Creationism

In response to the recent story “Do racial assumptions prevent recognizing Homo erectus as fully human?”, a friend wrote to say that many Darwin defenders miss the point, as follows: The problem is not merely that Darwin, a man of his age, was a racist. The problem is that his bias resulted in him and others distorting the fossil record to suit a racist worldview. To “get past” the fact that Darwin was a racist, we must be willing to undo science that begins by assuming that non-European features are sub-human. But the “hierarchy of man” is rooted in the fundamental assumptions of the “Descent of Man,” the idea that Darwin popularized. Rooting it out would call so many things Read More ›

From John Stossel at Townhall: We’ve been told conservatives don’t believe in science and that there’s a “Republican war on science.” But John Tierney, who’s written about science for The New York Times for 25 years and now writes for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, told me in my latest online video, “The real war on science is the one from the left.” Really? Conservatives are more likely to be creationists — denying evolution. “Right,” says Tierney. “But creationism doesn’t affect the way science is done.” More. If we are dealing in the present day (as opposed to a pretend past about how the human ability to raise the eyebrow leads to the human mind), creationism can indeed have no Read More ›

From Todd Starnes at Townhall: The Todd Starnes Radio Show obtained exclusive emails between the UCO [University of Central Oklahoma] Student Association and Answers in Genesis explaining why they had to rescind the invitation and opt out of a signed and legally binding contract. “We are currently getting bombarded with complaints from our LGBT community about Ken Ham speaking on our campus,” student body president Stockton Duvall wrote on Jan 25. “I was going to request that Mr. Ham refrains from talking on this issue, even if asked his views during the Q&A.” Ham was scheduled to deliver his remarks on March 5 in the university’s Constitution Hall. I find it highly ironic that after being booked to speak in Read More ›

A celebration of creation: The Riot and the Dance is a two part nature/science documentary, showcasing the vast and beautifully intricate planet on which we live. Produced in a fully cinematic style, the film presents a wide variety of ingeniously designed creatures from around the world in a way that will fascinate audiences of any age. Through a vividly powerful experience the audience is intended to develop a greater understanding of and appreciation for the Creator’s workmanship and personality. The documentary focuses on some of the world’s celebrity critters (mega fauna), but also draws attention to some of the often overlooked inhabitants of the everyday. From slugs to sharks to vipers and elephants, Dr. Gordon Wilson attempts to open eyes Read More ›

Language specialist Norbert Francis seems to think creationism played a role, as he writes at Quillette: In the aftermath of the persecution of biology professor Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College, we need to pause and look back. With the Higher Superstition exposé by Gross and Levitt in 1994, many of us assumed that the postmodern fashion would begin to fade. This prediction was wrong. This has prompted me to reflect on a similar suppression of academic freedom that passed virtually unnoticed years ago, when world-renowned Hopi language scholar, Ekkehart Malotki[*], was censored and vilified by the same inquisitorial thinking proliferating once more on American campuses. Far from fading, it is becoming entrenched and the current science establishment is either Read More ›

From Paul Braterman of slam dunk creationists fame at The Conversation: Listening to creationists can strengthen our understanding of evolution Sounds promising. As John Sturt Mill put it, people who do not understand the arguments against their position do not know their own position well. One naturally wonders why it takes so long for some people to tumble to that, but never mind. Can we learn from creationists – people who deny evolution? I think so. It is not enough to say, as Richard Dawkins notoriously did: “If you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane…” That’s a dead end. Conversation is a two-way street, and if I want creationists to Read More ›

Re two recent flaps around the possible discovery of soft dinosaur tissue, Senior Scientist at the Geoscience Research Institute Tim Standish writes from Loma Linda U to offer a perspective on YEC Mark Armitage’s find vs. Mary Schweitzer’s find: It isn’t replication, but it is strong verification. There are lots of other peer reviewed papers out there ranging from halophilic bacteria being resurrected from the dead in samples that are supposed to be hundreds of millions of years old to more recent finds, all point to the unexpected presence of biological samples that are supposed to be millions of years old. From my perspective, this is one of those things that needs very careful explaining if the current understanding of dating Read More ›

From Thomas E. Elliott at Acta Cogitate (Eastern Michigan University): Abstract: The cultural debate about Creationism contra evolution by natural selection may be far from over, but the logic underlying it is settled. Creationism is ill-suited to take the place of methodological naturalism for the investigation of biology. In this paper, I survey how philosopher Elliott Sober uses some well-formed concepts from statistics and epistemology, including the nature of evidence, data, as well as the contemporary theory of evolution by natural selection to destroy Creationism as a viable theory once and for all. Creationism is a demonstrable logical fallacy, one that has no support biblically, or in science, but is a thoroughly political conception. I also challenge the idea that disproving Read More ›

