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The question of the fossil ages is comparable to a central problem in forensic crime investigation, namely establishing the time of death. Did the creatures in the fossil record die tens of millions of years ago or did they die recently (say less than 50,000 years ago). It is mildly unfortunate that criticism of accepted mainstream fossil ages are conflated with YEC, because strictly speaking the age of the fossils is a formally distinct question from the question of Young Earth Creation (YEC) and the age of the Earth. One reason that criticism of the geological record has been resisted (even within ID circles) is the affiliation of such criticism with YEC. But this does not have to be the Read More ›

Creationists are now beginning to embrace the Design argument. If biology is Intelligently Designed, it stands to reason the designs can be used to teach humans how to construct designs. The implications of ID are not purely religious. This fact is often forgotten. The presumption that biology is mostly cobbled together junk is a hindrance to medical and technological advancement. What benefit is there in viewing biology as cobbled together mistakes that happen to be reproductively selected for? None of any consequence. But if biology is truly designed by a mind beyond anything we can comprehend, we can learn engineering from the all-wise creator himself. To that end, here is a book written by creationists describing the discovery of such Read More ›

Since BA77 likes posting so many off topic comments on so many threads, and because others probably want to talk about off topics, I’m creating the first official off topic thread at UD just for off topic comments. YAY! Here is my off topic, my pastor tried to get the congregation to stick around for 20 minutes longer than usual to take care of business matters requiring a vote. To give us incentive to remain, he said he’d pass around a copy of Cosmopolitan Magazine with a photo of his wife in it :shock:! Sure enough, she was in cosmopolitan magazine in the May 1965 issue. She was in a photo that featured former Congressman James Weaver, her dad…. http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jdweaver.htm Read More ›

The Lord is Subtle but he is not malicious. Albert Einstein I have second thoughts. Maybe God is malicious. Albert Einstein Look at the blue galaxies in this photo. Astronomers conclude the 33 of the blue galaxies are only 11 galaxies that are producing an optical illusion created by gravitation lensing (as predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity). Image : This gravitational lens shows a strange blue objects stretched. They are spread in a circle in this picture, but are only multiple views of a single ring galaxy. The analysis showed that at least 33 images of 11 different background galaxies are discernible in this image. Predicted by general relativity by Albert Einstein, a number of gravitational lensing have Read More ›

Jay Richards who co-authored pro-ID book Privileged Planet has now come out with a best seller that ranks #4 in the NY Times! This is his 2nd NY Times best seller. Congratulations! Infiltrated: How to Stop the Insiders and Activists Who Are Exploiting the Financial Crisis to Control Our Lives and Our Fortunes NOTES:1. HT Rob Crowther, Discovery Institute 2. photo creditshttp://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519r4sESkkL._SY346_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_.jpg 3. Jay W. Richards, PhD, is coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Indivisible and author of Money, Greed, and God, which won a 2010 Templeton Enterprise Award. He is the Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics and a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute. 4. No wonder Jerry Coyne wanted to shut down Read More ›

Jeff Tomkins was a faculty member of Clemson, was reviewer of mainstream biology journals, and ran Clemson’s Genomics Institute. Like biologist Robert Carter, he’s given up a promising career in secular academia and research to devote himself to resisting the falsehoods in evolutionary biology. I wrote about his presentation at ICC 2013: Geneticist Jeff Tomkins vs. Evolutionary biologist who got laughed off stage. His website is: http://designed-dna.org/ He also wrote a pro-ID book for creationists. which normally retails at $32, but which can be purchased at a deep discount here: The Design and Complexity of the Cell The functions within the cells of our bodies are foundational to our existence. Understanding these functions has made the environment and the processes Read More ›

Probably, with possible exception of Mike Gene. My good friend and colleague Casey Luskin writes: ID offers a strong positive argument, based on finding in nature the type of information and complexity that, in our experience, comes from intelligence alone. I will explain this positive argument further in Part B of this article. Those who claim ID is nothing more than a negative argument against evolution are misrepresenting ID. – ID uses a positive argument based upon finding high levels of complex and specified information. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/08/what_is_the_the075281.html#sthash.D6IZUcb1.dpuf I rarely disagree with Casey Luskin, and Casey echoes the majority view of ID, and I’m clearly in the minority to disagree with him. However, “positive argument of ID” in some people’s view would Read More ›

Coyne is soliciting questions for Dawkins to answer on his book tour, but Coyne will not allow certain kinds of questions to be passed on: Please, though, avoid questions that involve the following: • Extremely technical questions about genetics or evolution. reader-survey-do-you-have-a-question-for-richard-dawkins/ We all remember what happened the last time someone asked Dawkins a technical question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nkjn5mZZvs0 Ok, so can anyone formulate dumbed down questions for Dawkins? Ok, I’ll give it a shot, and readers are invited to try. Question: “Do you think society ought to allow married men to sleep around? If so, can you please convince my wife that it’s all right for me to have some fun?” (See: Richard Dawkins defends the idea of having a mistress Read More ›

