This is in connection, of course, with his new book, A Mousetrap for Darwin: Michael J. Behe Answers His Critics which, by the way, is: Best Sellers Rank: #7,155 in Kindle Store 2 in Biochemistry Science 4 in Biochemistry (Books) 4 in Evolution (Kindle Store)It’s nice to see that, in a world largely deformed by Cancel Culture, some people still love a good debate.
Culture
The bill collector comes. “Science” candidates did poorly in the US election
Don’t believe us. This is Scientific American talking: ” In the House of Representatives, just two endorsed challengers out of eight won, though one race remains too close to call because mailed ballots are still being counted.” Yuh. If you are a player, you can lose. That’s why we thought it would have been smarter for the Big Science types to stick to their traditional position as referees instead of jumping into the fray with all the others.
Can Darwinism generate purpose in the universe out of thin air?
There is no science explanation, at present, for why life forms, human, animal, plant, or bacterium, strive to go on living but rocks do nothing to avoid becoming sand.
Preparing the public for the slow demise of Darwinian evolution theory
Mike Behe’s new A Mousetrap for Darwin is available today and that’s the position he takes. That’s our sense too. What about New Scientist’s thirteen reasons for moving past Darwin and the doubts about speciation? Whatever else maybe said of these folk, they are not currently suffering from Darwinbrain. We need to distinguish between rubbish dropkicked from one edition to the next of a public school textbook and what alert minds are really thinking. And they’re really thinking that it’s time to move on.
Sean McDowell interviews Bill Dembski on how the ID movement is doing
Was the ID movement a success? What did it get right, and how has it changed?
Evidence of loss of faith in science due to political partisanship
Time will tell but the effect may prove cumulative. People lose trust for different reasons and the numbers add up, not down … When the next “Trust the Science!” panic sweeps the internet, a third group will join them, asking, “So what’s in this latest crazy for the Voice of Science?”
A debate at Scientific American: Can a pill change your mind about basic issues in life?
Readers who remain skeptical that hallucinogens can change our values may wonder how religious and political values— so often rooted in decades of history, family history, and personal experience—could really be overturned by a mere trip.
An academic discovers the “dark side” of Darwinism
Austin Anderson: Now I understand why I’ve never been asked in a biology class to read the original text of Darwin’s theories: Our contemporary reverence for Darwin’s gentlemanliness and the pure scientific brilliance of his theories is an overly optimistic illusion that shatters upon a closer look at his publications.
Slice of history: Darwin helped his co-theorist Wallace get a pension
Even though they emphatically disagreed about design in nature. Michael Flannery tells the story.
Darwin is now blamed for environmental destruction
Hirsch: In one important area of resource extraction—marine fisheries—we can trace the ramifications of Darwinian humility as it blinded powerful people to the unique and cataclysmic scale of their ecological impact.
Our founder Bill Dembski is quitting Twitter, moving over to Parler
Dembski might also be leaving Facebook for the same reason: Too much censorship and news management.
There’s a new buzz on the block, “social genomics”
Erik Parens: They are unfailingly clear about the fact that, when they add up the tiny genetic effects, the aggregate is small compared with, say, the total effect of the environment. They are relentless in their rejection of genetic determinism, and vigorous in their reiteration that environments play a huge role in explaining the outcomes they study.
Laszlo Bencze: Karl Popper never really retracted his doubt of Darwin
Bencze: Furthermore [in his recantation], he writes that natural selection is “a most successful metaphysical research program.” Wait a minute. Wasn’t that what he was to apologize for? So within his recantation he is reaffirming his original point of view, the very one that got him in trouble.
Nature: Scientists “aghast” that Biden didn’t win a landslide in the US
It’s hard to understand why these people imagine that the Big Science response to COVID-19 would be viewed by many people as a success. Many people around the world have experienced it as one panicfest after another, featuring contradictory opinions on all sorts of things shouted at us from “the science.”
Progressive mag blog sours on Cancel Culture when a progressive speaker gets Canceled
In reality, Cancel Culture, practised systematically, will tend to reward those with the fewest original ideas to offer and that should be reason enough to cancel it. People who can’t deal with ideas that upset them should just not be at a university for the same reasons as people who can’t stand the sight of blood should not work in an emergency room.