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There is the common fallacy that ID was created to sneak creationism into public high schools. Actually, one could make the case that ID was created to sneak “creationism” into universities. 🙂 ID literature is more sophisticated than creation science literature, perhaps because it is (except for Of Pandas and People) usually directed more toward a university audience… Eugenie Scott Eugenie Scott defeats Ed Brayton and I feel that the essential argument has to be carried on at the higher level, at the university level, and it’s interesting you see that the people that come from the NCSE side are always trying to say this is just an issue in the high schools Phil Johnson The link below is a Read More ›

I am a finance person by trade. I am a mediocre student of science and engineering at best and never progressed very far in my disciplines (relative to those in my circles), but I am curious about many things, and I love internet debates. Internet debates aren’t science, I don’t represent that anything I write on blogs is worth the reader’s time, but I write them anyway because blogs are an extension of my thought process as I try to understand the world around me. These blogs and discussions are a public diary of my quest to understand the world around me. Many engineers near where I live are hired to construct satellites and space probes, and in order to Read More ›

HT: Nullasullus Evolutionary theory itself is already in a state of flux… all the central assumptions of the Modern Synthesis (often also called Neo-Darwinism) have been disproven Denis Noble Physiology is rocking the foundations of evolutionary biology Nice to hear the truth for a change. The paper drew on the work of James Shapiro (who by the way had co-authored a paper with Discovery Institute Fellow, Richard Sternberg here). Jerry Coyne has a dislike of Shapiro’s writings: I hate to give attention to my Chicago colleague James Shapiro’s bizarre ideas about evolution, which he publishes weekly on HuffPo rather than in peer-reviewed journals. His Big Idea is that natural selection has not only been overemphasized in evolution, but appears to Read More ›

There are two versions of the metric for Bill Dembski’s CSI. One version can be traced to his book No Free Lunch published in 2002. Let us call that “CSI v1.0”. Then in 2005 Bill published Specification the Pattern that Signifies Intelligence where he includes the identifier “v1.22”, but perhaps it would be better to call the concepts in that paper CSI v2.0 since, like windows 8, it has some radical differences from its predecessor and will come up with different results. Some end users of the concept of CSI prefer CSI v1.0 over v2.0. It was very easy to estimate CSI numbers in version 1.0 and then argue later whether the subjective patterns used to deduce CSI were independent Read More ›

The scientific enterprise entails: 1. observation2. hypothesis3. testing Consider this passage from the class text of an introductory cosmology class I took once upon a time: galaxies farther than 4300 megaparsecs from us are currently moving away from us at speeds greater than that of light. Cosmological innocents sometimes exclaim, “Gosh! Doesn’t this violate the law that massive objects can’t travel faster than the speed of light?” Actually, it doesn’t. The speed limit that states that massive objects must travel with v < c relative to each other is one of the results of special relativity, and refers to the relative motion of objects within a static space. In the context of general relativity, there is no objection to having Read More ›

Mark Perakh, who was an author at Panda’s thumb passed away. From the NCSE website: Perakh was born (as Mark Yakovlevich Popereka) on November 2, 1924, in Kiev, Ukraine. After serving in the Soviet Army during World War II, he earned the equivalent of a PhD in physics from the Odessa Polytechnic Institute in 1946. From 1950 to 1973, he conducted research and taught physics in several universities in the USSR, receiving a Diploma of Doctorate of Sciences from Kazan Institute of Technology in 1968. He emigrated to Israel, where he changed his surname to Perakh and was appointed a professor of physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in 1973. He subsequently emigrated to the United States in 1978, Read More ›

Taxonomic nested hierarchies don’t support Darwinism or common descent, actually the opposite. Michael Denton convincingly argued that nested hierarchies can be used to argue against macro evolution. If the fish are always fish, then they will never be birds, reptiles, apes, or humans. From a forgotten book called Catholics and the Theory of Evolution, there is a quote of Platnick and Nelson who were pioneers of transformed cladism: ‘Darwinism . . . is, in short, a theory that has been put to the test and found false’ Dawkins was clearly unhappy with the claims of Nelson and Platnick and the transformed cladists: It isn’t that any transformed cladists are themselves fundamentalist creationists. My own interpretation is that they enjoy an Read More ›

