vjtorley

Professor Naomi Oreskes, the author of an influential 2004 study titled, Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, has penned a remarkable piece in The Guardian, in which she accuses top climate scientists of “climate denialism,” for publicly declaring that we need to expand nuclear energy to stop global warming, as renewable sources won’t meet our energy needs. “Climate denialism” is a term which smacks of a witch-hunt. But in this case, Professor Oreskes has bitten off more than she can chew. (H/t Eric Worrall, Judith Curry.) Oreskes defies the consensus: most serious reviewers agree with the pro-nuclear scientists whom she criticizes A couple of weeks ago, four leading climate scientists – Dr. James Hansen (professor at Read More ›

Highlights: Methodological naturalism is widely regarded as a cardinal rule of scientific methodology. This methodological principle excludes all references to the supernatural from scientific discourse: it says that God-talk has no place in science. In Part One of this series, after carefully distinguishing methodological naturalism from six other principles, I argue that methodological naturalism is properly defined as an injunction: when doing science, we should assume that natural causes are sufficient to account for all observed phenomena, and for precisely this reason, all talk of the supernatural is banished from science. The Intelligent Design movement makes no pronouncements about who the Designer of Nature is, but deliberately leaves open the possibility that the Designer is a supernatural Being (i.e. God). Read More ›

In February 1987, a supernova appeared in the Southern skies, and remained visible for several months. Giant squid, with their large, powerful eyes, must have seen it, too. But if you believe that the act of perception takes place at the object, as Professor Egnor argues in his perspicacious reply to my last post, then you will have to maintain that the squid’s perception of the stellar explosion took place at the location of the supernova itself: somewhere in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy about 168,000 light years from Earth. The problem is that the object itself ceased to exist nearly 200 millennia ago, long before the dawn of human history. Even if the squid that witnessed the explosion Read More ›

Professor Michael Egnor is not only an accomplished neurosurgeon, but also an articulate exponent of Aristotelian philosophy. In his latest article, however, he makes a fantastic claim which is foreign to Aristotle’s thinking: he asserts that whenever you perceive a distant object, your perception of that object occurs outside your body, rather than inside it. In Egnor’s own words: When you perceive music from your radio, your perception of the music occurs at your radio. When you perceive a tree in your yard, your perception of the tree occurs at the tree. When you perceive the moon, your perception of the moon occurs at the moon. Perceptions occur at the object perceived, regardless of distance, regardless of location. It seems Read More ›

A whopping 97 percent of the media elite are pro-choice, according to a 1995 survey conducted by Stanley Rothman and Amy E. Black, which attempted to partly replicate a 1981 study of journalists working at top media outlets. Reporting their findings in a Spring 2001 article for the journal Public Interest, Rothman and Blacks found that the media elite held strikingly liberal views on abortion and a range of other issues. Among the findings: Nearly all of the media elite (97 percent) agreed that “it is a woman’s right to decide whether or not to have an abortion,” and five out of six (84 percent) agreed strongly. Three out of four journalists (73 percent) agreed that “homosexuality is as acceptable Read More ›

Amid media speculation about the possible motivation of the Colorado Springs shooter who killed three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic last Friday, one thing seems to have been overlooked: the slain officer, The Rev. Garrett Swasey, was actually a pro-life pastor (h/t Terry Mattingly). Time magazine reports that the officer was “heavily involved in his church, a non-denominational evangelical place of worship called Hope Chapel where he was a co-pastor.” Hope Chapel’s doctrinal statements can be viewed online here. The Chapel’s statement on marriage is doctrinally conservative, firmly opposed to gay marriage, and its affirmation that “children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord” is staunchly pro-life (emphases mine – VJT): It is Read More ›

Matthew Cobb is a professor of zoology at the University of Manchester and a regular contributor over at Why Evolution Is True. Recently, while critiquing a cartoon from xkcd (shown above), he argued that our DNA is the mindless product of a series of historical accidents. But then he let the cat out of the bag, at the end of his post: On a final note, in some cases, within this amazing noise, there are also astonishing examples of complexity which do indeed appear to be the result of optimisation – and they would boggle the mind of anyone, not just a cocky computer scientist in a hat. In Drosophila there is a gene called Dscam, which is involved in Read More ›

Professor Jason Rosenhouse has written an unflattering review of Michael Ruse’s new book, Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know, which also discusses the trial of Galileo. Rosenhouse gets one important point right about Galileo, while lambasting Ruse’s assertion that “much of the problem was brought on Galileo by himself.” (In the interests of fairness, I should mention that Ruse’s book has been highly praised by no less an authority than Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson.) For my own comments on the Galileo affair, see my earlier posts here and here [scroll down to #2]). Rosenhouse writes (bolding in all passages below is mine – VJT): The fact is that the Galileo story is exactly what Ruse’s “anti-religious zealots” say it Read More ›

