Howard Van Till was once one of the best-known Christian evolutionists, but since his “What good is stardust?” article in Christianity Today arguing that nature is “fully gifted” and thus God never intervenes, he has increasingly moved toward what some describe as process theology.
He acknowledges his change of views, and has this to say in The Nature of Nature: Read More ›
Andrew Sibley writes*, While there is little doubt about the desire of theistic evolutionists to maintain their commitment to theism, it is pertinent to ask what follows logically from the scientific acceptance of some forms of theistic evolution, especially those that claim that it must be understood within methodological naturalism where all evidence of God’s handiwork is excluded from science by definition. What follows logically is a silent God and a loud Darwin. *Andrew Sibley, “The Nature and Character of God”, p. 98 , in Should Christians Embrace Evolution?: Biblical and scientific responses, Norman C. Nevin, ed. (Inter-Varsity Press: Nottingham, 2005). Foreword by Wayne Grudem,
The Discover interview with non-Darwinist (whatever she may feel forced to claim) evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis:
“All scientists agree that evolution has occurred… The question is, is natural selection enough to explain evolution? … This is the problem I have with neo-Darwinists: They teach that what is generating novelty is the accumulation of random mutations in DNA, in a direction set by natural selection… Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn’t create. …I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change — led to new species. I believe it until I looked for evidence. … Read More ›
… allegiance to Darwinism has become a litmus for deciding who does and who does not hold a ”properly scientific’ world view. ‘You must choose between faith in God and faith in Darwin; and if you want to be a secular humanist, you’d better choose the latter.’ So we’re told. We doubt that those options are exhaustive. But we do want, ever so much, to be secular humanists. In fact, we both claim to be outright, card-carrying, signed-up, dyed-in-the-wool, no-holds-barred atheists. [ … ] Still, this book is mostly a work of criticism; it is mostly about what we think is wrong with Darwinism. The cry of their heart is to follow anyone or anything but Darwinism, for the sake Read More ›
When David Brooks’ Man: The Social Animal appeared, it was reviled by people as far apart otherwise as O’Leary and P.Z. Myers, for its Gadarene (and utterly tone deaf) slide into the fever swamps of evolutionary psychology.
These fetid bogs are usually inhabited by the Evolutionary Agony Aunt, the Darwinian brand marketer and the advocates of neurolaw (“your neurons fail, you’re in jail”). However, a review in thinkmag The Catholic Thing (“a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary”) not only heaps praise on the failed materialist novel but grabs it for Roman Catholicism.
Reviewer George J. Marlin offers Thomas Aquinas (complete with halo) to provide support for the descent, and offers
Although Brooks surveys the latest research on the human mind, he doesn’t teach Catholics anything all that new. What he does is confirm a lot of what generations of undergraduates were once taught about the human person at Catholic universities in their Thomistic philosophical psychology and ethics courses (it would be interesting to know how much this is still the case).
[ … ]
Brooks basically agrees that we have an intuitive moral sense and effectively explains how people can be taught to control irascible passions. It’s good that a columnist for The Times has surveyed recent scientific studies and reached that conclusion. But it’s best to recognize that his solid work, which some see as opening previously unexplored territory, is really a clearing of the way for a return to some of the oldest traditional truths.
Here’s a curious fact about Christian Darwinists: Read More ›
In “Chimp, Bonobo Study Sheds Light on the Social Brain”, ScienceDaily reports (Apr. 5, 2011) It’s been a puzzle why our two closest living primate relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, have widely different social traits, despite belonging to the same genus. Now, a comparative analysis of their brains shows neuroanatomical differences that may be responsible for these behaviors, from the aggression more typical of chimpanzees to the social tolerance of bonobos.”What’s remarkable is that the data appears to match what we know about the human brain and behavior,” says Emory anthropologist James Rilling, who led the analysis. “The neural circuitry that mediates anxiety, empathy and the inhibition of aggression in humans is better developed in bonobos than in chimpanzees.” [ … Read More ›
A guy was involved with a push poll in a publically funded medium in Canada (currently heading to the polls), by which just about everyone comes out a “Liberal”: Here’s the first experiment. It only takes a minute. Go through the survey and answer every question with “no opinion” as your answer. Of course, skip the part where it asks you to choose parties or leaders (that would be taking an opinion). Surprise! The CBC push-poll says you’re a Liberal. Even though you gave absolutely no legitimate reason to be pegged as a Liberal. Like I say; Loewen and friends rigged the system. Now try a completely different approach. Go through the survey again and simply alternate clicking “strongly agree” Read More ›
Here: No book of this sort can cover every important topic, perspective, and challenge. But we were surprised that there was no discussion of why evolution remains controversial at a societal level. Why, for example, do many in the U.S. remain skeptical of evolution? In this sense, evolution is unique among the sciences (with the possible exception of climate change research) in that the majority of the public do not even believe it is real! Clearly, this situation is not desirable, given that it is largely this same public that, through their taxes, provides the financial support for teaching and research in evolutionary science. How can this challenge be addressed, in the US and elsewhere? On a related vein, we Read More ›
David Tyler reports on the beautifully preserved Cretaceous “ buttercup”: Many portrayals of habitats purporting to represent the Age of Dinosaurs have conifer trees and ferns, but very little ground cover. As palaeontologists continue their research, they are coming to recognise that the ecosystems were much more diverse. The earliest flowering plants are represented by pollen grains and considered to be about 130 Ma years old. However, diversity after this was rapid (see here). Recently, a strikingly beautiful fossil has been reported from China, in the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation. [ … ] ome questions deserve to be asked about the phrase “slower diversification of many families of eudicots”: if the evolution of the angiosperms was an “abominable mystery” to Read More ›
Why doesn’t this The Scientist feature, with Richard P. Grant interviewing Yale Passamaneck (March 31, 2011) fill me with confidence about the long slow march of Darwinian evolution?: What can a clam-like creature tell us about eye evolution? Quite a bit, as it turns out. We ran a news article at the beginning of the month, on the finding that brachiopod, or lamp shell, embryos have eyes that are more closely related to those of vertebrates, than of their spineless cousins. Here’s the original article, where Amy Maxmen explains “Eye evolution questioned: Invertebrates with vertebrate-like vision challenge the idea that the two groups of organisms have distinctly different visual receptors” (1st March 2011): In 2004, biologists hypothesized that an ancestor Read More ›
Casey Luskin addresses this question in “Ignore That Research!” (Spring 2011, p. 54). He notes that “Critics falsely claim there is no ID research.”