Johns Hopkins invited creationist Ben Carson to speak at the 2013 graduation. Unfortunately, he chose to withdraw as the speaker because gay rights activists complained about Carson’s comments against gay marriage. What is notable is that it is probably well known by now at Johns Hopkins that Carson is a creationist, and that didn’t stop the Johns Hopkins from inviting him to speak. Ben Carson Withdraws as Johns Hopkins Graduation Speaker Dr. Ben Carson announced Wednesday that he is withdrawing as graduation speaker at Johns Hopkins University, ceding to demands from students concerned about his controversial recent comments about gay marriage. “Given all the national media surrounding my statements as to my belief in traditional marriage, I believe it would Read More ›

Martin Cadra has a wonderful blog focusing on non-Darwinian views on evolution. He recently highlighted some rare publications by field biologists who provide empirical evidence that challenges the idea that Darwinian evolution is the source of butterfly mimicry. Here is an excerpt: Since Darwin’s time mimicry is presented as one of the best example of the efficiency of natural selection. Several species should have been shaped by natural selection to resemble or mimic dangerous or poisonous species. It is supposed that protected by their shape and coloration they deceive their predators. Thus mimicry confers them a survival advantage. In many cases mimicry is believed to be found among butterflies where palatable species mimic unpalatable ones (so called Batesian mimicry). In Read More ›

Some recent posts by Jerry Coyne brought back memories of this article: So if we don’t have free will, what can we do? One possibility is to give in to a despairing nihilism and just stop doing anything. But that’s impossible, for our feeling of personal agency is so overwhelming that we have no choice but to pretend that we do choose, Why you don’t have free will Pretend? As in “make believe”? As in live one’s life according to a presumed falsehood? A religious person at least has some conviction (even a mistaken conviction) he is following the truth, but Coyne “knows” what he is following is false, but still does it. Nuclear physicist Dave Heddle offers another criticism: Read More ›

Duane Gish passed away a few weeks ago, and even though I’m late in reporting it, I felt it important to offer a small tribute to him since he fought Darwinism for much of his life. I didn’t always agree with him, but before the ID movement, he was one of the few sufficiently competent voices in the world that articulated the case for intelligent design (albeit in a creationist context). From the NCSE website: The young-earth creationist Duane T. Gish died on March 5, 2013, at the age of 92, according to Answers in Genesis’s obituary. Born on February 17, 1921, in White City, Kansas, he served in the U.S. Army from 1940 to 1946 in the Pacific Theater Read More ›

Jerry Coyne has infiltrated a heretofore secret ID operation at Ball State University. Since the secret is now out and in the hands of the Darwinists, I may as well report on it. Ball State University, in Muncie, Indiana, is a public university (i.e., part of the state university system). … The course is taught by Eric Hedin, an assistant professor at Ball State’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. In one of its guises it’s an “honors” course, “Inquiries in the Physical Sciences,” which fulfills the science requirement for students as part of the University Core Curriculum: Science Course at Ball State University Look at the ID sympathetic bibliography: Bibliography of the Syllabus Coyne sounds the battle cry: This has Read More ›

There was an interesting poll of biology teachers in Pennsylvania that were given the freedom to respond to more than one choice when given the opportunity to express belief in evolution, creation or ID. If evolution is defined as “change over time”, then even creationists and ID proponents could be said to believe in evolution. That seems to be suggested by the latest poll: Is evolution missing link in some Pennsylvania high schools? Some 20 percent of science teachers in survey say they believe in creationism April 28, 2013 12:25 am …. Ninety percent chose evolution; 19 percent said they believe in creationism, not defined in the questionnaire; 13 percent said they believe in intelligent design; and another 5 percent Read More ›

Arsonists reportedly destroyed a well known Science Center in Naples Italy that promotes Evolutionism. From the pages of the Journal Nature: http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/496169c On the night of 4 March, unknown arsonists destroyed the famous City of Science centre in Naples. This shocking event has been publicly welcomed by some hard-line creationists in Italy, who disapprove of the teaching of evolution at the centre. ….. The conservative commentators who instead seemed to rejoice at the centre’s destruction include the national news paper Il Foglio, which applauded the flames as purification against the sourge of evolutionism — “a nineteenth-century superstition” destined to bring young people to “despair and simian behaviors”. This inflammatory anti-Darwinism has been rapidly amplified on the Internet. …. Italy’s current Read More ›

In order for a biological system to have more biological complexity, it often requires a substantial increase in thermodynamic entropy, not a reduction of it, contrary to many intuitions among creationists and IDists. This essay is part II of a series that began with Part 1 The physicist Fred Hoyle famously said: The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable to the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein. I agree with that assertion, but that conclusion can’t be formally derived from the 2nd law of thermodynamics (at least those forms of the 2nd law that are stated in many physics and engineering text Read More ›