…such as, for instance, those LINE elements? Wired magazine weighs in with an article about the shifting fortunes of so-called “junk DNA.” Anyone following the ongoing discovery of functional roles for DNA once assumed to be evolutionary rubbish should agree that this is the very worst heuristic for biology: I don’t know what X does; therefore, X probably does nothing. Wrong.
David DeWolf, professor of law at Gonzaga University and a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, explains in today’s Boston Globe why questions about teaching evolution can either be silly and tendentious (“Okay, who doesn’t believe in evolution?” — duh) or thoughtful. Alas, not many media types — let’s be honest — want to do the thoughtful thing. Doesn’t play in the headlines the way the silly questions do: “Senator Mockworthy Sez Earth is Flat, His Constituents Agree.” (‘Flat’ Left Undefined To Allow for Maximum Hilarity; Mockworthy Answers the Question Anyway.) Nor is thoughtful readily used for short clips on the Daily Show or Colbert Report. Still, one can hope. If most people know that the question was dumb, they’ll Read More ›
…we’ll deny tenure to anyone who wants to pursue the ideas, or develop them to the point where they can make predictions. If that sounds like a Catch-22, it is. Iowa State University Professor of Physics John Hauptman explains his No vote on Guillermo Gonzalez’s tenure decision as a simple matter: intelligent design isn’t science. Hauptman liked Gonzalez as a colleague: He is very creative, intelligent and knowledgeable, highly productive scientifically and an excellent teacher. Students in my Newspaper Physics class like to interview him. None of that counts, however, as Hauptman sees it. Rather what counts is the definition of “science.” Intelligent design, which Hauptman compares to the ancients attributing the growth of grain to the god Ceres, just Read More ›
Or something like that. This book looks WAY interesting…here’s the blurb from the University of California Press: The world is configured in ways that seem systematically hospitable to life forms, especially the human race. Is this the outcome of divine planning or simply of the laws of physics? Ancient Greeks and Romans famously disagreed on whether the cosmos was the product of intelligent design or accident. In this book, David Sedley examines this question and illuminates new historical perspectives on the pantheon of thinkers who laid the foundations of western philosophy and science. Versions of what we call the “creationist” option were widely favored by the major thinkers of classical antiquity, including Plato, whose ideas on the subject prepared the Read More ›
Jonathan Wells, Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, will be speaking today (Friday, May 25), on the icons of neo-Darwinism and the role of DNA in living things, at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara. The full-size event poster is here.
You see these gels, and you worry. So you contact the author, and he tells you, “Hey, relax — I’m a natural cause, just like you are. These are all natural events. Don’t fuss. Whatever happens, happens.” Are you going to let the publication stand? No. As a recent editorial in the Journal of Biological Chemistry points out, the manipulation of images by deliberate intent or purpose compromises the integrity of scientific inquiry. Science itself depends on our ability to detect natural versus intelligent causes. While the author of a manipulated image is of course natural, in familiar senses of that word — you can kick him, for instance — he is also intelligent, meaning that an effect he caused Read More ›
Michael Shermer and I will be debating evolution and intelligent design at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo on Thursday, April 26, 2007. Venue: Chumash Auditorium, located at the second floor of the University Union. The debate starts at 8:00 pm; doors open at 7:30 pm. The event is free to Cal Poly students, $10 at the door to general public — so have those Cal Poly IDs ready.
Assuming my plane can make it into the Philadelphia airport today — balmy weather the East Coast is having, eh? — Professor Stacey Ake of Drexel University and I will be presenting opposing viewpoints on ID & evolution tonight at Temple University. This is the same series in which Marcus Ross and Peter Dodson recently spoke. Tonight’s program starts at 6 pm and goes until 8:30. This event is free and open to the public. The lectures will be located in Gladfelter Hall, 1115 W. Berks Street, Room 13.
About one year ago, Sahotra Sarkar and I debated ID and evolution in front of an overflow audience at the University of Texas-Austin. Sahotra and I had known each other since the mid-1980s, when we were graduate students sharing Bill Wimsatt as our primary advisor. As background for the UT debate, Sahotra sent me a couple of chapter drafts from his forthcoming book on “creationism” — a book now available from Blackwell. One criticism that came up both during the debate [here’s some post-debate commentary], and in discussions at Austin bars afterwards, was the perception that ID bad guys circumvent the normal processes of scientific review by arranging debates in front of lay audiences, instead of academic peers. Having just Read More ›
Marcus Ross, the young ID-friendly paleontologist recently featured in the New York Times, will be giving a lecture on intelligent design and the Cambrian Explosion at Temple University today (Monday, April 9). The lecture will be located in Gladfelter Hall, 1115 W. Berks Street, Room 16. Also speaking (for evolution) will be dinosaur paleontologist Dr. Peter Dodson of the University of Pennsylvania. Dodson has been a skeptic of the dino-to-bird hypothesis, and has interacted with Ross at professional meetings. Their exchange today should be fascinating. The lectures begin at 6 and run to 8:30 PM. This event is free and open to the public.