Denyse O'Leary

Over at Neurologica blog, Steve Novella speculates about non-materialist neuroscience, about which he seems to have learned from New Scientist and the Discovery Institute’s News and Views blog. (I would have read books myself, but hey.) My favourite lines: I also think the New Scientist is correct in pointing out that the ID movement may be shifting their emphasis to neuroscience. I think it is fair to say that the ID attack on evolution has been largely a failure. They failed in Dover (where a conservative judge ruled that ID was warmed-over creationism and could not be taught in public school science classes), and the movie Expelled turned out to be a huge boondoggle. They are getting some traction with Read More ›

Was Darwin’s horrid doubt just horrid – or a reasonable fear?: … the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? I’d say that if his theory was true, horrid was a slam dunk (yes, you are an evolved monkey, no, your thoughts do not mean anything). But very little in science turned out to be what Darwin or his contemporaries thought. Non-materialist neuroscientists think that your mind is real and that it helps shape your brain. It is Read More ›

This seems like a good time to quote Tom Wolfe again,  in his interview with Carol Iannone, against barking mad pc rubbish invading scholarly disciplines. If only the sciences were immune – but fat chance, so here goes: People in academia should start insisting on objective scholarship, insisting on it, relentlessly, driving the point home, ramming it down the gullets of the politically correct, making noise! naming names! citing egregious examples! showing contempt to the brink of brutality! The idea that a discipline should be devoted to “social justice” is ludicrous. The fashionable deconstructionist doctrine that there is no such thing as truth, only the self-serving manipulation of language, is worse than ludicrous. It is casuistry, laziness, and childishness in Read More ›

Earlier, I called attention to this longish but very informative article by Carl Zimmer, “Now: The Rest of the Genome” (The New York Times, November 11, 2008). It pretty much blows the genetic reductionism I grew up with out of the water. The “gene” – that little coil of sugar that ran our lives back then – is a dead idea. Now here’s an exchange that caught my attention: “The way biology works is different from mathematics,” said Mark Gerstein, a bioinformatician at Yale. “If you find one counterexample in mathematics, you go back and rethink the definitions. Biology is not like that. One or two counterexamples — people are willing to deal with that.” More complications emerged in the Read More ›

Indeed, the extraordinary social skills of humans, compared with other primates, may be honed by constant practice with imagined or absent partners.

Climb down from the drapes, you idiot! The pattern looks better without you in the middle of it.

In the combox here, in response to this post, “scottrobinson” wanted me to be more clear as to where I stand on teaching creationism in science class.

I see now that my comments may require some unpacking if the reader is not familiar with the point of view that underlies them. So here goes:

1. I do not think that creationism should generally be taught in science classes because creationism is by nature an apologetics project: It harmonizes scripture or tradition with current findings of science. Hugh Ross (Christian), Gerald Schroeder (Jewish), Harun Yahya (Muslim), and Vine DeLoria Jr. (Native American) have all written in this area. I understand that there is a work in progress from Hare Krishna as well.

What should be obvious from my list is that a demonstrated harmony between current science and  a scripture or tradition is of interest only to those for whom a given work or way of life is scripture or tradition. Otherwise, it will sound like an attempt to introduce the religion itself in a more favourable light than other religions.

And how shall we address the Dalai Lama’s obvious disappointment with Big Bang theory in his book The Universe in a Single Atom? (Buddhists are happier with an eternal universe, or perhaps a Big Bounce universe, as recently proposed by Roger Penrose.)

I live in a multicultural society, and I will not attempt to prescribe for a monocultural society. But I would say that the obvious solution for a multicultural society is just not to have any such material on the curriculum.

2. That said, I am intrigued by the neo-fascists who want their government to hound creationist teachers. I worry that these people themselves would be perfectly happy teaching vast reams of Darwinian or Dawkinsian nonsense. Here are some examples of stuff they don’t like and have to teach around: Read More ›

In The Daily Telegraph, Martin Beckford tells us “One in three teachers says teach creationism alongside evolution” (07 N0v 2008).

The poll found that 31 per cent of teachers agree that creationism or intelligent design – the theory that the universe shows signs of having been designed rather than evolving – should be given the same status as evolution in the classroom, including 18 per cent of science teachers.

Half of those questioned agreed that excluding the alternative to evolution would alienate religious pupils, and almost nine out of 10 believed they should be allowed to discuss creationism if pupils bring it up.