PZ Myers came out with his book recently, “The Happy Atheist”. Did Richard Dawkins endorse it? Did Jerry Coyne endorse it? Did Sam Harris endorse it? Look at the endorsements at Amazon for the Happy Atheist. Did they so much as make an obligatory internet post saying, “great book”. How about a 1 line tweet? How about Massimo Pigliucci saying in effect: good riddance, PZ. Dawkins used to hang out at PZ’s website a lot, and it was there Dawkins made the comment that made Elevatorgate explosive. Haven’t seen Richard paying anymore visits to PZ. Dawkins’ new book will be coming out September about Dawkins favorite topic — himself. Will PZ promote Dawkins book? We’ll see… NOTES 1. HT Mike Read More ›

There is some benefit to ID if even parts of the YEC hypothesis are confirmed, the most notable example right now is Sanford and Cos work which was presented at the Cornell Conference. In a previous thread, I discussed the distant starlight problem is a thorn in the side of YEC. [ the Vodka designation means the following material likely has errors but has data that are worth considering ] There are some experiments that have indirect bearing on the question YEC. Any experiment that may enable us to augment existing physics, particularly Einstein’s relativity and Maxwell’s equations is good for YEC, and thus possibly good for ID. But Einstein’s relativity and Maxwell’s equations have numerous experimental proofs ( unlike Read More ›

If an unrepeatable, unobservable POOF was the way life came about, how could we scientifically infer it? Researchers of late have essentially resorted to A new mechanism of evolution — POOF. Appeals to POOF are hinted in the hopeful monster hypothesis and the mutationist/neutralist school of evolution and even punctuated equilibrium. And when Koonin appealed to multiverses to answer OOL, imho, the naturalists conceded to a POOF mechanism just like they were forced to concede to a POOF mechanism for the Big Bang. I listed the absence of seeing the Intelligent Designer and lack of direct observation and direct experiment as good reasons to reject ID. See: Good and bad reasons for rejecting ID. But on a more basic level, Read More ›

Each species has large numbers of unique genes that seem to have magically arisen without any ancestor. Evolutionists are saying they essentially POOFed into existence. These genes are referred to as ORFans or orphan genes. From the Max Plank Institute: However, with the advent of sequencing of full genomes, it became clear that approximately 20–40% of the identified genes could not be associated with a gene family that was known before. Such genes were originally called ‘orphan’ genes Evolutionary Origin of Orphan Genes 20-40% of the genes discovered cannot be explained by common ancestry or common descent. So what mechanism is left to explain it? Special creation? But evolutionists can’t accept special creation, so they just pretend they’ve made a Read More ›

I didn’t say that, but a comprehensive research study by Christopher Silver, a member of the Chatanooga Freethought association. Silver tried to show not all non-believers fit the negative stereotype of “angry, narcissistic, un-agreeable, anti-social dogmatists”, but in the process highlighted the very group that exactly fits that stereotype, namely the anti-theist (or loosely the New Atheist or GNU Atheist). The study can be found here: www.AtheismReserach.com A study came out that classified non-believers into six groups: Intellectual Atheist/Agnostic (IAA) Activist (AAA) Seeker-Agnostic (SA) Anti-Theist Non-Theist Ritual Atheist/Agnostic (RAA) To understand the typology and results, one has to go here: www.AtheismReserach.com But here is the Anti-Theist: Anti-Theist The fourth typology, and one of the more assertive in their view, we Read More ›

That was the shocking headline in 2005 in prestigious scientific journal Nature: Black holes are staples of science fiction and many think astronomers have observed them indirectly. But according to a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, these awesome breaches in space-time do not and indeed cannot exist. … Black holes are one of the most celebrated predictions of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which explains gravity as the warping of space-time caused by massive objects. The theory suggests that a sufficiently massive star, when it dies, will collapse under its own gravity to a single point. George Chapline thinks that the collapse of the massive stars, which was long believed to generate black holes, actually leads Read More ›

Dallas Haugh (aka the Creative Pooper) was one of Michael Shermer’s alleged victims according to this characterization: In fine witch-hunting style, Myers then broadly solicited more anonymous rumors to back up his anonymous rumor, resulting in more people coming forward claiming Shermer raped them, tried to rape them, or filled their wine glass for nefarious purposes, including a fat LARP-y guy named Dallas Haugh who was fairly sure Michael Shermer raped him. Breaking News: Michael Shermer issues cease and desist order against PZ Myers Haugh apparently posted a suicide note recently, and PZ Myers led efforts to rescue the Creative Pooper. PZ published up-to-the minute updates of his rescue efforts here: Do you know the person behind the tumblr “Creative Read More ›