Denyse O'Leary

Why do scientists sometimes ignore warnings that theories are wrong? Even great scientists can get it all wrong, and it is interesting to see how and when they do.

Just plain big? How do animals get that way? Why the exploding palm tree explodes – or why it doesn’t Frog from hell? Well, that’s how Nature News is telling it. Apollyon, check your e-mail. The frog is loose again.

February 19, 2008 K.D. Kalinsky (Note from Denyse: An ID theorist asked me to publish this essay on detecting design in nature. It is exactly as the scientist gave it to me except that – I have linked the sections for easier Web handling – all the notes have been moved to the end. – I don’t see a font choice for superscripts or subscripts in Blogger, so have decided to enclose the element that would be super or subscripted in two periods. In the number 10.-64. assume that .-64. Is a superscript. In the equation, P.f. = M(E.x.)/N, assume that .f. and .x. are subscripts. A .pdf version of his paper exists but is not on line as of Read More ›

Jonathan Wells reflects on how almost everything Darwin believed is being disconfirmed: There was a time when I would half-heartedly join in the chorus that praises Darwin as a great scientist, even though some of his ideas were mistaken. Now, when I look for Darwin’s positive contributions to biology, I see only that he made a persuasive case that something analogous to artificial selection operates in natural populations (a case also made by others, including A.R. Wallace). That and a few minor studies on barnacles, orchids, and such. But natural selection has never been shown to accomplish anything more than its artificial counterpart — which is to say minor changes within existing species. All of Darwin’s Big Ideas — universal Read More ›

Okay, I have probably got myself into a peck of trouble by deciding to just say what I think about Darwinism and Evolution Sunday and all that. I used to be tremendously polite to senior clergy, teachers, and opinion leaders who know that you must obey the system and say nice things about Darwin, whether or not it follows traditional religion or otherwise makes any sense. But I cannot even pretend to make excuses for them any more. I have decided to stop being a dhimmi for Darwin. I will no longer support or promote any excuse whatever about the havoc that the Darwinists have wrecked on our society, which they are celebrating this year and next year. I’ve explained Read More ›

Jane Harris has a new article at Design of Life blog about a newly discovered genus of palm in Madagascar (yes, that’s right, a GENUS): “New findings in science: self-destructive palm puzzles botanists” The tree waits about 100 years to flower and then explodes in tonnes of flowers and then just dies. I’m glad local trees in the Toronto area are more measured in their response to sex. (They live man y decades but flower decorously every year, and never just explode in flowers and die.) Like, the palm tree’s sort of behaviour would be okay for weeds, but … for TREES? And no one has any idea yet how it got itself to Madagascar.

Darwin’s theory of evolution – essentially, that life, including human life, occurs without purpose and perishes without consequence – popularized points of view that would have been considered unacceptable to most Westerners in earlier times. Indeed, that has always been its greatest appeal, to judge from the thousands of editorials on how Darwin’s great feat was to show that man is just a two-legged animal – a biped who affects trousers. Excerpt: West quotes political philosopher Leo Strauss, explaining that scientific materialism triesto understand the higher in terms of the lower: the human in terms of the subhuman, the rational in terms of the subrational (p. 4). To test his assumption, take a pop science mag and make a mental Read More ›

Charles Walcott, secretary  of the Smithsonian, had found the equivalent of Noah’s Ark. He found every animal phylum, or – as physicist Gerald Schroeder puts it – the “basic anatomies” of all animal life forms today. Cause for rejoicing? No, because there was a problem. The problem was that the find obviously did not support Darwin’s theory of evolution: So what did he do?

Posted by Denyse O’Leary for Jane Harris At one time, hybrids were thought to be common among plants but rare among animals. But as more animal hybrids are found, some scientists ask whether hybrids are not a more common means of creating new species than previously thought. … An intense focus on Darwin’s theory that natural selection is the main cause of new species has often meant that other possibilities are neglected. For more, go here.

