Academic Freedom

H’mm, pretty devastating — if true. But, is it true? I doubt it. Let us start with this response to a certain objector who keeps providing lists of typical objector talking points (and who evidently wishes to be able to do so on UD’s nickel, without effective response). Not on our watch, gentilhombre: >>13 kairosfocus May 30, 2017 at 1:17 am F/N: DI’s opening remarks on the annotated list of ID professional literature updated to March 2017: BIBLIOGRAPHIC AND ANNOTATED LIST OF PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS SUPPORTING INTELLIGENT DESIGN UPDATED MARCH, 2017 PART I: INTRODUCTION While intelligent design (ID) research is a new scientific field, recent years have been a period of encouraging growth, producing a strong record of peer-reviewed scientific publications. In 2011, Read More ›

Our physics colour commentator wrote recently to advise us of the deprofessionalization of academy From Rob Sheldon, noting an article at Quillette: Over twelve years, I have watched with increasing dismay and incredulity as academic integrity, fairness, and intellectual rigor have been eroded, with the implicit endorsement of administration and faculty alike. I have witnessed the de-professionalization of the professoriate—hiring policies based on tokenized identity politics and cronyism, the increasing intellectual and ideological conformity expected from faculty and students, and the subsequent curtailment of academic freedom. Just to be clear, most of my faculty colleagues are well-educated, bright, and dedicated teachers. Some are also worthy scholars or creative authors. Yet, in addition to cronyism, the program’s hiring practices have been Read More ›

Readers may not have heard the explosion when the New York Times’ remaining subscribers discovered that their Tree Deathstar had published a columnist who questions global warming hysteria. Publisher Sulzberger has been begging the enraged elitists to quit cancelling their subscriptions ever since. Possibly, the enraged ex-Times readers are too young to recall the era when newspapers routinely published non-editorial board opinions on the op-ed page. That is why it was called the op-ed page (“opposite” the “editorial”). That oppressive ancient custom predates the war on free speech. Formerly, Times readers would have felt somewhat foolish if they explained in polite company that an opposing opinion was a “trigger” for their latest emotional meltdown and/or lifelong freakout. In the 1990s, Read More ›

From Denyse O’Leary at MercatorNet: Here are four reasons why the war against freedom will not just somehow lose itself, without our taking any action: 2. Progressive academics are training “child soldiers” to carry out their revolution against intellectual freedom. Put simply, they are teaching their rioting students attitudes, values, and beliefs that guarantee failure in work and healthy relationships. Reader, would you want, as a colleague, someone who put a middle-aged woman professor at Middlebury College in the hospital ? No? Then think what your answer means. In an age when most graduates face job shortages, students who have been encouraged in transgressive behaviour must simply continue their “revolution” off campus. That may be all they know how to Read More ›

From Center or Science and Culture at Evolution News & Views: A recent article in Nature Ecology & Evolution, “Public literacy in evolution,” discusses a newly launched project to push evolution on the European public. Called EvoKE, or “EVOlutionary Knowledge for Everyone,” the project’s main concern is to find ways to increase “European citizens’ acceptance and understanding of evolution.” In multiple places, the article quotes EvoKE leaders who are worried about the level of “acceptance” of evolution. Translation: Right now, in Europe, it is still safe to follow the maxim: If it sounds unbelieveable, don’t believe it. And when in doubt, doubt. But EvoKE aims to fix that: To summarize, the resolution claims that intelligent design is a form of Read More ›

From Denyse O`Leary (O’Leary for News) at MercatorNet: This year’s March for Science offered some sobering revelations for the future of science as identity politics. One was figurehead Bill Nye. During the aftermath of the March, videos surfaced that won’t likely help his reputation: My Sex Junk and another one in which ice cream cones discover sex. Detractors wondered if he wasn’t now the ”Pee Wee Herman of popular science.” Meanwhile, Nye was also quoted as wanting to shrink science classrooms: “Should we have policies that penalize people for having extra kids in the developed world?” and also as being open to jailing skeptics of climate change. But the key complaint about Nye that made news during the pre-March publicity Read More ›

From Denyse O’Leary (O’Leary for News) at MercatorNet: In 2015, Eric Posner, a law professor at the University of Chicago, announced that “universities are right—and within their rights—to crack down on speech and behavior. Students today are more like children than adults and need protection.” Why today in particular? Is it possible that decades of proselytism for left fascism by their teachers have left their mark? The rioting students are not dissidents but conformists. So many people don’t want to face how marchin’, marchin’ affects the sciences: The sciences are especially hard hit. In a post-fact science world, objectivity comes to be seen as sexist if not racist, and engineering is suspect. Does it feel odd to you, reader, that young Read More ›

