Darwinism

This is a good example of how to use ID and abandon “unintelligent” evolution. Read article here (in PDF)

Casey Luskin’s thoughts on tomorrow’s Darwin Day celebrations here: www.usnews.com/…/darwin-intelligent-design-…

I am pleased to say that an audio version (MP3) of my play ‘Lincoln and Darwin — Live for One Night Only!’ is now on-line at ‘The Sci-Phi Show’, courtesy of Jason Rennie, the Sydneyside philosophical broadcaster. Here it is, just in time for Lincoln and Darwin’s 200th birthday (tomorrow). The play runs to 85 minutes and is premised on Lincoln and Darwin coming on one of today’s TV chat shows to talk about has happened since they died.  Each then is given the option of staying in 2009 or returning to the 19th century. One decides to stay and the other goes.  The play was originally staged in Liverpool in September 2008 as part of the annual meeting of the British Read More ›

This from the conclusion of Darwin’s THE VARIATION OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS UNDER DOMESTICATION: The shape of the fragments of stone at the base of our precipice may be called accidental, but this is not strictly correct; for the shape of each depends on a long sequence of events, all obeying natural laws; on the nature of the rock, on the lines of deposition or cleavage, on the form of the mountain, which depends on its upheaval and subsequent denudation, and lastly on the storm or earthquake which throws down the fragments. But in regard to the use to which the fragments may be put, their shape may be strictly said to be accidental. And here we are led to Read More ›

Following are some insightful extracts from G.K.Chesterton that still ring true.
Doubts About Darwinism by G. K. Chesterton, 17th July 1920

. . .I am confronted with a very reasonable retort that I know nothing about the subject. . .it would be equally true if I ventured to throw out the suggestion that the Kaiser has suffered a defeat. If I were to insinuate that the armies of the German Empire were ultimately out-manoeuvered and forced to a surrender, it might be said that I was wholly ignorant of the technical strategy of soldiering, . . .But these cases alone will be sufficient to suggest, to anybody of the smallest commonsense, that there is a fallacy somewhere in the simple argument that only an expert in detail can perceive that there is a difficulty, or declare that there is a defeat. Read More ›

Check out this link: www.charlesdarwin.org.

Andrew Sibley has drawn attention to the recent Theos survey of the UK public’s beliefs in evolution, creationism and intelligent design. Wearing my sociologist’s hat, one overriding conclusion comes through in this survey: It was very poorly designed. Theos should get its money back from the social researchers they hired. Theos wants to give the impression that the public holds confused views about the various positions relating to the origins of life. In fact, Theos is the one confused. Have a look at how the various positions were described and what people thought of them. I’ve collapsed the statistics because I want to focus on the exact wording: Young Earth Creationism is the idea that God created the world sometime Read More ›

A few days back I reported here that Ben Stein had been uninvited to give the UVM (University of Vermont) commencement address, at which he was also to be given an honorary doctorate. I’m afraid I may have come across as a bit miffed by this seeming unfairness. Well, I’m happy to report that all’s right again with the world in Vermont: Howard Dean tapped for UVM commencement http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=9800475&nav=menu183_2 Burlington, Vermont – February 6, 2009 A familiar face will give this year’s commencement speech at the University of Vermont. Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean has been chosen. He served six terms as the state’s highest elected official. He then went on to run for president and just stepped down as Read More ›

Some of you may find interesting a couple of articles in the latest issue of Spontaneous Generations, a peer-reviewed journal founded and run by graduate students at the Institute for History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Toronto.   One article documents the activities of a philosopher of science in the American South who teaches the next generation of teachers who will have to deal with evolution/creation/ID in the classroom. It’s quite a thoughtful piece and well worth a read.   The other article is a piece I was asked to write in response but which turned out to be a stand-alone piece that attempts to justify my participation in these matters (since this is a question that arises Read More ›

This week marks the publication of the Darwin book that has so far received the most advance publicity in the UK, Darwin’s Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins, by Adrian Desmond and James Moore (Allen Lane). Desmond and Moore, both together and separately, have written some of the best histories of the Victorian life sciences, including a best-selling biography of Darwin. You can get a sense of the book from this excerpt currently featured in Prospect Magazine. 