Or are we just connecting to the universe, as the Design of Life authors think.I’ve always found the connection between soft math and useful information easy (like, you get charged for a side of fries you never ordered, and never would have ordered). But HARD math? That’s about something else for sure. Go here for more about why hard math matters. Also: Today at the Post-Darwinist Christianity Today features news item on young astronomer denied tenure Catholic Darwinists to congregate in Rome? Also: Today at The Mindful Hack: The myth of the Christian Right: What happens when you ask Democrats if they too are born again? God must exist, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to enjoy this debate.

Well, he could be, at least about some things.Don’t shoot! Look, no one expected that the human being would have only a few more genes than the worms that survived a space shuttle blowup and were returned to their owners. We could be wrong about lots of other things too. Anyway, here’s Jane Harris-Zsovan’s story, just up at The Design of Life: Lolle’s 2005 paper with Robert Pruitt of Purdue University, Genome-wide non-mendelian inheritance of extra-genomic information in Arabidopsis”, suggested that a mutant variety of this species overrides its genetic code and does indeed revert back to its wild state.Starting in the 1990s, the researchers began using specimens of A. thaliana to study plant cuticles. Lolle and Pruitt bred plants Read More ›

Recently, Bill Dembski and Jonathan Wells published a textbook supplement called The Design of Life. It’s pretty controversial, as you can tell by all the ignorant remarks and insults at the Amazon site.

The book explains the reasons why Darwin was wrong. Stuff you won’t find in the textbook your taxes pay for (or your student loan pays for if your prof puts it on the course.)

You can find out more about the book (or even buy it) here.

Meanwhile, trusty Canadian bloggers Jane Harris-Zsovan and I blog at the Design of Life blog on items that help explain why the book was written: To help students understand the facts of life that don’t mesh with Darwinism.

Now, maybe you know all this stuff. Great! Have you considered encouraging friends or family who DON’T know it to have a look?

Remember, your nearest and dearest are always hearing from legacy media, schools, and museums why Darwin was right (your tax dollars at work again, usually).

If you don’t help them understand why that’s mainly propaganda in the service of materialism, can you really blame them for just saying, “Okay, whatever … whatever they want me to believe, I’ll just believe, so they will shut up and go away … “?

For example, here are some stories that someone you know might appreciate:

Origin of life: Popular science media solve the origin of life every few weeks. Huh?

Origin of species? Check out the beefalo and see if you STILL believe the textbook. Read More ›

Help this guy. He wants to know when artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence.Here are his numbers so far: A question very simply crafted poll I’m asking a few friends to gain a better perspective on the time-frame for when we may see greater-than-human level AI. Results posted below… if you wish to participate, email me (bruce-at-novamente.net) an answer for the following: [ ] 2010-20 [ ] 2020-30 [ ] 2030-50 [ ] 2050-70 [ ] 2070-2100 [ ] Beyond 2100 [ ] Never [ ] Prefer not to make predictions [ ] Other: __ He recounts, “Many people have replied Never, so I’ve separated this answer from the replies and have added it to the survey results (above). – Read More ›

In the wake of the fact that Guillermo Gonzalez’s appeal has been dismissed by the Iowa Board of Regents (this was expected, actually, and more later), Discovery Institute has launched an Academic Freedom petition: Across America, the freedom of scientists, teachers, and students to question Darwin is coming under increasing attack by self-appointed defenders of the theory of evolution who are waging a malicious campaign to demonize and blacklist anyone who disagrees with them. You can help by signing the Academic Freedom Petition If you are an American, you can go here to sign. By the way, academic freedom is under severe attack in many forums, not just the study of design in the universe. Go to The Fire to Read More ›

I’ve been meaning to catch up with the Catholic side of the controversy over Darwinian evolution, and now at last I have a moment: Recently, Pope Benedict XVI gave a talk in which he said explicitly: “Man is not the fruit of chance or a bundle of convergences, determinisms or physical and chemical reactions,” he told a meeting of academics of different disciplines sponsored by the Paris Academy of Sciences and Pontifical Academy of Sciences. This sort of language explains why Catholic Darwinist Ken Miller got so upset with Christoph, Cardinal Schoenborn, a close B16 associate, over his famous 2005 op-ed in the New York Times. Miller was upset because he knows as well as anyone that this and other Read More ›