This article (http://www.the-scientist.com/article/daily/23793) presents the ongoing controversy over whether an evolutionist presented “adequate justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of evolution, and not intelligent design theory, was correct” . . . in his grant proposal!
I’ve reported on this blog Coyne’s NewRepublic review of Coulter (go here) and Hotz’s LATimes review of Quammen, Brockman, an Shermer (go here). There’s an interesting contradiction between the two reviews. See if you can catch it. Compare Jerry Coyne’s insistence that The real reason Coulter goes after evolution is not because it’s wrong, but because she doesn’t like it–it doesn’t accord with how she thinks the world should be. That’s because she feels, along with many Americans, that “Darwin’s theory overturned every aspect of Biblical morality.” What’s so sad–not so much for Coulter as for Americans as a whole–is that this idea is simply wrong. Darwinism, after all, is just a body of thought about the origin and change of Read More ›
[From a colleague in the UK:] The current issue of the British Ecological Society Bulletin has a special feature on Gaia. It appears that James Lovelock was made an Honorary Member of the B.E.S. in 2005, and the Gaia hypothesis is his “most significant contribution to ecology”. Apparently, the Gaia hypothesis posits that the earth’s ecosystem has improbable stability, and this is increasingly being accepted as a fact by ecologists. In particular it points to processes like these: animals secrete nitrogenous waste as urea rather than nitrogen to help other species use the waste product; phytoplankton in the oceans secrete dimethysulphide, a costly gas which is important for cloud formation; the balance of photosynthesis releasing oxygen and taking in carbon Read More ›
In the latest New Republic Online, the irrepressible Jerry Coyne keeps the insults against ID coming: . . . [O]ne has to ask whether Coulter (who, by the way, attacks me in her book) really understands the Darwinism she rejects. The answer is a resounding No. According to the book’s acknowledgments, Coulter was tutored in the “complex ideas” of evolution by David Berlinski, a science writer; Michael Behe, a third-rate biologist at Lehigh University (whose own department’s website disowns his bizarre ideas); and William Dembski, a fairly bright theologian who went off the intellectual rails and now peddles creationism at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. These are the “giants” of the ID movement, which shows how retarded it really is. Learning biology Read More ›
John Rennie, the chief editor at SCIAM, continues to do his cause more harm than good. All his naysaying against ID has to give the dispassionate observer pause whether there might not be something to it after all. Here is his latest: http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=i_d_is_bad_science_on_its_own_terms&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1.
As the debate over how to teach evolution continues, two new radio commercials promoting www.standupforscience.com and the online petition to “Stand up for Science, Stand up for Kansas” will air this weekend across Kansas. One ad features molecular biologist Jonathan Wells, explaining that “it is imperative to understand both the evidence for and against a scientific theory — as a scientist, I am standing up for science education policies that require students to learn both the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence that supports Darwin’s theory, as well as the scientific evidence that challenges it.” The second commercial features Kansas public school science teacher Jill Gonzalez Bravo who was also recently interviewed for the ID The Future Podcast about her Read More ›
The sign of erudition these days is the ability to craft culturally sophisticated terms of abuse. I want to urge others on this thread to list their favorite erudite term(s) of abuse for ID. July 30, 2006 SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW Laws of nature A century and a half ago, Charles Darwin sparked a scientific revolution. Now that revolution has become a culture war. But does the concept of intelligent design have validity as an alternative to evolution? Three new books look beyond the rhetoric.  By Robert Lee Hotz The Reluctant Mr. Darwin An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution David Quammen Atlas Books/W.W. Norton: 304 pp., $22.95 Intelligent Thought Science Versus the Read More ›
Check out this forthcoming book, in which I understand that our very own Sal Cordova is featured. Note especially Sam Harris’s blurb — with people like Harris expressing such foreboding, one has to wonder how close we are to seeing the Darwinian house of cards collapse under the weight of its self-delusion.ÂÂ
Book Description
There’s a new youth movement afoot in this country. It’s a counterculture fusion of politics and pop, and it’s taking over a high school near you. Like the waves that came before it, it’s got passion, music, and anti-authority posturing, but more than anything else, this one has God. So what does it mean when today’s youth counterculture has a mindset more akin to Jerry Falwell’s than Abbie Hoffman’s?In RIGHTEOUS: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement, Lauren Sandler, a dynamic young journalist, reports from this junction of Evangelicalism and youth culture, traveling across the country to investigate the alternative Christian explosion. Using the grassroots modus operandi of the 1960s, these religious kids – part of the “Disciple Generation” as Sandler calls it – turn an antiauthoritarian sneer toward liberalism, feminism, pacifism, and every other hallmark of that era’s counterculture. And they’re engaging their peers with startling success, fusing pop culture, politics, and religion as they preach from the pulpit of the skate park, bar, and rock concert. Secular, liberal, and practically the embodiment of everything Evangelicalism deems unholy, Sandler travels with skateboard missionaries, hangs out with the tattooed members of a postpunk Seattle megachurch that has evolved into a self-sufficient community, camps out with a rock’n’roll antiabortion group, and gets to know the rap preachers who are merging hip-hop’s love of money with old-fashioned bible-beating fundamentalism. Much more than a mere observer, she connects with these young people on an intimate level, and the candor with which they reveal themselves to her is truly astonishing.
