Darwinism

On a private listserve which shall remain unnamed, I posted the following to Phillip Johnson. Phil deserves a tremendous amount of gratitude for his insight and courage. Dear Phillip, Neither you nor I have any notion of the magnitude of the ripple effects that have emanated from Darwin On Trial, but I can tell you this: That book cut through all the Darwinian story-telling presented as science like a razor. Darwin On Trial, combined with Michael Denton’s first book, made me slap myself on the forehead and proclaim, “Holy mackerel, I’ve been conned!” Darwinism is in its evidential, mathematical, intellectual, philosophical, and ethical death throes — thus all the hysteria on the part of its adamant proponents, whose meaning in Read More ›

From Evolution News and Views: More than 50 years ago two playwrights penned a fictionalized account of the 1920s Scopes Trial called “Inherit the Wind” that is now universally regarded by historians as inaccurate propaganda. Last night PBS aired its “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design” documentary, which similarly promotes propaganda about the 2005 Kitzmiller trial and intelligent design (ID). Most of the misinformation in “Judgment Day” was corrected by ID proponents long ago. To help readers sift the fact from the fiction, here are links to articles rebutting some of PBS’s most blatant misrepresentations:

The global warming debate has striking parallels to the evolution/intelligent design debate. James Lewis explores the pathological consequences when political correctness replaces the search for truth in science: “Trofimko Lysenko is not a household name; but it should be, because he was the model for all the Politically Correct “science” in the last hundred years. Lysenko was Stalin’s favorite agricultural “scientist,” peddling the myth that crops could be just trained into growing bigger and better. . . . Hundreds of thousands of peasants starved during Stalin’s famines, in good part because of fraudulent science. . . . The explosive spread of AIDS occurred when the known evidence about HIV transmission among Gay men was suppressed by the media. . . Read More ›

For those who haven’t listened to it, I encourage UD readers to check out The Incorrigible Dr. Berlinski. I paraphrase some of his comments below the fold.
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For those not familiar with it, be sure to visit this site. At the bottom of the homepage there are links to various chapters. They are all worth a look, but be sure to check out the chapter on evolution. (I also loved the tables and charts, especially the geologic ages and events chart.)

From the site:

What is Science?
Put most simply, science is a way of dealing with the world around us. It is a way of baffling the uninitiated with incomprehensible jargon. It is a way of obtaining fat government grants…

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Anybody willing to offer predictions about when Darwinists will be getting back big time into the eugenics business? Africans are less intelligent than Westerners, says DNA pioneer SOURCE: news.independent.co.uk . . . His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in which he writes: “There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.”

This is the wisdom promulgated by the “new atheists” at a recent conference.

From the cnsnews.com article: “Science must ultimately destroy organized religion, according to some of the leading atheist writers and intellectuals who spoke at a recent atheist conference in Northern Virginia.”

They might as well dream of destroying humankind’s urge to eat.

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Last evening I truly enjoyed a wonderfully edifying experience at Biola University in La Mirada, California: a debate between Paul Nelson and Michael Ruse. The theme of what was characterized as an “undebate” was, What would it take to make you change your position on Darwinism versus ID? Both men were extremely articulate, and I witnessed a side of Ruse of which I had not been aware. He has a clever sense of humor. Nelson concentrated on two evidential issues and one philosophical issue: the problem of the origin of self-replicating biological systems and their complex machinery, the problem of the origin of new body plans (specifically the Cambrian explosion), and the truth-seeking deficiencies associated with the exclusion of design Read More ›

I can’t say I feel sorry for these atheistic scientists in agreeing to interview for EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED. When the BBC interviewed me for their Horizon documentary on ID (Horizon = the UK version of PBS Nova), they gave the ID side no warning that the program would be titled A WAR ON SCIENCE (I wouldn’t have agreed to be interviewed had I known that was going to be its title). What goes around comes around. September 27, 2007 Scientists Feel Miscast in Film on Life’s Origin By CORNELIA DEAN A few months ago, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins received an e-mail message from a producer at Rampant Films inviting him to be interviewed for a documentary called “Crossroads.” Read More ›

Francisco Ayala’s latest book, DARWIN’S GIFT TO SCIENCE AND RELIGION, defends Darwinism against ID. For my review of that book for Science & Theology, go here.

Computer programs that purport to validate the grand claims of Darwinian (i.e., chance and necessity) biological evolution are a hoot.

In early August my aerospace R&D company sent me off to Livermore, CA for a four-day course in using a finite element analysis (FEA) simulation program called LS-DYNA, originally developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It models the laws of physics and material properties with astounding fidelity. It is so powerful that it is used heavily in the automotive industry to simulate entire vehicles and how they behave during impacts.

On the first day of the course the instructor warned us that it is very easy to create “cartoons” with LS-DYNA (it not only generates all kinds of data, it produces beautiful animations). By this he meant that if your initial assumptions are not correct, or if the FEA tools are not used correctly, you can get results that look really cool but don’t comport with reality. Much of the course focused on avoiding cartoon-generating pitfalls.
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Three cheers for an editor with courage: “Editor: Lebanon Daily News In the words of the brilliant investigative-journalist and four-time Gold Medallion winner, Lee Strobel, “My road to atheism was paved by science … but, ironically science became my later journey to God.” The public needs enlightenment on the truth of intelligent design as increasing numbers of the world’s greatest scientists are yielding to the compelling and mounting evidence of this burgeoning movement. In recent years the erroneous teaching of Darwinism and life by random chance is becoming unraveled and exposing itself for what it really is: a bankrupt philosophy masquerading as a science with the aid of fake fossil mills loose in the world. . . . Full article Read More ›

IDers like to portray evolution as being built entirely on an edifice of darwinian natural selection. This caricature of evolutionary biology is not too surprising. Most molecular, cell and developmental biologists subscribe to the same creed, as do many popular science writers. However, it has long been known that purely selective arguments are inadequate to explain many aspects of biological diversity.

Michael Lynch, May 2005

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[continued from Dr. D.A. Cook’s thread, Where Did Sea Anemones Get Human Genes?]

Michael Behe has certainly given his critics a thrashing at his Amazon weblog. When I saw Mike taking Ken Miller to task for Miller mischaracterizing Lipids as Proteins (a sophomoric mistake by Miller), I knew Mike was slamming the best the Darwinist could muster onto the floor. Behe single handedly defeated Ken Miller, Sean Carroll, Jerry Coyne, Michael Ruse, and Richard Dawkins, and thus earned the title “Darwin Slayer”.
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