Blogger Tim O’Neill, who has a Master of Arts degree in medieval literature and who describes himself as a “Wry, dry, rather sarcastic, eccentric, occasionally arrogant Irish-Australian atheist bastard,” has created a blog site dedicated to educating New Atheists about some basic facts of history. His latest article, Scientists and “Rationalists” Getting the Historical Jesus Completely Wrong, is a highly entertaining read. In his first blog article, Why “History for Atheists”?, O’Neill explains his motives for creating his new blog (green bolding mine – VJT): Does the world need yet another blog?  Perhaps not, but it seems I do.  Back in 2009 I began Armarium Magnum, focused on history book reviews; mostly of books on ancient and medieval history.  Occasionally I’ve Read More ›

In a recent post titled, Was Jesus a real person? – see what denialism looks like, Professor Larry Moran declares that as far as he knows, “the evidence that Jesus actually existed is not strong and, even more importantly, there’s no independent evidence that he rose from the dead or performed miracles.” Moran is miffed that Dr. James F. Grath, who has a Chair in New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University, Indianapolis, accused him (and Professor Jerry Coyne) of “denialism” for rejecting mainstream historical scholarship about Jesus and voicing skepticism about whether Jesus really existed. Moran complains: “Is it ‘denialism’ to think that the Biblical Jesus — the one who performed miracles and rose from the dead — Read More ›

Over at Why Evolution Is True, Professor Jerry Coyne has written a post mocking an anthropologist for claiming that human beings aren’t apes. Not only is Coyne’s reasoning muddle-headed, but his biology is embarrassingly wrong. Heck, even I could spot his mistakes – and I’m not a scientist. The anthropologist who has had the temerity to declare that humans are not apes is Professor Jonathan Marks, who teaches biological anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In an article on his PopAnth blog titled, Are we apes? No, we are humans, Marks insists that we are related to apes: “indeed,” he writes, “we are closer to a chimpanzee than that chimpanzee is to an orangutan” and “we know Read More ›

Over at the Skeptical Zone, Petrushka has written a post arguing that “DNA is a template, not a code.” In today’s post, I’d like to briefly review the reasons why we claim that the genetic code is a literal reality, not a metaphor, and explain exactly what a code is. But before I do that, I’d like to critique Petrushka’s short post, titled, What Is A Code? (October 20, 2015): Lots of heat surrounding this question. My take is that a code must be a system for conveying meaning. In my view, an essential feature of a code is that it must be abstract and and able to convey novel messages. DNA fails at he level of abstraction. Whatever “meaning” Read More ›

Brazilian Intelligent Design Society President emeritus Enézio E. De Almeida Filho informs us that rabid ID-critics in his country are accusing Intelligent Design advocate Dr. William Dembski of fabricating the following quotes from Schopenhauer and J. B. S. Haldane in his book, The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design (Intervarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 2004, p.20), because he failed to document their sources. These critics, who I’m told are mainly atheists and agnostics, are claiming that the two quotes below are not genuine: “The acceptance of radical ideas that challenge the status quo (and Darwinism is as status quo as it gets) typically runs through several stages. According to Arthur Schopenhauer, ‘All truth passes through three stages. Read More ›

Computer programmer Glenn Williamson now claims that ICR geneticist Jeff Tomkins made an elementary error when using the nucmer program to show that human and chimp DNA are only 88% similar. Williamson also asserts that 60 de novo protein coding genes said to be unique to human beings have very similar counterparts in apes, contrary to claims made last year by Dr. Cornelius Hunter, who is an adjunct professor of biophysics at Biola University. What Dr. Tomkins allegedly got wrong As readers of my recent post, Human and chimp DNA: They really are about 98% similar, will recall, Glenn Williamson demolished Dr. Tomkins’s original claim, made back in 2013, that human and chimp DNA are only about 70% similar. Williamson’s Read More ›

Despite showing no behavioral signs that they are aware of anything, some patients diagnosed as being in a vegetative state are able to remain conscious because the thalamus in their brain is still intact, even though its connection to the motor cortex (which controls our voluntary movements) is severely damaged, according to a University of Birmingham report (19 October 2015): Dr Davinia Fernández-Espejo, from the University of Birmingham, explained, “A number of patients who appear to be in a vegetative state are actually aware of themselves and their surroundings, able to comprehend the world around them, create memories and imagine events as with any other person.”… “In highlighting damage to the pathways that physically connect the thalamus, one of the Read More ›