From Anil Ananthaswamy at New Scientist: Welcome to one of the more provocative-sounding explanations of how the brain works, outlined in a set of 26 original papers, the second part of a unique online compendium updating us on current thinking in neuroscience and the philosophy of mind. In 2015, the MIND group founded by philosopher Thomas Metzinger of the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany, set up the Open MIND project to publish papers by leading researchers. Unusually, the papers were published in open access electronic formats, as an experiment in creating a cutting edge online resource – and it was free. The first volume, spanning everything from the nature of consciousness to lucid dreaming, was a qualified success. The Read More ›

From Denyse O’Leary (O’Leary for News) at MercatorNet: … In short, violent outbreaks on campus are not the outcome of kids acting out! Quite the contrary, they are the outcome of kids acting out the values that they have been absorbing over the past fifty years from increasingly illiberal teachers. … Take note that the new approach to intellectual freedom does not permit anyone to just mind their own business. Even silence can be violence… …One of two things will happen if universities continue to make themselves enemies of intellectual freedom and free speech. Either our intellectual life will rot or it will find a home other than the university. In the age of the internet, many are now exploring Read More ›

No, really. See this: PLEASE read https://t.co/vEUBmgqcwL Terrifying. Sinister social-media bots read minds & manipulate votes. Explains mystery of Trump & Brexit — Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) February 27, 2017 Dawkins now appears to be channelling persons who cannot handle the new non-gatekeeper world of online media, who think it must all be a big plot involving fake news, the alt right, the Russians, and all things that scare them.     Memo From: UD News To: UD News Robotics Dawkinsbot II Special Project Re: Retooling needed for Dawkinsbot II – urgent Our revamped Dawkinsbot has been performing fabulously to date.* But AI experts are warning that our introduction of a ramped-up politics algorithm could endanger the entire mechanism. We have Read More ›

One of the ugliest agit prop, street theatre tactics now being commonly used is the accusation: fascist, in effect, outlaw beyond the pale of civil protection. It is therefore appropriate to pause and seek clarification on what fascism really is about. But first, let us draw attention to a disturbing historical parallel to what we saw on the streets of Berkeley only a few days past; headlining a comment in the still live agit-prop thread: >>Let’s compare UCB, two Wednesdays ago and another Wednesday in 1921 in Bavaria http://ww2timelines.com/leader…..2power.htm >> Wednesday, September 14, 1921 Hitler, a substantial number of members of the Turn-und Sportabteilung, the paramilitary arm of the Nazi Party [ = SA], and other Nazi party adherents disrupted Read More ›

From Tom Bethell’s Darwin’s House of Cards: A Journalist’s Odyssey Through the Darwin Debates: “The science of neo-Darwinism was poor all along, and supported by very few facts. I have become ever more convinced that, although Darwinism has been promoted as science, its unstated role has been to prop up a philosophy—the philosophy of materialism—and atheism along with it.” (Page 20) “The scientific evidence for evolution is not only weaker than is generally supposed, but as new discoveries have been made since 1959, the reasons for accepting the theory have diminished rather than increased.” Page 45 “Darwinian evolution can be seen as a way of looking at the history of life through the distorting lens of Progress. Given enough time, Read More ›

Sir Isaac Newton once said,

“In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.”

The USA’s Founders required the Bill of Rights in the Constitution, including:

make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

Yet now we have US Senators coercing government officials of establishing atheistic materialism in public education, by accusing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos of supporting Intelligent Design in schools. Read More ›

Here, on the thugs’ attack on Thomas Nagel for doubting Darwin: The intelligentsia was so furious that it formed a lynch mob. In May 2013, the Chronicle of Higher Education ran a piece called “Where Thomas Nagel Went Wrong.” One paragraph was notable: Whatever the validity of [Nagel’s] stance, its timing was certainly bad. The war between New Atheists and believers has become savage, with Richard Dawkins writing sentences like, “I have described atonement, the central doctrine of Christianity, as vicious, sadomasochistic, and repellent. We should also dismiss it as barking mad….” In that climate, saying anything nice at all about religion is a tactical error. It’s the cowardice of the Chronicle’s statement that is alarming—as if the only conceivable Read More ›

Well, that didn’t take long. They’re not stunned any more, they’re mad. Mad as stink. From Phillip Williamson at New Scientist: Ocean acidification is an inevitable consequence of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That’s a matter of fact. We don’t know exactly what will happen to complex marine ecosystems when faced with the additional stress of falling pH, but we do know those changes are happening and that they won’t be good news. UK journalist James Delingpole disagrees. In an article for The Spectator in April 2016, he took the sceptical position that all concerns over ocean acidification are unjustified “alarmism” and that the scientific study of this non-problem is a waste of money. He concluded that the only reason Read More ›