Denyse O'Leary

Here are the new additions to the Evolution and Intelligent Design Encyclopedia, from British physicist David Tyler. Read, for example, about adaptationist fantasies (how natural selection explains everything it doesn’t explain), why bipedalism (walking on two legs) is good for you (not like what you’ve been told), and what the fact that very old life forms had complex genomes means. Shhhh!! It means – generally – that Darwinism is, like, dead. Walk softly, for you tread on the Darwinbots’ dreams.

At Mindful Hack I have put up some information from a neurosurgeon on why the mind obviously isn’t merely the brain. Amazing stuff, and certainly NOT what you would hear from materialist cognitive scientist Steven Pinker.

Pinker posed a whole bunch of “dangerous questions” in the Chicago Sun-Times. What strikes me as remarkable is how UNdangerous his questions are.

Anyway, I decided to list and answer his questions, as follows:

Do women, on average, have a different profile of aptitudes and emotions than men?

[From Denyse: Yes, of course. Get pregnant, have and raise a baby, and you will understand. But so? (If you cannot carry out this program, not to worry, you have just made my case. Thanks much. Read on anyway.)] Read More ›

At Mindful Hack I have put up some information from a neurosurgeon on what the mind obviously isn’t – merely the brain. Amazing stuff, and certainly stuff you won’t hear from materialist cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, who has discovered questions that he thinks are “dangerous”, but I have no idea why. Today, non-materialism is dangerous. The rest is mostly lining for the floor of the bird cage.

Who will it be? The Dawkins delusion or you? Malcolm Chisholm, our Master of the Games, tells me, “We are up to 2170 simulations run so far. I have had no feedback, except about spelling, That is now corrected. And HERE is the link. He also says, “I will have another game ready in a day or so. I am going to post that on “a private list” first to see if anyone can spot bugs in it.” Play this one, and tell us what you think.

A propos Bill Dembski having to defend himself against a silly attack in top science mag Nature, a lawyer friend suggests taking a look at Nature‘s mission statement: First, to serve scientists through prompt publication of significant advances in any branch of science, and to provide a forum for the reporting and discussion of news and issues concerning science. Second, to ensure that the results of science are rapidly disseminated to the public throughout the world, in a fashion that conveys their significance for knowledge, culture and daily life. He wisely observes, To report advances and serve scientists means not to report setbacks, or the exposure of fallacies in widely-held theories that would tend to put mainstream science in a Read More ›

My Touchstone piece “Glorious Wild Things”is here (scroll down): We will never understand creation if we insist on separating glory and design from suffering, loss, and waste, because, bound in finite time and space, creation is full of suffering, loss, and waste as well. All must be taken together or put aside together, in a final decision for meaning or nihilism. The modern debate has decayed in part because that vision of the inseparability of the horror from the glory has been lost. Of course, Stephen Jay Gould was merely being tendentious when he dismissed our deep-seated fears of monsters as commercial hype. As a paleontologist, he well knew that, before humans ever walked the earth, there were terrible beasts Read More ›

Recently, Decima polled Canadians on the origin of humans – God dunit? God neverdunit? Dunno?

Here are the Canadian responses to the 2007 question by percentage, along with the US figures to a similar series of questions in brackets:

 Less than one in three Canadians (29%) believe that God had no part in the
creation or development of human beings. (US: 13%)
 Fewer still (26%) believe “that God created human beings pretty much in their
present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so”. (US: 46%)
 A plurality, but still only 34%, say that “human beings have developed over millions
of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process”. (US: 36%)

None of this surprises me particularly, … but there are some surprises when you break the figures down. Read More ›

Radio host and fellow UD blogger Barry Arrington notes that there may be progress in legacy media understanding of the intelligent design controversy.