Desmond and Moore always wade very deep in the archives but also with an eye to what might attract today’s reader about their subject. Not surprisingly, then, this is a book that documents the link between Darwin’s more general doctrine of common descent and his belief that all humans descend from a common ancestor and hence are members of the same species. A lot of stress is placed on Darwin’s revulsion at the brutality of slavery that he saw while voyaging on the Beagle, and the fact that it was common among the natural historians of his day to believe in several species of ‘man’. The reader can easily get the impression that this was some kind of triumph of evidence over prejudice. However, this impression would be very misleading. Read More ›

More details of DNA repair have been revealed.
See: Human DNA repair process recorded in action (Video)

(PhysOrg.com) — A key phase in the repair process of damaged human DNA has been observed and visually recorded by a team of researchers at the University of California, Davis. The recordings provide new information about the role played by a protein known as Rad51, which is linked to breast cancer, in this complex and critical process.
. . . In 2006, the researchers recorded a portion of the bacterial DNA repair process, a system considerably less complex than its human counterpart.. . .

This filament composed of a fluorescently-labeled DNA molecule and the repair protein Rad51 grows progressively brighter and longer as more and more Rad51 molecules assemble onto the DNA.

Human DNA is under constant assault from harmful agents such as ultraviolet sunlight, tobacco smoke and a myriad of chemicals, both natural and man-made. Because damage can lead to cancer, cell death and mutations, an army of proteins and enzymes are mobilized into action whenever it occurs. Read More ›

A Book Review of John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York, Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present (Monthly Review Press, 2008).

There are many interesting features of this book, authored by academic Marxists (or at least people who used to be Marxists) and published by a historically Marxist press. The argument is presented as a critical intellectual history, which, while clearly written from a committed ‘materialist’ standpoint, is quite nuanced. But from the standpoint of ID defenders, the book’s most interesting feature is that the authors gladly embrace ID’s demonised image of its opponents. So those who remain sceptical of ID rhetoric that connects Epicurus, Darwin, Marx and Freud as part of a vast ‘materialist’ conspiracy should be silenced by what transpires in these pages: Yes, such scary two-dimensional materialists do really seem to exist – and they write books like this.

Read More ›

I am really going to miss Richard John Neuhaus, who slipped away January 8 (1936-2008), quite unexpectedly, and is NOT an example of the problem I am commenting on here. 

I got my February First Things earlier this week, knowing it was the last installment I would ever read of his “The Public Square,” and especially of my favourite portion, “While We’re At It,” of which I am transcribing a bit for you below, a bit that is relevant to the intelligent design debate.

I first became aware of Neuhaus when he was a Lutheran pastor (he subsequently became a Catholic priest), because he was one of the first people ever to write against the “population bomb” hoax, in 1971 – when that very hoax was hot stuff in what we today call the legacy media.

Essentially, as Pamela Winnick has also pointed out, there was no population bomb. The rise of national government – which meant, among other things, the prohibition of local warfare, together with the worldwide spread of modern agriculture and medical techniques – simply meant that more people than ever before in history happen to be alive at the same time. This is an inevitable consequence of reducing child and young adult mortality. But inevitably then, birth rates begin to taper off. As Neuhaus recognized, there was unmistakable evidence that birth rates were already tapering off, even while editorialists were freaking out about the supposed “bomb.”

Anyway, without more ado, here are some of Neuhaus’s comments on Ernst Haeckel, Darwin’s devoted German disciple: Read More ›

I have posted on my website an audio recording of the talk I gave this past Tuesday at the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture, kicking off their Darwin Year series. My talk was entitled ‘Darwin’s Original Sin: The Rejection of Theology’s Claims to Knowledge‘. If you scroll down to the bottom of this page you should find it. It’s only about 45 minutes long, and it captures many of the points that I have been raising more discursively since I started blogging here. I should say that the first 4 minutes or so is introductory stuff, including a reference to Obama’s inauguration.