Mr Bethell said: “Although over half of teachers either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the idea that creationism should be given the same status as evolution, there is a significant minority who believe that it should be given equal weight.

“Nearly half of teachers also agreed with Professor Michael Reiss’ sentiment that excluding alternative explanations to evolution is counter-productive and alienates pupils from science.

No surprise here, except, were I advising those teachers, I would tell them to keep quiet about their doubts for now. The people who fired Michael Reiss are perfectly capable of a purge, and indeed, a purge has already been threatened. Read More ›

When someone informs you that it (whatever “it” is) is in their genes – so forget asking them to grow up and accept some responsibility – show them this article: …. new large-scale studies of DNA are causing her and many of her colleagues to rethink the very nature of genes. They no longer conceive of a typical gene as a single chunk of DNA encoding a single protein. “It cannot work that way,” Dr. Prohaska said. There are simply too many exceptions to the conventional rules for genes. It turns out, for example, that several different proteins may be produced from a single stretch of DNA. Most of the molecules produced from DNA may not even be proteins, but Read More ›

Here are some realistic stats from Brit expert Richard Buggs: Looking closely at the chimpanzee-like 76% of the human genome, we find that to make an exact alignment, we often have to introduce artificial gaps in either the human or the chimp genome. These gaps give another 3% difference. So now we have a 73% similarity between the two genomes. In the neatly aligned sequences we now find another form of difference, where a single ’letter’ is different between the human and chimp genomes. These provide another 1.23% difference between the two genomes. Thus, the percentage difference is now at around 72%. We also find places where two pieces of human genome align with only one piece of chimp genome, or Read More ›

In “Francis Beckwith finally disowns ID” Bill Dembski and a number of others have offered a variety of comments about this piece, “The Truth about Me and Intelligent Design.”

Honestly, Beckwith disowning ID reminds me of a guy divorcing his wife ten years after she’s run off with the plumber. The question isn’t “Why, Frankie, why?” but “Why, frankly, why?”.

Last I heard from Beckwith, he was defending John Lilley’s scorched earth campaign against the academic deans at Baylor (deans 1, scorched earth 0, as I recall – even at dysfunctional Baylor, there is some stuff you just can’t do).

My take is that some philosophy types will always hate ID because it asserts the priority of evidence over theory.

Let’s look at a typical Darwinist theory: The peacock’s tale (cue pompous science doc intro music) Read More ›

From the Discovery Institute:

Turning Darwin Day into Academic Freedom Day

Next year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. As you can imagine, Darwinists have a full year of celebrations planned, and February 12th, Darwin’s birthday, is likely to be the high water mark for most of those celebrations. Every year Darwin Day celebrations get more and more elaborate and outrageous. Celebrants decorate evolution trees, sing Darwin carols and odes to natural selection, and eat from the tree of life.Academic Freedom Day.

Naturally, we don’t want you to miss out on the fun. On Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday (Feb. 12, 2009), we want students everywhere to speak out against censorship and stand up for free speech by defending the right to debate the evidence for and against evolution and turn “Darwin Day” into

Actually, the Darwin cult has become so ridiculous that it would be hard to parody. Just look at this ridiculous hagiography. And if they force it down school kids throats, some of it might wind up coming back again, too.

Video and Essay Contest: Grand Prize $500

All the details are here:

Who Is Eligible

Students currently enrolled in high school (grades 9-12) or as a college undergraduate may enter the contest. (High school students include those attending private, public, or home schools.) Essays must be submitted by an individual student, but videos may be submitted by a group of up to 5 students.The PrizesOne grand-prize winner will be announced and have his or her entry officially unveiled at academicfreedomday.com on Academic Freedom Day, February 12th 2009. The grand-prize winner will be awarded $500, and one essay runner-up and one video runner-up will receive $250. Up to 10 finalists will receive their choice of a free book or DVD.

The Deadline
Entries must be submitted to the YouTube Group “Academic Freedom Day Video Contest” here, by the end of business on January 23, 2009.

Here’s Ben Stein introducing the idea:

Also just up at the Post-Darwinist: Read More ›

In “Atheists Pick on God” (Sydney Morning Herald, November 2, 2008), Simon Webster explains:

LONDON buses will carry the slogan “There’s probably no God” next year, in a campaign paid for by an atheist organisation. Transport chiefs say it would never work in Sydney, where commuters wait at bus stops for so long that they eventually die and go to heaven, where God tells them: “There’s probably no bus.”

