William Dembski

http://www.theadvocate.tv/ADV1005.pdf (scroll down to page 10).

Evolve yourself intelligently to the new and more successful you. . . .** For some time now I’ve been wanting to complement Darwinalia, Inc. (which will soon be in operation — I have three partners and we own www.darwinalia.com) with an ID-based success and motivation course (complete with infomercials). I had been thinking about something like “Designed for Success” or “Designed to Flourish.” But the more I thought about it, especially with intelligent design taking the hits it has lately, it’s time simply to co-opt the language of evolution and interpret it in an ID-friendly way (in this vein, recall my post about intelligent evolution on this blog some months back — go here). Yes, ID is itself evolving! I Read More ›

Intelligent Design forum features Dembski & Ruse Jan 12, 2006 By Staff Baptist Press MARIETTA, Ga. (BP)–An upcoming dialogue between a key Intelligent Design proponent and a Darwinian evolutionist from Florida State University reflects the fact that, “Our commitment to truth leads us to believe that we have nothing to fear from public discussion of important topics,” said Robert Stewart, associate professor of philosophy and theology at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. The 7 p.m. Feb. 3 dialogue between ID proponent William Dembski and evolutionist Michael Ruse is the featured event of NOBTS’ two-day Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum, to be held at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga. MORE

[From an engineer friend of mine–what’s the evolutionary explanation for the synthesis of perfect magnetite crystals in bacteria?] I’m in Houston at a custom short course (all week long) in nanotechnology for [snip] given by a group of profs at Rice Univ. It’s been a very intensive course, but very informative. One interesting thing that came up was the description of a bacteria that is able to synthesize an approximately linear array of the most perfect crystals of magnetite (better than any that experts have been able to do thus far) internally, which it uses to align itself with the earth’s magnetic field so that it can navigate with respect to the oxygen gradient in the mud in which it Read More ›

THE SPECTATOR
Thursday 12 January 2006
Dawkins is wrong about God
Roger Scruton

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article_pfv.php?id=7185

Faced with the spectacle of the cruelties perpetrated in the name of faith, Voltaire famously cried ‘Ecrasez l’infâme!’ Scores of enlightened thinkers have followed him, declaring organised religion to be the enemy of mankind, the force that divides the believer from the infidel and thereby both excites and authorises murder. Richard Dawkins, whose TV series The Root of all Evil? concludes next Monday, is the most influential living example of this tradition. And he has embellished it with a striking theory of his own — the theory of the religious ‘meme’. A meme is a mental entity that colonises the brains of people, much as a virus colonises a cell. The meme exploits its host in order to reproduce itself, spreading from brain to brain like meningitis, and killing off the competing powers of rational argument. Like genes and species, memes are Darwinian individuals, whose success or failure depends upon their ability to find the ecological niche that enables reproduction. Such is the nature of ‘gerin oil’, as Dawkins contemptuously describes religion. Read More ›

. . . “There are cultural forces at play here which go very deep,” Dembski said. “This is about our creation story, how we came about.” Dembski cautioned that any school board that adopts intelligent design in its curriculum must justify it on scientific, rather than religious, grounds to survive a legal challenge. http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060111/NEWS0101/601110436

. . . Dembski is the author of “The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design” and a senior fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture in Seattle. Organizers asked three Kansas University scientists critical of intelligent design to also speak at the event, but all declined. Brown said organizers could have used corporate funds distributed by the university for the event if there had been KU scientists on the roster. Brown said he offered to change the speaking format to make the invitation more attractive to the KU professors, but that didn’t work. MORE

Two biology textbooks with 2004 copyright dates feature Haeckel’s faked drawings (slightly redrawn and colorized). They are: Raven & Johnson, Biology Sixth Edition (ISBN: 0072921641) Voet & Voet, Biochemistry (ISBN: 047119350X) Further evidence for the longevity of evolutionary theory.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-blue-mountains-passage-that-made-darwin-wonder/2006/01/10/1136863239665.html

Randomness Is Unpredictability
Antony Eagle
Exeter College and Oxford University, Oxford OX1 3DP, UK
antony.eagle@philosophy.oxford.ac.uk

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2005 56(4):749-790; doi:10.1093/bjps/axi138

The concept of randomness has been unjustly neglected in recent philosophical literature, and when philosophers have thought about it, they have usually acquiesced in views about the concept that are fundamentally flawed. After indicating the ways in which these accounts are flawed, I propose that randomness is to be understood as a special case of the epistemic concept of the unpredictability of a process. This proposal arguably captures the intuitive desiderata for the concept of randomness; at least it should suggest that the commonly accepted accounts cannot be the whole story and more philosophical attention needs to be paid. Read More ›

Hubert Yockey, who at the Mere Creation conference in 1996 expressed to me some sympathy for ID and indicated at the time that he was not publicly coming out in favor of ID because he thought he could do the movement more good by working on his own program, has steadily been reversing himself on ID. Note that his love for the other side has not increased either. Here’s his latest. Scientific Reality vs. Intelligent Design’s False Claims — The Problem Is Getting Caught in Behe’s Tar Baby, Not Darwin’s Black Box Nuclear physicist and bioinformatician Dr. Hubert P. Yockey shows why Michael Behe and his ilk are wrong in his books, Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life Read More ›

Paul Kurtz’s skeptic organization has just announced its next cruise, this one to Alaska. Join the Center for Inquiry Explorers Club “with a rich line-up of events and activities, a stellar cast of speakers, entertainment, and breathtaking excursions, all aboard the luxurious Holland America Westerdam.” The top-billed speaker is Barbara Forrest (go here for details).

It appears that Ken Miller is contacting people about how I got the copy of that check for $7000 that Playboy Enterprises made out to Michael Ruse for writing a pro-evolution anti-ID article (go here for an image of the check). He could simply have asked me. Hef is actually a long-time Chicago buddy of mine (he and my Dad were at the UofI in Champaign-Urbana after WWII). Hef showed it to me the last time I was at the Mansion. Read More ›

From yesterday’s state of the commonwealth address by Gov. Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky: Our founding fathers recognized that we were endowed with this right by our creator. So I ask, what is wrong with teaching “intelligent design” in our schools. Under KERA, our school districts have that freedom and I encourage them to do so. This is not a question about faith or religion. It’s about self-evident truth. http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060110/NEWS0104/601100335/1008

Since the term “science” as we use it today is a 19th century invention, and since the older term is “natural philosophy,” I’m happy for high school courses to teach “Natural Philosophy of Design” courses. The following class, then, is at least a step in the right direction. California high school class discusses intelligent design LEBEC, Calif. A small high school outside of Bakersfield has jumped into the national debate about whether “intelligent design” belongs in the classroom. Officials at Frazier Mountain High School in Lebec contend that the class, called “Philosophy of Design,” is not being offered as science. The teacher of the course is Sharon Lemburg. She says in the course syllabus — quote — “This class is Read More ›