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Evolution

Sign me up for the next Dawkins cruise

Thanks Bombadill for alerting me to this photo (that’s Richard Dawkins on the left, Steve Aldrich on the right). To view all the festivities of the 2004 Center for Inquiry cruise, go here. Imagine someone putting a gun to your head and forcing you to go on this cruise. Imagine you died and woke up in hell. But I repeat myself.

Cardinal Pell of Australia on ID

Australian cardinal comfortable with Intelligent Design
http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=39416

Sydney, Sep. 05 (CWNews.com) – Cardinal Pell told The Australian that although the theory of evolution can be reconciled with Christian doctrine, sometimes evolution is presented “in an anti-God way.” Where that is the case, he said, “I’d be happy for them to talk about design or intelligent design.” Read More ›

“Censorship” at Uncommon Descent

As someone who actually has been censored and had his academic freedom violated (go here), I find it more than a little ironic that the evolution diehards at talk.origins and the Panda’s Thumb continually moan about my “censoring” them at this blog. When I was hired at Baylor University, that academic appointment came with certain privileges and rights which, in my case, were indeed violated. When it comes to this blog, on the other hand, I pay the bills and have no obligation to anyone. The issue is not “censorship” but “freedom of association.” The Internet is a big place and you are free to whine on it, only not here.

The Rabbi and the Scientist

A rabbi and a scientist were traveling together on an airplane. Each brought with them a grandson. The rabbi’s grandson came every few minutes to check on his grandfather’s welfare and inquire as to his needs, while the scientists’ grandson sat in back watching the movie, never once coming forward. The scientist asked the rabbi why his grandson was so profoundly respectful, whereas the scientists’ grandson had forgotten that his grandfather was even alive. The rabbi replied, “In our tradition, God gave the Torah to Moses at Sinai, and the closer you are to that great moment of revelation and truth, the more respect you deserve. Hence, my grandson accords me respect. But as an evolutionist, you believe that mankind Read More ›

“Militant Darwinists like Dennett”

What is at stake in the evolution debate is whether militant Darwinists like Dennett get to inculcate the nation’s schoolchildren with their own materialistic religion under the mantle of authority that our society accords to science. Read More ›

More on Gonzalez

According to Hector Avalos: “It’s becoming increasingly clear to some of us that Iowa State University is being marketed as an intelligent design research center.” So, on the one hand, Eugenie Scott et al. tell ID theorists and researchers to get busy, do the work and get it through the peer-review process. But now we learn that the very idea of a ID research, much less an ID research center, is out-of-bounds. Heads I win, tails you lose. Read More ›

“Intelligent Design Has No Place in the Science Curriculum”

Harold Morowitz is the lead author in a disappointing article in the latest Chronicle of Higher Education: go here. I say disappointing because Morowitz spent three days at a seminar on ID that I organized at Calvin College back in summer of 2000. In other words, he should know better. Take the following remark in reference to Mike Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity: “Intelligent-design argument contains a hidden assumption: that all parts of a complex structure must have had the same function throughout the history of the development of the organism.” Behe explicitly repudiates this assumption (see Darwin’s Black Box, p. 96).

The Best Defense Is to Pretend There Is No Offense

Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne today have provided still further lessons in evolutionary logic (for a primer on evolutionary logic, go here). Their article in the Guardian titled “One Side Can Be Wrong” at least gets one thing right (though the irony is lost on them), namely, that their side is indeed wrong. Read More ›