William Dembski

I expect it won’t be long before ID is explicitly used to justify virtue ethics/natural law just as Darwin is used to justify EvoPsycho and EvoEthics. The Return of Goodness by Edward Skidelsky Contemporary liberalism’s insistence that morality is a mere matter of rights and obligations empties life of its ethical meaning. We need a return to the virtue ethics of the pre-moderns, and a renewed conception of the good life. Morality is once again on the lips of politicians and commentators. David Cameron has warned that we are “becoming quite literally a de-moralised society, where nobody will tell the truth any more about what is good and bad.” He is echoed by Richard Reeves, new director of Demos, who Read More ›

Have a look at Joel Isaacson’s paper “The Intelligence Nexus in Space Exploration” (click here). I’d like to encourage discussion on this thread concerning what you think about Isaacson’s notion of “fantomarks”?

Randy Isaac, the executive director of the ASA (i.e., the American Scientific Affiliation — an organization of evangelical Christians largely committed to theistic evolution) will give a talk titled “Science: A Misused Weapon in a Religious War” at Baylor on September 9th. I’m fifteen minutes from the school, so I’ll probably be there. For details, see below. From his talk description, Isaac seems to have things exactly backwards. For Isaac the science-faith problem is a clash of competing religious perspectives. In fact, the problem is a clash of two competing scientific conceptions of biological and cosmological origins, one that incorporates real teleology, the other that eschews it. These two scientific conceptions have radically different implications metaphysically. Hence the enormous stakes Read More ›

This from the Faraday Institute Newsletter (No 32 | September 2008): The Faraday Course entitled “Science and Religion for Church Leaders”, also intended for those training for ministry, will take place Nov 4-6th . As usual full details are up on the Faraday web-site (www.faraday-institute.org). . . . Those in the Birmingham UK area might be interested to know that on Saturday, 27th September, at 4.0 p.m. in the George Hotel, Lichfield, the Institute Director will be in debate with Prof. Steve Fuller (Prof. of Sociology at Warwick University) at the Lichfield Literary Festival (hwww.lichfieldfestival.org) on the subject of Intelligent Design. This is a somewhat counterintuitive debate in that Prof. Fuller, an agnostic, is an ID supporter whereas the Director, Read More ›

We’ve come a long way since Laplace’s nebular hypothesis… Solar System Is Pretty Special, According To New Computer Simulation ScienceDaily (Aug. 8, 2008) — Prevailing theoretical models attempting to explain the formation of the solar system have assumed it to be average in every way. Now a new study by Northwestern University astronomers, using recent data from the 300 exoplanets discovered orbiting other stars, turns that view on its head. READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

A friend of mine told me about this interesting link: www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse Regardless of whether you agree with the economic philosophy presented here, it suggests a useful approach to presenting ID.

Jeff Schloss, formerly an ID supporter and Senior Fellow of Discovery Institute (until August 2003 — click here for Way Back Machine), has since been distancing himself from ID and even going on the offensive against it. I witnessed the beginnings of this offensive at a symposium featuring Ron Numbers, Howard Van Till, Schloss, and me in 2007 at Grove City College (go here for the program). His criticisms of ID at that event seemed to me naive and ill-considered. Yet he did seem to advance them sincerely, and I hoped to have an opportunity try to persuade him otherwise, which unfortunately never happened. Schloss’s critical review of EXPELLED, however, raised his opposition against ID to a new level and Read More ›

Second Baptist in Houston (www.second.org) is a terrific church with a huge membership. My good friend Ben Young is a pastor there and runs two contemporary services at two different campuses Sunday mornings. I was there on Sunday, July 27th at those two services, with Ben and I having a conversation in front of the congregation and then fielding questions. The church is high-tech, so in addition to questions from the microphones, we were also taking text messages from people’s cell phones. Below are all the questions received (about 250 total). Such text message questions give people a fair degree of anonymity. It’s interesting what people ask when they feel less self-conscious: Read More ›

www.uncommondescent.com/audios/Lilley_Firing.mp3

Check out his forthcoming documentary RELIGULOUS (click here for the trailer).

To listen to this song in mp3, click here. SHE’S GOT NO BRAIN By Jim Rogers Little machines that go Integrated just so Blueprint incognito What makes it grow Put together so fine Personalities shine Words of poetry rhyme How can you know What a wonder it is It’s a silly thing to think we’re dumber Than Mother Nature who’s got no brain For evolution it’s quite the bummer Because she can’t explain What clearly needs a brain Mother Nature’s got no brain Nanotechnology In cell biology Professors eulogize It’s Darwin I surmise DNA transcription Protein configuration Gene translocation Godly revelation What a wonder it is It’s a silly thing to think we’re dumber Than Mother Nature who’s got no Read More ›

This just in from Christianity Today. Lilley, you will recall, expelled Robert Marks’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab from Baylor (for that story, go here). July 24, 2008 9:57AM President of Baylor University Fired John Lilley had angered alumni, faculty, and others with tenure decisions. Ted Olsen Baylor University’s board of regents has fired president John Lilley, whose presidency began and ended with disputes over tenure. In 2006, associate professor of church-state studies Francis Beckwith was denied tenure. His appeal became a cause celebre in some evangelical academic circles, and he eventually prevailed. Lilley, however, continued to be viewed with suspicion by some Christian observers. But it was April’s decision to deny tenure to 12 candidates that really set the drumbeats going. Read More ›

Here’s the closing disclaimer on a GodTube video about evolution (hat tip to bornagain77):

Olivia Judson is on a mission to control the damage to Darwin’s hemorrhaging theory. Her latest at the NYTimes is to suggest that we stop using the term “Darwinism” because the field of evolutionary biology is so much richer than what Darwin gave us. Others have tried that strategy with equal laughable disingenuity (e.g., Paul Gross in criticizing David Berlinski for Berlinski making Darwinism the target of criticism). CAPTION: OLIVIA JUDSON BUSY AT HER RESEARCH But Judson gives the game away: [Darwinism] suggests that Darwin was the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega, of evolutionary biology, and that the subject hasn’t changed much in the 149 years since the publication of the “Origin.” He wasn’t, and it has. Read More ›

Antony Flew, formerly the most prominent atheist in the English speaking world, goes after Dawkins, his successor as head atheist: The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins, is remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this book show Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: namely, a secularist bigot. (Helpfully, my copy of The Oxford Dictionary defines a bigot as ‘an obstinate or intolerant adherent of a point of view’). MORE