Evolution

Can You Say Hidden Agenda? by Jason Miller August 6, 2006 at 21:17:33 The Discovery Institute’s True Raison d’être and Why We Need to Be Deeply Concerned Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank which champions socially conservative causes, has become heavily invested in the “debate” between Darwinists and those who wish to introduce Intelligent Design into public school classrooms. According to their Website, Discovery’s stated mission is: “… to make a positive vision of the future practical. The Institute discovers and promotes ideas in the common sense tradition of representative government, the free market and individual liberty.” Finding a handful of academics willing to act as its shills, Discovery’s ultimate goal is to subvert the prevailing paradigm of modern science Read More ›

Note especially the opening segment by Donohue:

I want to invite on this thread names of past scientists who thought Darwinism was B.S. along with evidence showing that they did indeed think this. Me first: Wolfgang Pauli. Check out pp27-28 at http://www.igpp.de/english/tda/pdf/paulijcs.pdf.

Professor Ratzinger goes back to school. After Islam last year, Darwin topic this year Evolution will be the focus of the upcoming seminar between the pope and his former students in Castel Gandolfo. Meanwhile, Jesuit scholar Christian W. Troll has updated his analysis of progressive Muslim thinkers by Sandro Magister ROMA, August 2, 2006 – This year’s Ratzinger-Schülerkreis seminar will focus on “Schöpfung und Evolution”, creation and evolution. The private meeting is set for Saturday, September 2, and Sunday, September 3, at the Pontifical Villa in the pope’s summer residence of Castel Gandolfo (see photo). The Ratzinger-Schülerkreis, that is the ‘Ratzinger Students’ Circle’, brings together once a year the old theology professor, now pope Benedict XVI, and his former students Read More ›

Since 1999, Kansas has now swung four times on the question of science standards and whether evolutionary theory should be properly scrutinized or swallowed whole. Below is the latest. This war will not be decided by courts, legislators, or school boards, but by young people as they wake up to the fact that dogmatic Darwinists have been systematically indoctrinating and disenfranchising them. Just as the counterculture of the 60s overturned the status quo, so a new counterculture, with high school, college, and university students taking the lead, will overturn the Darwinian status quo.

Evolution Opponents Lose in Kansas Primary
By John Hanna
Associated Press
posted: 02 August 2006
09:56 am ET

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Conservative Republicans who pushed anti-evolution standards back into Kansas schools last year have lost control of the state Board of Education once again.   Read More ›

Here is an email I received from a troll just after I started posting Jim Downard’s asinine emails to me. Presumably the troll wanted me to post the email as is. I am posting it, but without incriminating a prominent anti-ID proponent, whose career I was supposed to place in jeopardy, but which would have backfired on me. Note that I emailed “Concerned Scientist” twice (never a reply):

Email 1 (7.12.06): “I’m not sure what to believe. In this age of computers and hard drives it makes no sense to me that you didn’t keep a back-up of your project. Absent that, you need to reconstruct it and show it to me before we can take a next step. –WmAD”

Email 2 (7.14.06): “Unless I hear back from you in short order with some solid evidence that the story you gave below is true (e.g., transcript with “F” for course from [snip–prominent anti-ID proponent], I’m going to conclude that you are a troll and will use your letter any way I see fit. –WmAD”

Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:32:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: Concerned Scientist < concernedscientist23@yahoo.com>
Subject: Supression of an ID Experiment
To: [snip]@designinference.com

Dr. Dembski,

I recently graduated from the University of [snip],
with a major in computer science and a minor
in economics.  I originally planned to minor in
biology, and it is the disgraceful events that led me
to change this that I wish to share with you.  The
events I describe here took place between the early
fall of 2004 and fall of 2005, however I had feared
repercussions from the University if I had stepped
forward.  I have now graduated and been accepted into
a graduate program in another state, so I have come up
with the courage to speak. Read More ›

This article (http://www.the-scientist.com/article/daily/23793) presents the ongoing controversy over whether an evolutionist presented “adequate justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of evolution, and not intelligent design theory, was correct” . . .  in his grant proposal!

