Books of interest

Criminologist and former atheist Mike Adams summarizes the three foundational philosophical alternatives to the Cosmos:

First, we can say that it came into being spontaneously – in other words, that it came to be without a cause. Second, we can say that it has always been. Third, we can posit some cause outside the physical universe to explain its existence. The second option is no longer reasonable. Science has been leading inexorably to the conclusion that the universe is not infinite but instead had a beginning. . . . Reasonable people grasp intuitively that it makes far more sense to say that something came from something than to say that something came from nothing. Of course, admitting that the universe was caused by something rather than nothing comes with a price. Any cause predating the physical universe must therefore be non-physical in nature.

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  Michael Denton’s Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis (2016) placed at #5 in both Biology and Evolution, 1:00 EST Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,753 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store) #5 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Biological Sciences > Biology #5 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Evolution #49 in Books > Science & Math > Evolution   Oh, and here’s Steve Meyer’s Darwin’s Doubt: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #31,039 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store) #2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Biological Sciences > Paleontology #4 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks Read More ›

Here. January 23, 2016, 7:30 pm EST: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #31,015 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store) #13 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Evolution #16 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Biological Sciences > Biology #174 in Books > Science & Math > Evolution Book to be released January 26. More than thirty years after his landmark book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985), biologist Michael Denton revisits his earlier thesis about the inability of Darwinian evolution to explain the history of life. He argues that there remains “an irresistible consilience of evidence for rejecting Darwinian cumulative selection as the major driving force Read More ›

Recently, we noted the new “bold new take” book on whether Darwinism explains higher taxa (which raises the quite undaring question whle offering an equally unconvincing alternative. And a “public goods” approach to Darwinism that leads to design. Plus an attempt to separate Darwin from his mentor Malthus that sheds worse light on Darwin than Malthus. So a reader writes to ask if we have addressed Simon Conway Morris’s The Runes of Evolution: How the Universe Became Self-Aware? Yes we did: See Evolutionary biologist Simon Conway Morris on how the universe became self-aware What? Self-aware? and ET, call pretty much anywhere at THIS point. Especially call Simon Conway Morris, Cambridge, Collect. This from a review from an arts and letters Read More ›

A new book, The Origin of Higher Taxa by T. S. Kemp, asks, Does Darwinian evolution acting over a sufficiently long period of time really offer a complete explanation, or are unusual genetic events and particular environmental and ecological circumstances also involved? With The Origin of Higher Taxa, Tom Kemp sifts through the layers of paleobiological, genetic, and ecological evidence on a quest to answer this essential, game-changing question of biology. More. A legitimate response would be: Do you still need your job, Kemp? If so, you know that the answer is Yes. (Turns out he doesn’t still need his job, so … ) We are told, Kemp here offers a timely and original reinterpretation of how higher taxa such Read More ›

Yes, that time of year again, and Maria Popova’s list at Brainpickings: offers few surprises and some items of at least social interest, including #3, Lisa Randall’s Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: Randall starts with a fascinating speculative theory, linking dark matter to the extinction of the dinosaurs — an event that took place in the outermost reaches of the Solar System sixty-six million years ago catalyzed an earthly catastrophe without which we wouldn’t have come to exist. … But the theory itself, original and interesting as it may be, is merely a clever excuse to do two more important things: tell an expansive and exhilarating story of how the universe as we know it came to exist, and invite Read More ›

At Christian Scientific Society, here: Shadow of Oz, by Wayne Rossiter (Wipf and Stock, 2015) does something that should have been done a long time ago: it takes a direct and critical look at the theology of theistic evolution. Often the debate over intelligent design (ID) has been cast in terms of questioning the theological premises of ID, e.g., accusations of god-of-the-gaps, God making things up ad hoc, etc., but the shoe can be on the other foot: do theistic evolutionists have a coherent theology? Wayne Rossiter takes a close, often iconoclastic, look at the theological beliefs of major theistic evolutionists such as Kenneth Miller, Karl Giberson, Francis Collins, and John Polkinghorne. More. From the publisher: Shadow of Oz: Theistic Evolution Read More ›

  Biochemist Michael Denton has a new book in the works, Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis. His 1985 book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis first brought before a general public the reasons Darwinism might not be the single greatest idea anyone ever had, which of course earned the agnostic biochemist (who did not doubt that evolution occurs) a mass of abuse from tenured Darwin drones and their then-exploding troll nursery. No surprise that; anyone who is focused on hegemony is not focused on evidence. In the thirty years that followed, masses of evidence supporting Denton’s doubt began to accumulate, and the trolls’ job has been to beat it back into the shadows. We can listen to some of them Read More ›

Here: But how did Nature become such an essential institution? In Making “Nature,” Melinda Baldwin charts the rich history of this extraordinary publication from its foundation in 1869 to current debates about online publishing and open access. This pioneering study not only tells Nature’s story but also sheds light on much larger questions about the history of science publishing, changes in scientific communication, and shifting notions of “scientific community.” Nature, as Baldwin demonstrates, helped define what science is and what it means to be a scientist. “Changes in scientific communication” now include staying friends with the entire Twittersphere. See: Scientific American may be owned by Nature but it is now run by Twitter Follow UD News at Twitter!

We’ve been short on religion news recently, due to many new atheists seemingly going to relationship counselling instead of going to law with each other or having rows in elevators , and Richard Dawkins deciding to rant constructively for once (about the decline of intellectual freedom at universities) 😉 But here’s a review worth reading of a book on science and religion: This brings us back to an earlier question: who stands to benefit from this reconfiguration of religio as “religion” and scientia as “science”? And who benefits from the endurance of the conflict myth? This is where Harrison’s nuanced attention to contingency is perhaps most illuminating. As he persuasively points out, in 17th-century England we see Christianity sowing the Read More ›

  Debating Darwin’s Doubt Hope some are reading it. I can’t help remembering when, just by way of illustration, Templeton grantees were meeping about whether they were even going to review Darwin’s Doubt, and of course pronounce themselves displeased by it, as they must. And as if anyone cares now (6:00 am EST): — Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #1 in Books > Science & Math > Evolution > Organic #1 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Theology > Creationism #2 in Books > Science & Math > Biological Sciences > Paleontology — Sorry guys. The ship has sailed, and Christians for Darwin are not on it. The rest of us, Read More ›

In a review of Piers J. Hale’s Political Descent: Malthus, Mutualism, and the politics of evolution in Victorian England , Gregory Radick writes, Although attracted to Morris’s vision initially, Wells became disenchanted, and at exactly the moment when socialist London found itself under new pressure from Darwinian quarters. In 1888, Thomas Henry Huxley, “Darwin’s bulldog”, published a lecture entitled “The Struggle for Existence in Human Society”, which depicted nature as pitilessly gladiatorial, and humans as challenged to find and follow the path of morality even as human society remained – on pain of degeneration – subject to struggle’s stern discipline. The Left’s reply to Huxley came from Kropotkin, in a series of articles and, ultimately, a book arguing that co-operative Read More ›

 Except in this case?: Philosopher of science Massimo Pigliucci (defender of falsifiability*) offers a thoughtful review of The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time by by Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin: Before we get to what the authors set out to accomplish, it is worth discussing a more basic premise of the book: they see it as an exercise in what they call (a revived form of) “natural philosophy.” Of course, natural philosophy was the name by which science went before it became a field of inquiry independent of philosophy itself. Descartes, Galileo, Newton and even Darwin thought of themselves as natural philosophers (the word scientist, in fact, was invented by Darwin’s mentor, William Whewell, in 1833 [2]). Read More ›