Darwinism

I recently posted on op-ed in which I described that the concern in the 1970s was not global warming but global cooling (go here). Critics of that piece are now claiming that I’m misrepresenting the fabulous 70s and that “science” back then was not in fact claiming that the earth was cooling. I recall seeing cited some literature on global cooling from that time, so I wrote the op-ed from memory. I since went to that trusted source — Wikipedia — and looked up the article on “global cooling.” It begins (go here): Global cooling was a conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere along with a posited commencement of glaciation. This hypothesis never Read More ›

Marvin Olasky, in an article at Townhall.com, makes a simple request: that Dr. Francis Collins, former leader of the Human Genome Project and President Obama’s recent nominee to direct the National Institutes of Health, come to King’s College in the Empire State Building and spend an hour discussing Darwinism and ID with Dr. Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute. Mr. Olasky states, What I and many others need help with is the science. I’ll put it simply and personally: I like Collins and find him convincing as he attacks ID. But when I hear Steve Meyer, author of Signature in the Cell, a major new book published by HarperCollins and reviewed positively by many scientists, expound the flaws in Darwinism, Read More ›

In this year of Darwin, I guess its only fitting that Darwin’s theory should be celebrated in song. So, Darwin scholar Richard Milner has done just that. Milner is now the official Darwin singin scholar. Where most scholars look for intellectual insights in their research, according to Milner, he looks for musical cues. Kinda makes you wonder what other popular scientific theories could be set to music. Could Einstein be set to hip hop? Hmmm….

This is a bit dated. It took place at the Pontifical Gregorian University a few months back: SOURCE

Is this vapid appeal to authority all the Darwinians have left? Creationism piece no way to honor Darwin’s birthday July 20, 2009 Letter to BOSTON GLOBE SHAME ON you for publishing two creationist op-eds in two years from the Discovery Institute, a well-funded propaganda factory that aims to sow confusion about evolution. Virtually no scientist takes “intelligent design’’ seriously, and in the famous Dover, Pa., trial in 2005, a federal court ruled that it is religion in disguise. The judge referred to the theory’s “breathtaking inanity,’’ which is a fine description of Stephen Meyer’s July 15 op-ed “Jefferson’s support for intelligent design.’’ Well, yes, Thomas Jefferson died 33 years before Darwin published “The Origin of Species.’’ And Meyer’s idea that Read More ›

Collins, well known as the genome mapper who sat with President Clinton and others on the White House lawn in 2000, is the new head of National Institutes of Health.

As others have noted, he may be as well known for his recent book, The Language of God, part personal testimony and part explanation of how there need be no conflict between faith and science.

Some are skeptical. David Klinghoffer writes,

Do you ever notice how religious believers are always cited by the media as “devout” precisely when they are equivocating on basic Judeo-Christian moral and theological tenets? Dr. Francis Collins has some startling ideas on abortion. Startling, that is, from an Evangelical Christian who is Obama’s choice to head up the National Institutes of Health. He’s a favorite church speaker with Evangelical audiences, especially on how Darwinism poses no threat to their faith.

Klinghoffer offers some examples of his concerns:

– From an interview here at Beliefnet:

Q: [S]ometimes when parents learn that their child has Down Syndrome, they terminate the pregnancy. What is your opinion of that sort of scenario?

A: I’m troubled that the applications of genetics that are currently possible are oftentimes in the prenatal arena. That is not the reason I went into this field.

The reason I went into this field was to figure out how to treat illnesses, rather than try to stop such individuals from even being born. But, of course, in our current society, people are in a circumstance of being able to take advantage of those technologies. And we have decided as a society that that choice needs to be defended.

Read More ›

This should be interesting: Book Description In this book, Weikart helps unlock the mystery of Hitler’s evil by vividly demonstrating the surprising conclusion that Hitler’s immorality flowed from a coherent ethic. Hitler was inspired by evolutionary ethics to pursue the utopian project of biologically improving the human race. This ethic underlay or influenced almost every major feature of Nazi policy: eugenics (i.e., measures to improve human heredity, including compulsory sterilization), euthanasia, racism, population expansion, offensive warfare, and racial extermination. More…

[[Discovery Press Release:]] In Darwin Anniversary Year, New Zogby Poll Reveals Majority Support for Intelligent Design — Doubts about Darwin Continue to Mount Seattle – Just a few months before the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, a newly released Zogby poll shows that the American public overwhelmingly rejects Darwinian theory in favor of intelligent design. When asked if life developed “through an unguided process of random mutations and natural selection,” a standard definition of Darwinism, only 33 percent of respondents said they agreed with the statement. But 52 percent agreed that “the development of life was guided by intelligent design.” “In the Year of Darwin, these figures must represent a terrible disappointment to Darwinian advocates,” commented Read More ›

It’s nice to see people like Pat Buchanan feeling more at ease about going after Darwin. In citing Eugene Windchy’s THE END OF DARWINISM, Buchanan writes: Darwin … lied in “The Origin of Species” about believing in a Creator. By 1859, he was a confirmed agnostic and so admitted in his posthumous autobiography, which was censored by his family. SOURCE: worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=102589

John Lynch whines that “noted historians”* weren’t properly informed that a documentary for which they were interviewed (The Voyage That Shook the World) would take an anti-Darwinist line. Lynch is outraged: the documentary makers are guilty of “lies” and “deception.” Would a charge of fraud hold up in court? I suspect the documentary makers simply withheld information. Is that wrong? The BBC, for instance, didn’t inform me that a documentary they were making about ID was to be called “A War on Science,” and that I would be portrayed as one of the “bad people” trying to “destroy science.” I was, to be sure, displeased with this outcome, but I recognize that this is the way the game is played. Read More ›

Benjamin Wiker’s   The Darwin Myth  was first available on Amazon.com on June 2; my book on natural selection’s co-discoverer Alfred Russel Wallace, titled Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Intelligent Evolution, first appeared on Amazon on February 16. My aim in pointing this out is only to say that had Dr. Wiker been well ahead of me instead of a little behind, I might have saved perhaps one-third of the 114 references in my work. In other words, in order to give Wallace some historical context it was absolutely essential to at least give a general assessment of Charles Darwin, the man who utterly eclipsed the younger naturalist.  How did Darwin develop his theory? What did it contribute? How are we to assess the man (Darwin) in relation to his theory (evolution)? How was Darwin’s theory unique and different from all others?  How do answers to these questions impact the current evolutionary debate today?  I tackled these same questions in my own work but found that they had to be answered from multiple sources (from several contemporary biographies and from primary resources available in Darwin’s published notebooks, his Autobiography [used with extreme caution!], and others). Search after search yielded no one-volume source that handled Darwin with the frank perspicacity that biology’s paterfamilias deserved.  With Wiker’s new book it has finally arrived!

Read More ›