I’ve reported on this blog Coyne’s NewRepublic review of Coulter (go here) and Hotz’s LATimes review of Quammen, Brockman, an Shermer (go here). There’s an interesting contradiction between the two reviews. See if you can catch it. Compare Jerry Coyne’s insistence that  The real reason Coulter goes after evolution is not because it’s wrong, but because she doesn’t like it–it doesn’t accord with how she thinks the world should be. That’s because she feels, along with many Americans, that “Darwin’s theory overturned every aspect of Biblical morality.” What’s so sad–not so much for Coulter as for Americans as a whole–is that this idea is simply wrong. Darwinism, after all, is just a body of thought about the origin and change of Read More ›

As the debate over how to teach evolution continues, two new radio commercials promoting www.standupforscience.com and the online petition to “Stand up for Science, Stand up for Kansas” will air this weekend across Kansas. One ad features molecular biologist Jonathan Wells, explaining that “it is imperative to understand both the evidence for and against a scientific theory… as a scientist, I am standing up for science education policies that require students to learn both the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence that supports Darwin’s theory, as well as the scientific evidence that challenges it.” The second commercial features Kansas public school science teacher Jill Gonzalez Bravo who was also recently interviewed for the ID The Future Podcast about her support Read More ›

In April I announced on this blog Ann Coulter’s then forthcoming book GODLESS (go here). There I remarked, “I’m happy to report that I was in constant correspondence with Ann regarding her chapters on Darwinism — indeed, I take all responsibility for any errors in those chapters.” Jim Downard, rather than simply taking me at my word, instead wants me to elaborate on my correspondence with Ann (go here); and for my refusal to elaborate, charges me with not really taking responsibility for errors in the chapters in question. But such elaboration is not my responsibility. If Ann’s chapters on evolution are so riven with difficulties, let him enumerate them, point out the errors, and then hold me up to Read More ›

Just as Monty Python’s Black Knight was whittled from a full human to a stump, so evolutionary theory is finally being whittled to its proper size. Where, in the whittling of the Black Knight, is evolutionary theory (stage I, II, III, IV, or V?): Read More ›

Too bad that Nobel Prizes are only awarded to people — natural selection deserves dozens of them. Scientists decode how plants avoid sunburn Source: Arizona State University Too much sun – for plants as well as people – can be harmful to long-term health. But to avoid the botanical equivalent of “lobster tans,” plants have developed an intricate internal defense mechanism called photoprotection, which acts like sunscreen to ward off the sun’s harmful rays. “We knew that biomolecules called carotenoids participate in this process of photoprotection, but the question has been, ‘How does this work?’ ” says Iris Visoly-Fisher, a postdoctoral research associate in the Biodesign Institute at ASU. Carotenoids act as “wires” to carry away the extra sunlight energy Read More ›

Faith Project Director The National Center for Science Education, a non-profit organization that defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools, seeks candidates for the post of Faith Project Director. The FPD’s duties will include: **developing materials pertaining to evolution and religion for print and web; **representing NCSE to the faith community, in print and in person; **serving as liaison between NCSE and professional theological societies and religious organizations; **speaking to the press about issues involving evolution education and challenges to it; **counseling teachers, administrators, parents, and others facing challenges to evolution education. Candidates should have either formal academic training in or extensive informal knowledge of theology, particularly as it relates to science. A record of involvement in or Read More ›

The molecular machinery that starts the process by which a biological cell divides into two identical daughter cells apparently worked so well early on that evolution has conserved it across the eons in all forms of life on Earth. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley have shown that the core machinery for initiating DNA replication is the same for all three domains of life — Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya. MORE Given that, according to Carl Woese, the three domains are not descended from a common ancestor (see here), is it plausible that this same switch could have arisen apart from design three times?

Here’s your second chance to make this thread productive. Stay on topic. Janiebelle has been booted. NEW RULE AT UD: No more bold insertions into existing comments. I’ve done it as has DaveScot. That’s now a thing of the past. One-comment-one-poster is now the rule.

Brilliant men always betray their wives
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/07/13/baaffairs13.xml

Einstein’s affairs should surprise no one, says Desmond Morris. It is all in the genius’s genes

So Albert Einstein did not, after all, spend all his waking hours chalking up complex symbols on a blackboard. According to letters newly released this week, he devoted quite a bit of it to chasing the ladies. And with considerable success.

To many, the idea of Einstein having 10 mistresses does not fit the classical image of the great, remote genius. Why was he wasting his valuable time with the exhausting business of conducting a string of illicit affairs – affairs that would cause havoc with his family life, damaging especially his relationship with his sons?

The answer is that he, like many other intensely creative men, was over-endowed with one of the human male’s most characteristic qualities: the joy of risk-taking.

Every creative act, every new formula, every ground-breaking innovation, is an act of rebellion that may – if successful – destroy an old, existing concept. So every time a brilliant mind sees a new possibility, it is faced with a moment of supreme risk-taking.

The new formula, the new invention, may not work. It may turn out to be a disaster. But the man of genius – such as Einstein – has the courage to plough ahead, despite the dangers, both on and off the intellectual field.

Not that Einstein is by any means an isolated instance. Indeed, far from being the exception he is closer to the norm where great men and sex are concerned. Read More ›