Evolution

Here’s a letter that The American Scholar declined to publish. Unfortunately, the magazine has no electronic presence. The printed copy is the only access. The article “Getting It All Wrong” appeared in the Autumn 2006 issue. I reprint the letter here with the permission of László Bencze, who happens to be my professional photographer. (Note that the picture on the UD banner is not by László; one of his will be appearing in the next week or so when the entire blog is revamped.) The Editor The American Scholar 1606 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W., Washington DC 20009 24 September 2006 Re: “Getting It All Wrong” It is not often one reads an article which contradicts itself so unashamedly as Mr. Read More ›

Lee Strobel and “The Case for a Creator” Thursday, December 7th 7:30 – 9:30 p.m. FREE EVENT! FREE DVD! Biola University 13800 Biola Ave La Mirada CA 90639 Map to Biola: http://biola.edu/about/map_directions.cfm FIRST COME, FIRST SEATED! Come early. Bring your friends and carpool. We are expecting a full house so please come early to ensure a seat and a parking spot. There will be parking attendants to guide you. Witness the launch of a much anticipated new DVD product based on Lee Strobel’s best selling book. Hear from scholars who are helping to win the debate over Darwinism in our time. –Dr. Jay Richards –Dr. Steve Meyer –Dr. J.P. Moreland –Dr. John Bloom –Dr. William Lane Craig –Dr. Jonathan Wells Read More ›

Check out the following piece by G. K. Chesterton, published in 1920. . . . The Darwinians have this mark of fighters for a lost cause, that they are perpetually appealing to sentiment and to authority. Put your bat or your rhinoceros simply and innocently as a child might put them, before the Darwinian, and he will answer by an appeal to authority. He will probably answer with the names of various German professors; he will not answer with any ordinary English words, explaining the point at issue. God condescended to argue with Job, but the last Darwinian will not condescend to argue with you. He will inform you of your ignorance; he will not enlighten your ignorance. And I Read More ›

The Center for Inquiry’s new branch office in DC has issued a “Declaration on Science and Secularism” in which they lament the increasing appeal of ID among the unwashed masses. There’s a simple way for this problem to go away: stop stealing the money of the unwashed masses (in the form of taxes) to underwrite an ideologically driven materialistic conception of science; instead, get your money from secular elites like Paul Allen, George Soros, Charles Simonyi, etc. For the text of the Declaration, go here: http://www.cfidc.org/declaration.html.

“You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.” — Who said it and how does it apply to the ID-evolution controversy?

With Dawkins and his village atheism getting so much attention, it’s only appropriate that THE BRITES is back in business: http://cedros.globat.com/~thebrites.org/index.htm.

First Richard Dawkins calls Michael Ruse the Neville Chamberlain of the evolution-ID debate. Now PZ Myers attacks Eugenie Scott for being too soft on us. It reminds me of the old joke about fascists in South America after World War II sitting around a table and musing: “Yep, we’re going to do it again, but this time no more Mr. Nice Guy.” What’s next PZ? Internment camps of ID proponents — or do you prefer interment camps? Eugenie Scott in Kansas Key line: “Take off the comfy cardigan, Dr Scott. Scientists have a role to play in our culture, and it’s not as the pleasant, soothing flim-flam artists, mumbling consolation and excuses in return for a donation on the offering Read More ›

Obviously this new think-tank is not about science as such but about pushing a materialistic, Darwin-undergirded conception of science. Question: Did Kurtz ever get the memo from the NCSE that evolution is religiously neutral? Mission statement: A Global Federation committed to science, reason, free inquiry, secularism, and planetary ethics Source: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=221 By Center for Inquiry PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Nathan Bupp Phone: (716) 636-4869 x 218 E-mail: nbupp@centerforinquiry.net Washington, D.C. (November 14, 2006)—The Center for Inquiry/Transnational, a think tank devoted to promoting reason and science in all areas of human interest, announced today that it is opening a new Office of Public Policy in Washington, D.C. This initiative will mark an unprecedented drive to bring a rigorous defense Read More ›

Larry Moran has been getting some play on this blog, so I’ll throw in my two cents. I met Larry in 2002, when he attended a lecture I gave at U of Toronto and confidently explained to me and the audience how indirect Darwinian pathways explain the evolution of the flagellum from the type three secretory system. To this day it amazes me that people find so bogus an argument a slam dunk for evolutionary theory. Try explaining to an engineer that the origin of the laptop computer is the product of trial and error tinkering from a cathode ray tube. If anything, this analogy fails to capture the full measure of self-delusion that evolutionary theory has become. Below is Read More ›

Tom Schneider, “Mr. Information Theory” for the pro-Darwin side, criticized Lee Spetner (author of Not a Chance) for a probability calculation characterizing evolutionary processes. Here is a reply by Spetner that I’m posting with his permission: Someone just brought to my attention the website http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/ev/AND-multiplication-error.html which criticizes a probability calculation I made. . . . Schneider is mistaken. He evidently did not take the trouble to understand what I was calculating. My calculation is correct. The probability 1/300,000 is the probability that a particular mutation will occur in a population and will survive to take over that population. If that mutation occurred it would have to have had a positive selective value to take over the population. If that occurred, Read More ›

Touchstone now has Jonathan Witt’s review of Francis Collins’ The Language of God in their online archive: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=19-08-032-f.

It’s hard to find a Darwinist more extreme than P. Z. Myers (though they do exist). Darwinian extremists like Myers are the reason these people are so hard to parody (see http://cedros.globat.com/~thebrites.org/index.htm, The Brites, which has temporarily closed its doors). Have a look at Myers’s most recent escapades: http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/MikeSAdams/2006/10/30/philippians_413. I want to encourage discussion not so much of Myers’s escapades as Mike Adams’s handling of a very hostile situation (exacerbated above all by Myers, who then, apparently, wussed out). I especially want to encourage someone to upload the video and provide a link here.

How much play do you think ID is going to get in Harvard’s new origin of life initiative: President Bush recently said intelligent design should be discussed in schools, along with evolution. Like intelligent design, the Harvard project begins with awe at the nature of life, and with an admission that, almost 150 years after Charles Darwin outlined his theory of evolution in the Origin of Species, scientists cannot explain how the process began. Now, encouraged by a confluence of scientific advances — such as the discovery of water on Mars and an increased understanding of the chemistry of early Earth — the Harvard scientists hope to help change that. ”We start with a mutual acknowledgment of the profound complexity Read More ›

Earlier a link to the mp3 audio file of the Quinn v. Dawkins radio debate was posted on this blog. The following link has the transcript. Quinn provides an object lesson in how to take apart village atheists. http://catholiceducation.org/articles/science/sc0086.htm

The Dawkins rampage against religion raises the question why religion in the first place? On strict evolutionary grounds, isn’t religion an adaptation that offers humans survival and reproductive advantages? It’s is not at all clear that atheism offers similar benefits (how many Dawkins-style village atheists were there among our hunter-gatherer ancestors?). Consider, for instance, the following piece by Chuck Colson on the negative sloping demographic trends in Russia. Or does Dawkins also want to target not just religious believers but overpopulation? Perhaps he should make common cause with Eric Pianka, whose fondest dream for the human race is that 90 percent be wiped out by Ebola virus (see here). A Sterile Worldview Vanishing Russia By Chuck Colson Wednesday, October 25, Read More ›