Illuminating, often troubling, and unapologetically frank, RIGHTEOUS introduces a bold new voice into the ongoing debate over religion in American life. And it is the first in-depth front-line exploration of the country’s new moral majority – dressed up in punk-rock garb – and what its influence could mean for the future of America.
BACKCOVER: Advanced Praise:
“Lauren Sandler obliterates the naïve and complacent hope that keeps most secularists and religious moderates sleeping peacefully each night-the hope that, in 21st century America, the young know better than to adopt the lunatic religious certainties of a prior age. The young do not know better. In their schools, skate-parks, rock concerts, and in the ranks of our nation’s military, our children are gleefully preparing a bright future of ignorance and religious fascism for us all. If you have any doubt that there is a culture war that must be waged and won by secularists in America, read this book.”
— Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation Read More ›
Is God Really Good? Granville Sewell Mathematics Dept. University of Texas El Paso                                                                                           .  In debates over the theory of intelligent design, the “problem of evil” is frequently brought up by opponents of design: if we are the products of intelligent design, why is there so much evil and misery in the world? From a purely logical, or scientific, perspective, this problem is easy to deal with: Nature offers evidence of design–the question of what the designer is like is a separate, more philosophical, issue. But for most of us humans, this is a very unsatisfactory answer. In two other articles on my web page (here and here, both highlighted by Discovery.com in the last few months) I have outlined Read More ›
Check out the following papers at the big June 2006 Metanexus conference: http://www.metanexus.net/conference2006/papers.asp. How well was ID represented?
Here are two books you’ll want to put in your Amazon.com cart and read this fall. I’ve blurbed each of them. For Wells’s book I wrote: “Darwinists will be furious over this book, gnashing their teeth and vilifying its author — because biologist Jonathan Wells masterfully exposes their bizarre delusions and replaces them with what they hate most: logical arguments and evidence for intelligent design.” For Wiker and Witt’s book I wrote: “With the science of intelligent design now well in hand, the question arises about its wider cultural implications: in a world where materialism fails and where intelligent design is evident, how should we think about ourselves in the grand scheme of things? A MEANINGFUL WORLD masterfully answers this Read More ›
Questions: (1) Leaving aside Calvinism, is Howard Van Till a Christian at all? Would he even accept that designation? (2) Given that he has veered so far from Calvin College’s statement of faith, is it legitimate for him to maintain his formal affiliation with the school as “professor emeritus”? Are professors emeritus held to the same standards as nonretired faculty? FROM CALVINISM TO FREETHOUGHT: The Road Less Traveled by Howard J. Van Till Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Emeritus Calvin College Presented 5/24/2006 for the Freethought Association of West Michigan Lightly edited 5/26/2006 Precis: Born into a Calvinist family, shaped by a Calvinist catechism training, educated in the Calvinist private school system, and nurtured by a community that prized its Calvinist Read More ›
Wesley Elsberry, in blogging about Denyse O’Leary’s recent coming on board here at UD, refers to her as a “pseudo-journalist” (go here)? What a curious designation. Does Wesley’s use of the prefix “pseudo” simply indicate his disapproval of O’Leary and, in particular, her failure to accept his brand of evolution? Or does the prefix indicate something substantive (Denyse, did you come on board here under false pretenses? Are you really a journalist at all? What exactly have you published in recognized media outlets?) If Denyse is in fact a real journalist, does that make Elsberry a “pseudo-blogger”?
In April I announced on this blog Ann Coulter’s then forthcoming book GODLESS (go here). There I remarked, “I’m happy to report that I was in constant correspondence with Ann regarding her chapters on Darwinism — indeed, I take all responsibility for any errors in those chapters.” Jim Downard, rather than simply taking me at my word, instead wants me to elaborate on my correspondence with Ann (go here); and for my refusal to elaborate, charges me with not really taking responsibility for errors in the chapters in question. But such elaboration is not my responsibility. If Ann’s chapters on evolution are so riven with difficulties, let him enumerate them, point out the errors, and then hold me up to Read More ›
Just as Monty Python’s Black Knight was whittled from a full human to a stump, so evolutionary theory is finally being whittled to its proper size. Where, in the whittling of the Black Knight, is evolutionary theory (stage I, II, III, IV, or V?): Read More ›