Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Category

Darwinism

Jonathan Wells reviews Francis Collins

Here’s the conclusion of Jonathan Wells’s review of Francis Collins’s THE LANGUAGE OF GOD: Darwin of the gaps Recall Collins’s principal objection to ID: “ID is a ‘God of the gaps’ theory, inserting a supposition of the need for supernatural intervention in places that its proponents claim science cannot explain… But those theories have a dismal history. Advances in science ultimately fill in those gaps, to the dismay of those who had attached their faith to them. Ultimately a ‘God of the gaps’ religion runs a huge risk of simply discrediting faith. We must not repeat this mistake in the current era. Intelligent design fits into this discouraging tradition, and faces the same ultimate demise.” Except for the “supernatural” part, Read More ›

Fitna vs Expelled – Is Islamofascism similar to Darwinian fascism?

Are there parallels between the effects of “Big Science” Darwinism severe job discrimination against non-Darwinists as shown in Expelled, and recent terrorism by Jihadists?

The very controversial film Fitna offers a view on radical Islam and the Qur’an by by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV). It was just released today March 27th on the Internet, and already has over one million downloads each in English and Dutch. Wilders alternates verses from the Qur’an with terrorist events and statements by radical jihadists. Blogpulse of Fitna already lists 2110 messages or 0.1% of messages, compared to 1618 for Blogpulse Expelled Stein.

Compare prominent Darwinist PZ Myers Insisting:

“Don’t tell me to be dispassionate or less unreasonable about it all because because 65% of the American population think creationism should be taught alongside evolution,. . .
I say, screw the polite words and careful rhetoric. It’s time for scientists to break out the steel-toed boots and brass knuckles, and get out there and hammer on the lunatics and idiots. If you don’t care enough for the truth to fight for it, then get out of the way.”

Read More ›

Dawkins in Austin

Last week was spring break at Southwestern Seminary where I teach. The seminary is located in Ft. Worth, about 200 miles north of Austin. As it is, in the middle of the break (last Wednesday), Richard Dawkins was going to be speaking in Austin. I therefore challenged my class to go listen to him and provide proof that they had actually been there (the preferred proof was to have him sign a copy of THE GOD DELUSION). The incentive to go was extra credit for the course. Six of my students went. I told them that they should greet Richard from me should they speak to him. One student got Dawkins’s signature, shook hands, and then greeted him from me. Read More ›

PSSI Takes the Debate to Spain, Darwinists React With Lies

Rich Akin, CPA and CEO of Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity (PSSI), has reported to its membership the completion of a successful five-city educational event, titled What Darwin Didn’t Know, in Spain this past January.

A week prior to the first event the national newspaper El País published a full page article that portrayed these presentations as the Americans bringing creationism to Spain. While riddled with distortions and inaccuracies, the article listed a link to the on-line registration site. The article also carried the times and locations of each event and even placed next to the article the poster prepared to advertise the events, likely increasing attendance.

This article acted like an alarm, awakening and riling up the Darwinists, who immediately began a campaign of intimidation against the locations where the events were scheduled. Read More ›

Will Promotion of (Anti)Religion Continue to be Permitted in U.S. High Schools?

In my neighborhood in Southern California, a high school student has filed suit against a history professor who openly and consistently disparages Christianity in the classroom. Note that this teacher is “faculty adviser to the Free Thinking Atheist and Agnostic Kinship student club.” Question #1: Why is no discussion of scientific challenges to Darwinism permitted in high schools, when open hostility to Christianity is? Where is the ACLU when you really need them? Question #2: Why are atheists and materialists the only ones who qualify as “skeptics” and “free thinkers”? I used to be an atheist and materialist, but when confronted with the evidence, I became skeptical of atheism and materialism. I became a free thinker.

Complex speciation of humans and chimpanzees

John Wakeley1 Abstract Arising from: N. Patterson, D. J. Richter, S. Gnerre, E. Lander & D. Reich Nature 441, 1103–1108 (2006); Patterson et al. Genetic data from two or more species provide information about the process of speciation. In their analysis of DNA from humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and macaques (HCGOM), Patterson et al.1 suggest that the apparently short divergence time between humans and chimpanzees on the X chromosome is explained by a massive interspecific hybridization event in the ancestry of these two species. However, Patterson et al.1 do not statistically test their own null model of simple speciation before concluding that speciation was complex, and—even if the null model could be rejected—they do not consider other explanations of a Read More ›

Maximo Sandin

As every child in our public school system knows, all critics of neo-Darwinism are religious fanatics. Except those who aren’t, such as University of Madrid biologist Maximo Sandin, whose dislike for Darwinism seem to be as much based on its association with capitalism (here) as with its inconsistency with the fossil record and other evidence. The theories which have been proposed to replace neo-Darwinism tell us something about the respect that many biologists have for the official version. Sandin’s alternative theory involves viruses and bacterias (he refers more or less approvingly to Alfred Hoyle’s “Evolution from Space”). The following is excerpted from one of his essays , an English translation is here . Viral and bacterial response capacity to environmental Read More ›

Bird Brains, GN&C, and ID

For many years I was an avid hang glider pilot, and one of my specialties in aerospace R&D is Guidance, Navigation and Control software development for precision-guided airdrop systems.