The British Humanist Association and prominent atheist Professor Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, are paying for the ads. They believe God is nothing but a figment of the human imagination, much like the T-Card and the North West Rail Link.

The news comes at a time when record numbers of Sydneysiders say they have lost their faith: despite all the promises of a second coming, there never will be an extension to the light rail network.

Premier Nathan Rees has called on them to find it again quickly: if Sydney Ferries is privatised it may be necessary for commuters on the less popular routes to learn to walk on water …

The rest here. The campaign would never work in Toronto either. Here, once you give up waiting for the bus and call a taxi, the bus turns the corner just as the taxi pulls up – which proves that the atheist’s explanation of the universe cannot be quite right.

Also just up at The Mindful Hack Read More ›

My friend Forrest Mims, survivor of Darwinist thug attacks, has recently been named one of the “50 best brains in science” by Discover Magazine (December 2008, page 43). The cover story informs us, “there may be no amateur scientists more prolific than Forrest Mims.” It is not on line yet.

The Discover article classes Mims as an Outsider and reads, in part, “There may be no amateur scientist more prolific than Forrest M. Mims III, 64, of south central Texas. He has published in major scientific journals such as Nature as well as countless general-interest publications. Mims began teaching himself science and electronics at age 11 and says he never received any formal training apart from a few introductory college courses in biology and chemistry.” I am told the list includes some other relative unknowns, as well as Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking (on the cover), Michael Griffin (head of NASA), James Hansen (global warming guru), E. O. Wilson (sociobiologist and evolutionist), Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google founders), Neil deGrasse Tyson (PBS Nova), Harold Varmus (NIH), and J. Craig Ventner (human genome).

The selection panel has good reason for its view of Forrest. For a man with little formal science training, Mims has done an astonishing amount of research that has been published in a variety of journals. He has written many popular articles, as well as books. He is probably best known for the books and lab kits on electronics projects that he had developed for Radio Shack over the years. He even has a claim to minor historical fame as a co-founder of MITS, Inc., which introduced the Altair 8800, the first microcomputer, in 1975.

Encouraged by her family, his daughter Sarah Mims had a journal publication while still a high school student.

However, Forrest told me yesterday that when he was first told by a Discover editor to expect his name to come up, he worried that it was a vulgar hit piece, retailing the “Scientific American” affair or the “Eric Pianka” episode. Read More ›

A friend alerts me to this interesting article, “Does Nature Suggest Transcendence?”, by Neil D. Broom in The Global Spiral (a Metanexus publication). Broom is Professor of Materials Science at the University of Auckland New Zealand.

My friend describes the article as “broadly pro-ID” – and I would be inclined to agree, except that I would not want Broom to be assailed by a horde of ass hats demanding that he recant. It’s the sort of article you must read to get the benefit of his careful thought, especially because it is adorned by well-chosen photographs and drawings:

… can natural selection be so easily dismissed as a wholly material, unconscious, purposeless process? I think it is fair to say that at one popular level the expression natural selection serves as a kind of mantra, an almost magical utterance that quickly allays any doubts a skeptic might entertain. It is uttered with power and authority when any kind of biological achievement required to be explained, and in the currency of a wholly material world. My argument is that the claim that natural selection explains the extraordinary (read life processes) while drawing only on the ordinary (read material processes), is not only bad science, it is also contradicted by the very narrative the materialist seems compelled to employ to present his or her story of life.

 
Referencing British biologist’s comparison of natural selection to engineers in a soap factory, he writes, Read More ›

I’ve been meaning for ages to review the pseudonymous* Mike Gene’s Design Matrix – and yes, I’ll get to it – but for now here is fun post at his blog, summarizing the incontrovertible truth about evolution and irreducible complexity Chris Ho-Stuart: However, Muller’s claim is that this [IC] is an EXPECTED result of evolution. Massimo Pigliucci: there is no evidence so far of irreducible complexity in living organisms. Blue Collar Scientist: Muller’s paper….contains a description of irreducible complexity, along with an explanation of how it comes about through the simplest of evolutionary means. It amounts to a prediction that “irreducible complexity” will actually be found in organisms. Niall Shanks and Karl Joplin: The redundancy we observe today in effect Read More ›