Creationism

Fired after discovering soft dino tissue. From Jennifer Kabbany at College Fix: A creationist scholar recently received a six-figure settlement from California State University Northridge, a payout that resolved a 2-year-old lawsuit that alleged the scholar had been fired after discovering soft tissue on a triceratops horn and publishing his findings. … Armitage, who has some 30 publications to his credit and is past-president of the Southern California Society for Microscopy, was hired by the university in early 2010 to manage a wide variety of oversight duties for the biology department’s array of state-of-the-art microscopes, court documents state. He also trained students on how to use the complicated equipment. In the summer of 2012, while at the world-famous dinosaur dig Read More ›

Stefaan Blanche and Peter C. Kjærgaard indulge fears at Scientific American: We have both had encounters with creationists. They come in all shades and represent all major denominations. They live in cities and in rural areas. Some are well educated, some belong to the establishment, others don’t. Some are well organized and well funded, others are not. Several are dedicated to a cause, many as missionaries with the role of spreading the word of divine creation as opposed to evolution; others keep to themselves. But despite their differences, they have something in common—they are all Europeans. A certain type of education prevents the average European intellectual from considering the possibility that such a disparate group may be united more by Read More ›

The question of whether methodological naturalism is an idea worth holding onto in science has been one that the ID camp, as a whole, is not unified on. Some think that methodological naturalism is a perfectly valid way to define science, and that ID fits nicely within that scope. Others think that methodological naturalism is just philosophical baggage hitching a free ride and should be discarded.
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The creationist biology conference See also: Todd Wood: New findings on homo Naledi Follow UD News at Twitter!

Readers may vaguely remember Francis Collins’* colleague at BioLogos, Karl Giberson. In an expected pan review, he tells us: Dogged by controversy since its conception, the project overcame many challenges. Tax incentives were controversial, given the organization’s view on LGBT hiring. Raising funds was a problem, solved partially by Ham’s high-profile debate with Bill Nye, who was an early visitor to the Ark Encounter. Scientists expressed concern about the promotion of pseudoscience. Biblical scholars objected to treating the myth of Noah’s flood as a historical event. Having overcome so many problems—which he views as the work of Satan—Ham now confidently states, “The Lord has worked mightily over the years to make this project a reality.” The Ark Encounter is based on Read More ›

BioLogos exists to reconcile Christians to evolution, which today seems to mainly mean Darwinism (“modern science” ). From their prez Deborah Haarsma: When people accept the AiG narrative that these scientific conclusions are essential to Christianity, then their faith is often shaken when they encounter the incredible explanatory power of modern science. In fact, we hear from individuals on a daily basis who have experienced a deep crisis of faith when their young-earth creationist beliefs were exposed as scientifically (and biblically) weak. While we are grateful that BioLogos has helped recover and strengthen the faith of these Christians, we mourn the fact that countless others have drifted away from the faith. Young-earth creationist teaching is causing unnecessary harm to the Read More ›

Remember Bill Nye, who wants global warming skeptics prosecuted for the sake of his peace of mind? Well now, Nye went to visit Ken Ham at Ark Encounter in rural Kentucky: Ark Encounter features a full-size Noah’s Ark, built according to the dimensions given in the Bible. Spanning 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 51 feet high, this modern engineering marvel amazes visitors young and old. Ark Encounter is situated in the beautiful Williamstown, Kentucky, halfway between Cincinnati and Lexington on I-75. From the moment you turn the corner and the towering Ark comes into view, to the friendly animals in the zoo, to the jaw-dropping exhibits inside the Ark, you’ll experience the pages of the Bible like never before. Read More ›

From a 2015 journal paper, Engines of creationism? Intelligent design, machine metaphors and visual rhetoric: Machine metaphors are ubiquitous in the molecular sciences. In addition to their use by scientists, educators and popularizers of science, they have been promoted intensively by the Intelligent Design (ID) movement in arguments for the necessity of a god-like designer to account for the complexities of life at the molecular level. We have investigated the visual rhetoric employed in a movie by ID proponents, with particular emphasis on machine metaphors. After presenting examples, we argue that science communicators could reduce the persuasive impact of ID visual rhetoric based on machine metaphors by emphasizing that selfassembly is fundamental to molecular complexes. Paper. (public access) – Gunnar Read More ›

