especially in sensitive areas like evolution, provides grounds for hope that intervention will help. Trying to “Islamize” Darwin would hardly produce a happier Middle Read More ›

Non-materialist neuroscientists, friends of design, often talk about “mindfulness,” that is, the capacity of making changes in the brain by directing attention. Or, as psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz puts it, You are not your brain. Recent research suggests one difference mindfulness makes: Read More ›

Overhearing the squabble noted by Steno between “gnu atheists” Jerry Coyne and P.Z. Myers on the one hand and National Center for Science Education and its British counterpart, BCSE (Darwin schools lobbies) on the other, my first thought was of a proverb I learned as a child: “When thieves fall out, honest men come by their own.”

The point isn’t, of course, that any of these people are thieves; the proverb expresses a general truth: There are fights people can’t afford to be in, but they are in them anyway and others will benefit from the fallout.

Essentially, Coyne and other “gnu”* atheists are attacking the Darwin-in-the-schools lobbies for pretending that Darwinism is compatible with traditional Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. He’s right, and Darwin thought much the same thing, as we know from his private notebooks, released some years back. We’ve been saying hose things ourselves for years here about Evolution Sunday, Michael Dowd’s thirty-three ring circus of “evolutionary Christians,” and other “dhimmis for Darwin” enterprises. But what is the consequence of the “gnu atheists’ squabbling publicly with the dhimmis for Darwin and making sure the world knows about it?

One thought: Next time you are pestered by the “Jesus loves Darwin and you should too!” crowd, I suggest sending them the link to Jerry Coyne’s open letter and suggest they discuss it with him, not you. When Darwinists disagree, who can decide?

And if local school boards are smarming us that Darwinism is without religious significance, point out that among Darwinists themselves, that view is highly contested, never mind what the ID community thinks.

*Jerry Coyne’s perspective on the squabble is interesting because he may have invented the term “gnu atheist”, Read More ›

I wrote the index to Nature of Nature , a multilateral discussion of the issues around intelligent design (which originated in a conference that got Bill Dembski fired from Baylor while back.) Hardest index I ever wrote, and I have written hundreds. What makes it  difficult is that – unlike with most books – the authors disagree about just about everything. So one can’t just identify indexable terms, one must actually read. Such a rare practice these days. I ended up just telling the publisher to be patient – as I would have to be – so I could get it right. But that index should be good for the reader, to help identify sources for widely made assumptions. For Read More ›