He cites the work of Douglas Axe who published articles in 2000 and 2004 in the Journal of Molecular Biology, Michael Behe and David Snoke who published in 2004 in Protein Science, and Axe again in 2010 in BIO-Complexity, a peer reviewed journal for testing ID claims. From my reading, all these papers cast doubt on natural selection acting on random mutations as a source of new information.
Luskin’s is obviously not intended to be a complete list. Here’s a much fuller one. But, given the difficulties of even raising these issues in Darwinworld, it is a wonder that any papers were published anywhere. Does anyone remember what happened to editor Rick Sternberg of the Journal of the Biological Society of Washington (Smithsonian) over Steve Meyer’s peer reviewed paper suggesting that design might be a reasonable explanation?
That said, a legitimate question raised by thoughtful people is, why don’t ID-friendly researchers do positive research? Why do they just go on proving that Darwinism doesn’t work?
I have thought about that one for a while, and now usually reply:
Because, just as bad money drives out good, bad ideas drive out good. Let us say your country’s carefully regulated money supply is assaulted by counterfeiters. Does it make more sense to start by exposing them or to just virtuously ignore them and continue to print good money – while they continue to print bad money? Read More ›
THE NATURE OF NATURE is now finally out and widely available. If you haven’t bought it yet, let me suggest Amazon.com, which is selling it for $17.94, which is an incredible deal for a 7″x10″ 1000-page book with, for most of us, no tax and no shipping charge (it costs over $10 to ship this monster priority mail). This is a must-have book if you are interested at all in the ID debate. To get it from Amazon.com, click here. Below is the table of contents and some introductory matter.
(Other news coverage continues below)
———————————————
Seven years in the making, at 500,000 words, with three Nobel laureate contributors, this is the most thorough examination of naturalism to date.
<<<<<>>>>>
The Nature of Nature: Examining the Role of Naturalism in Science
Edited by Bruce L. Gordon
and William A. Dembski
ISI Books
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Wilmington, DE 19807
Back Cover:
And tells us a bit Explaining the history and diversity of life is simply not an issue of great concern to most people except as a marker of belief system. On that score, many “evolution believers” have knowledge that is just as shallow as creationists. They simply nod and smile in response to different cues. Professing a belief in evolution or creation is a not-so-secret handshake that signals membership in a loose clan. That’s why the press is so insistent that presidential candidates take some position on the issue; it marks them like a scarlet letter. before freaking out: But many [creationists] are well practiced in the art of debate and will not easily play into your hands. They will Read More ›
In “Did Erasmus Darwin foreshadow the tweaking of his grandson’s paradigm?” (The Scientist , 2011-03-01) , Andrew D. Ellington, a University of Texas biologist tells us,
The Lamarckian idea that giraffes’ reaching for leaves resulted in longer-necked progeny seems silly to us today, primarily because we know so very much about the underlying mechanisms of genetics. And yet Lamarck may have a last laugh—think inheritance patterns in ciliates, or the effect of diet on the coat color of agouti mouse offspring. We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in our understanding of how evolution can act…on evolution, yielding mechanisms that allow both adaptation and heritability within the course of a lifetime. And such paradigm shifts almost always have societal consequences. Manel Esteller shows that epigenetics also impacts the “dark genome” in a way that may improve cancer diagnostics. An even more far-reaching consequence is that it may prove possible to engineer epigenetics, as Bob Kingston’s Thought Experiment tacitly suggests. If so, will epigenetic engineering be subject to the same restrictions as genetic engineering? Or will this be a way that we can not merely treat disease, but possibly engineer human health into future generations?
And in the face of so momentous a revolution in our thinking, his worry is
We can expect that epigenetics will be held up as the forerunner of that bastard child of Creationism, Intelligent Design.
Such limited aims in the face of so vast an ocean of possibilities.
Not only is he right in his concerns, such as they are, but it helps to see why he is right. In the first place, the modern Darwinism enforced in schools is a narrow cult compared to what Darwin actually proposed about how evolution occurs. For example, as David Tyler notes, Read More ›
Here, Aman Batheja reports that an “Arlington lawmaker’s bill would protect questioners of evolution” (Star-Telegram, Mar. 17, 2011):
The measure from Republican state Rep. Bill Zedler would block higher education institutions from discriminating against or penalizing teachers or students based on their research into intelligent design or other theories that disagree with evolution.
The really surprising thing about this story is that it is fair and Batheja did his homework. (I am ashamed to admit what a rarity that is on these sorts of subjects these days, so he deserves a great deal of credit.)
Yes, we hear (as expected) that Read More ›