During many of my hang glider flights I had the opportunity to observe, from an unusual perspective, hawks in their native environment — the air. Flying wingtip to wingtip at the same airspeed, one gets a profound appreciation for these amazing creatures and their GN&C.

On a number of my hang glider flights, hawks came up close. They always seemed to be curious about me, flying my lumbering 32-foot-wingspan Dacron and aluminum aircraft. Up this close, I could observe the subtle adjustments they made in their primary feathers to compensate for the turbulence in the air, and they would glance furtively at me.
Read More ›

Melkikh’s Improbability of Darwinism and deterministic evolution model

Is is said that in the USA one can criticize politics but not evolution, while in Russia one can criticize evolution but not politics. The Russian author Alexey Melkikh provides the most spectacular improbability of Darwinian evolution that I have seen. He then proposes a mode of evolution without mutation. As some readers have asked for more science based posts, enjoy. ————-
INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLE AND POSSIBLE DETERMINISTIC MECHANISM OF BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION Alexey V. Melkikh, (Ural state technical university, Molecular physics chair,) Entropy 2004, 6, 223–232

It was shown that the probability of new species formation by means of random mutations is negligibly small. . . . The problem is that the Darwin mechanism of the evolution (a random process) cannot explain the known rate of the species evolution. In accordance with the very first estimates, the total number of possible combinations of nucleotides in the DNA is about 4^(2×10^9) (because four types of nucleotides are available, while the number of nucleotides in the DNA of higher organisms is about 2×10^9). . . . Thus, finally we have P = 10^57000000. This figure is vanishingly small. Therefore, a conclusion may be drawn that species could not be formed due to random mutations.

Read More ›

Grape Expectations and Interpreting Evidence

From The Boston Globe: Can expectations influence how we judge the evidence?

SCIENTISTS AT CALTECH and Stanford recently published the results of a peculiar wine tasting. They provided people with cabernet sauvignons at various price points, with bottles ranging from $5 to $90. Although the tasters were told that all the wines were different, the scientists were in fact presenting the same wines at different prices.

The subjects consistently reported that the more expensive wines tasted better, even when they were actually identical to cheaper wines.

[…]

What they saw was the power of expectations. People expect expensive wines to taste better, and then their brains literally make it so. Wine lovers shouldn’t feel singled out: Antonio Rangel, the Caltech neuroeconomist who led the study, insists that he could have used a variety of items to get similar results, from bottled water to modern art.

[…]

After the researchers finished their brain imaging, they asked the subjects to taste the five different wines again, only this time the scientists didn’t provide any price information. Although the subjects had just listed the $90 wine as the most pleasant, they now completely reversed their preferences. When the tasting was truly blind, when the subjects were no longer biased by their expectations, the cheapest wine got the highest ratings. It wasn’t fancy, but it tasted the best.

Read More ›

Merely a Theory

Evolutionists continue to be much exercised about evolution being treated as “merely a theory,” arguing that to identify it as such is as disreputable as treating gravity or the second law as “merely a theory.” But consider, as a close colleague recently reminded me: The late Ernst Mayr, a Harvard professor called “the Dean of American Evolutionists ” wrote in his 1976 book Evolution and the Diversity of Life: Selected Essays: “When I lectured in the mid-1950’s to a small audience in Copenhagen, the great physicist Niels Bohr stated in the discussion that he could not conceive how accidental mutations could account for the immense diversity of the organic world and its remarkable adaptations. As far as he was concerned, Read More ›

Florida’s Darwinian Standards evolve to “a scientific theory”

Could Florida’s Darwinian regulations be “evolving” from “fact” to free inquiry? In More on the vote on evolution and Florida’s new science standards Leslie Postal reports that teaching Evolution in schools is now mandated, but officially as the “scientific theory of” Evolution.

Will students now be able to seriously study evolution as “a scientific theory” – with all the testing, probing, and skepticism required by the scientific method? Or will they be Expelled for exercising their unalienable rights to free speech? – that founded the Declaration of Independence (which heads the US Codes Organic Laws) and are preserved by the First Amendment.
In a Special Report on the American Spectator Ben Stein writes::

Read More ›

Dawkins Cashes in on Darwin’s Upcoming Bicentennial

The same publisher that brought you DARWIN’S BLACK BOX and THE EDGE OF EVOLUTION (i.e., The Free Press) is paying Richard Dawkins $3.5million for his next book, to be titled ONLY A THEORY? I’m told, however, that other titles are still in the running, including MERELY A HYPOTHESIS MERE DARWINISM (this and the last to attract fans of C. S. Lewis) THE NADIR OF SCIENCE DARWIN’S DEAD IDEA EVOLUTION: THE ILLUSION OF POSSIBILITY DARWINISM DEVOLVING EVOLUTION: THE SENESCENT YEARS $3.5million is a lot of money. The question I have is whether Dawkins still worships exclusively in the temple of Darwin or if he now also attends services at the temple of Mammon.