From Science, where there is a paywall so I can’t swatch a bit of it for you (but you might be able to read it), there’s this big worry, via Michael Baltzley: Some students might earn credits for learning “creationism.” Would that include reading Suzan Mazur’s The Paradigm Shifters: Overthrowing “the Hegemony of the Culture of Darwin”? Or anything about rethinking evolution? Should we punish such students by forcing them to join the Pants in Knot war on creationism in Louisiana? Except, if they had any brains, they’d probably either go home (preferred option) or switch sides (well, we all gotta learn). Note: Many countries have just avoided these wars, saving the taxpayer time, grief, and money. Some fellow tried starting Read More ›

I’ve already written here about the recent dust-up between the United Methodist Church (UMC)and Discovery Institute. Being involved with this has caused me, as a United Methodist, to take a closer look at some of the official statements of the UMC on science. As regular UD readers will likely know, the church has banned Discovery Institute from exhibiting at the upcoming General Conference. Vince Torley has already written here that probably UMC co-founder John Wesley wouldn’t be welcome at this year’s General Conference, so I won’t rehash that aspect. Rather, I want to take a closer look at the official statements of the UMC on Science to which the Church appealed as rationale for denying Discovery Institute an information table Read More ›

Odd, and it speaks very poorly of the science of the day. But one historian says that the historical data demonstrate that view. Further to the new science mythbuster book, Newton’s Apple and Other Myths About Science, a reader kindly notes that we also learn from the paywalled review in Science: Michael Gordin … [debunks] the widely accepted belief that science can be easily differentiated from pseudoscience simply by determining whether a particular theory is falsifiable. In addition to the philosophical shortcomings of this approach, he notes that if a negative result is sufficient to falsify a theory, then high-school science students manage to “falsify” most of Western science each week in their lab classes. Gordin goes on to analyze Read More ›

Alister McGrath is a well-known Christian theologian, priest, and author of many apologetic books. In one of them, “The Dawkins Delusion”, he fiercely opposes the pseudo intellectual arrogance of Dawkins’ atheism. In general I appreciate much McGrath’s work in defense of theism. For this reason I sincerely regret the need to criticize some of his opinions about theistic evolution (TE), as expressed in his interview with Nigel Bovey,”The universe is not an accident.” McGrath rightly supports the ontological and logical necessity of a Creator of the universe, who provides to it and to all of its beings all meaning and reality, and makes it something quite other than an “accident”, as the title of the interview makes clear. Bovey asks: Read More ›

Rude on Will’s conflation of progressives and creationists: Will is an atheist and dumb about Darwin. But he brings up an interesting point. There is a difference between design by central planners and design by the cooperative efforts of multitudes of individuals. Thomas Sowell (don’t know where he stands on Darwin) waxes eloquent on this. He asks: What is more intelligent–a small cadre of experts or millions of individuals making decisions in their own self-interest? Creativity arises from individuals–not committees. The goal of groups is stability, and stability is opposed to creativity. Scientific breakthroughs come about via individuals. Great art and literature are the inspiration of individuals. Composers compose and orchestras perform–not so much the other way around (though I do Read More ›

Or versa vice? From commentator George Will at National Review: Creationists of the Secular Kind “Secular theists” — economist Don Boudreaux’s term — produce governments gripped by the fatal conceit that they are wiser than society’s spontaneous experimental order. Such governments’ imposed order suffocates improvisation and innovation. Like religious creationists gazing upon biological complexity, secular theists assume that social complexity requires an intentional design imposed from on high by wise designers, aka them. In The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge, Matt Ridley refutes the secular creationists’ fallacious idea that because social complexity is the result of human actions, it must, or should, be the result of human design. In fact, Ridley says, “Far more than we like to Read More ›