This week’s article at Design Disquisitions is about Perry Marshall’s ‘Evolution 2.0’ thesis and his criticisms of intelligent design. This article responds to some of his recent writings on his blog and his interaction with Stephen Meyer a few weeks back. Bottom line is, his philosophy of science has significant problems and he has some grave misconceptions about what ID is: A few days ago I was listening to an episode of Unbelieveable?, the fantastic radio debate show and podcast at Premier Christian Radio. The episode was a fairly recent one between Stephen Meyer and Perry Marshall. Marshall is the author of Evolution 2.0 and writes at his blog Cosmic Fingerprints. I’ve read some of his work and he makes some Read More ›

Here’s my new article at Design Disquisitions. Enjoy: In the next two (potentially three) articles I’ll be taking an in-depth look at an excellent paper written by Jeffrey Koperski, a philosopher of science at Saginaw Valley State University. Koperski has written about ID in several publications (1), which I highly recommend, and he takes a balanced and sensible approach to this topic. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t accept ID, but takes a constructively critical stance, so his work is well worth engaging with. As one can tell from the title of the paper, Two Bad Ways to Attack Intelligent Design and Two Goods Ones(2), Koperski critically analyses two common criticisms of ID, suggesting that they are highly dubious lines of argument. He then Read More ›

Concluding our religion News coverage for the week, From Wayne Rossiter, author of Shadow of Oz: Theistic Evolution and the Absent God: at his book blog: Over the weekend, I had a friend ask me about this story, in which Pope Francis has seemingly cast in with Darwinian evolution. Now, I have learned from previous experience, that pressing some Catholics on this will often result in some long response about the Pope being mis-interpreted. So, I’ll let others decide if this is really what the Pope said. But, let’s at least roll with what the story declares. “The theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real and God is not ‘a magician with a magic wand’, Pope Francis has Read More ›

Finally, I’ve managed to publish my first blog article! It’s been a rocky start as I had some technical difficulties. Nevertheless, it feels good to get the ball rolling. In this first article, I’ve chosen to take a step back and reflect upon whether or not intelligent design is an important problem to consider in the first place. I outline what I consider to be five strong reasons why this is a matter of great significance.   In the foreword to the intelligent design text, The Design of Life, biochemist William S. Harris notes: The scientific community continues to wrestle with the deep and fundamental questions: Where did the universe come from? How did life originate? How did a coded language (i.e., DNA) Read More ›

One of the main pages on my new blog has a brief account of my journey towards accepting ID. I’ve taken a few different stances on the biological origins question in the past so it’s been a bumpy ride for me. This article is mainly autobiographical, but it gives me a chance to lay my cards on the table so I don’t have assumptions made about me and so readers know roughly where I’m coming from. Here’s a snippet: So, how and why did I become an intelligent design advocate? It’s a long(ish) story… I am, perhaps unsurprisingly, a Christian. I was raised in a Christian home and, with the exception of a period of ephemeral teenage agnosticism, I have Read More ›

From Denyse O’Leary (O’Leary for News) at MercatorNet: Anyone not committed to Darwinian survival of the fittest cannot be ‘alt right’. I wrote the piece because I had been following the alt right (human biodiversity studies, etc.) for a while on account of a curious incident: An alt right group was promoting a book, Troublesome Inheritance, by a retiring science writer. Their promos landed in my box. They understood the book to be a defense of classic Darwinian racism. At the time I was mainly interested in the way in which popular science media treated Inheritance respectfully but very cautiously. The science writers are all supposed to be pro-Darwin, you see, but anti-racist. It is not clear that the two concepts Read More ›

In the recently settled soft dino tissue find case, part of the fired prof’s evidence was the following incident: The lawsuit contends that [creationism was] why Armitage’s employment at Cal State Northridge was terminated, with one professor allegedly storming into his office and shouting: “We are not going to tolerate your religion in this department!” More. It strikes me that Prof Stormer thinks that there is a hard and fast distinction to be made between “science” and “religion.” But the distinction falls apart when examined. Here is a hypothetical example: My religion, we’ll say, teaches that killing animals is wrong and therefore eating meat is wrong. It would be easy to come up with a wealth of science information on Read More ›