Maybe, but an argument can be made for the fact that the slowness to “get” the possibility that Darwin could be wrong is part of a general trend toward decline, in favor of the blogosphere and other newer media. I cannot imagine advising anyone to learn about the intelligent design controversy by reading dead tree media or zoning out in front of whatever the idiot box normally offers on the subject. That would be like hiring a stupid person to observe and explain a complex situation. Read More ›

Over what now, you wonder, could the Pharyngula – usually as placid as a sea of glass – be freaking? Actually over something kind of stale. Years ago, at the Post-Darwinist, I blogged on the fact that one of the late Stephen Jay Gould’s friends (yes, he of Wonderful Life AND The Simpsons) said that Gould would never have signed the Darwin lobby’s Steves list (all the Steves in science that the Darwin lobby can find who agree with them). Pivar had his own take on evolution, which he thinks is much closer to what the original Steve really meant. And now his take is back for another run, too. Go here for the rest. Also, more fun today at the Mindful Hack, Read More ›

Audiophiles, go here for Jason Rennie’s excellent Darwin or Design audiobook, which you can listen to on line or buy. Rennie, of Australia’s ScPhi show has done a marvellous job of assembling a cast of dozens of key contributors to the intelligent design controversy. He offers such point men as P.Z. Myers, Sean Carroll, and Nick Matzke in one corner and Mike Behe, Guillermo Gonzalez, and Mike Gene in the other – and tons of your other faves – including top Canadian science fiction author Rob Sawyer. (Well, if he isn’t yet one of your faves, make it so.) Sal Cordova explains what ID is here. I talk about the media and ID here, predicting the past and postdicting the Read More ›

Malcolm Chisholm tells me that he has worked the bugs out of a new game called the Richard Dawkins Mutation Challenge. I’m not much good with games, so I am hoping others will try it and tell me what they think. It is especially timely in light of this.

Behe’s Edge of Evolution: A turning point in the evolution vs. intelligent design controversy Before dealing with Edge of Evolution, which I see as a turning point in the debate between Darwinism and intelligent design, permit me to briefly sketch the cultural landscape in which it has just appeared: … , two factors have protected Darwin as he approaches his 200th birthday – his friends and his enemies. 2. The Edge of Evolution: What exactly does Behe say about Darwinism? In Darwin’s Black Box, Behe was concerned to show that some elegant structures in life are beyond the reach of random mutation and natural selection (= Darwinism). In The Edge of Evolution , he seeks to draw up “reasonable, general Read More ›

Well everyone, actually. David Tyler discusses the recent startling admission that the claim that humans share 99% of our genes with chimpanzees has long been known to be wrong: For over 30 years, the public have been led to believe that human and chimpanzee genetics differ by mere 1%. This ‘fact’ of science has been used on innumerable occasions to silence anyone who offered the thought that humans are special among the animal kingdom. “Today we take as a given that the two species are genetically 99% the same.” However, this “given” is about to be discarded. Apparently, it is now OK to openly acknowledge that those who are involved in this research have never been comfortable that the 1% Read More ›

Bill Dembski scooped me on the latest idiocy of Darwinism’s idiot child, evolutionary psychology:

Until very recently, it was a mystery to evolutionary psychology why men prefer women with large breasts, since the size of a woman’s breasts has no relationship to her ability to lactate. But Harvard anthropologist Frank Marlowe contends that larger, and hence heavier, breasts sag more conspicuously with age than do smaller breasts. Thus they make it easier for men to judge a woman’s age (and her reproductive value) by sight — suggesting why men find women with large breasts more attractive.

and on Fred Reed’s hilarious take on it. Reed, of course, knocks the stuffings out of the pillow. Responding to “Blue-eyed people are considered attractive as potential mates because it is easiest to determine whether they are interested in us or not”, he notes,

I think of those millions of pitiful Chinese women, sobbing quietly in corners, “Oh, how can I let him know I’m interested when I have these horrible dark eyes? Maybe I can write him a letter….”

One thinks also of the advice Naomi gives Ruth in the Book of Ruth. I doubt Boaz knew what colour Ruth’s eyes were. It’s not clear how he could.

Still, we need to put a pin on the map for this latest outburst of evo psycho … Read More ›

There couldn’t be a better example of the warfare between religion and science than anesthesia in childbirth. Religious folk, we are told, opposed anesthesia in childbirth because women should suffer, right? Indeed, the claim that religious folk opposed such anesthesia has become a minor but regular component of the folklore of materialism. Medical historian A. D. Farr actually went to the trouble of methodically searching the literature from Britain in the 1840s and 1850s, where modern anesthesia during childbirth was first introduced there. He found that religious opposition to the introduction of childbirth anesthesia was a figment of later propaganda. How did the idea get started, despite a lack of evidence? Well, now, that’s a story …. Read the rest Read More ›