Category: Intellectual freedom
The ID issue vs Digital Empire/Cartel concerns: information utilities/ “superhighway” vs shadow-censoring, de-platforming information gatekeepers
The ID issue has long been a focal point for intense, often deeply polarised debate on our origins and world roots as informed by science. Science, being a major source of knowledge and understanding about our world, which also energises technological innovation and economic growth. Science is often treated as though it is the grounds […]
Sam Harris on taboo topics, Jordan Peterson, and getting sent to PC hell
| July 1, 2018 | Posted by News under Atheism, Culture, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
Readers will remember Sam Harris as one of the Four Horsemen of the atheist apocalypse (with Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens). Recently, he fell out with the progressives and ended up on the Dark Internet. He talks with Dan Hall at the Independent: Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, best-selling author, philosopher and host […]
You can’t be an honest atheist and a progressive at the same time.
| June 6, 2018 | Posted by News under Atheism, Culture, Intellectual freedom, Philosophy, Science |
From Denyse O’Leary at MercatorNet: … She worries about the fact that some prominent atheists are attracted to the intellectual dark web, “an alliance of heretics” making “an end run around the mainstream conversation” (New York Times). The dark web includes figures like Jordan B. Peterson, Steven Pinker, and Bret Weinstein,) who want to discuss […]
Carry that teapot carefully. There is consciousness in tableware.
| May 12, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Mind, Naturalism |
From John Ellis at PJ Media: The belief that inanimate objects, like rocks and tableware, contain consciousness is quickly picking up steam among respected philosophers and scientists. … The problem for these “credible philosophers, neuroscientists, and physicists” who take panpsychist seriously is, as Goldhill points out, “The materialist viewpoint states that consciousness is derived entirely […]
Why science needs free speech
| May 4, 2018 | Posted by News under academic freedom, Culture, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Science |
Adam Perkins offers a revealing example at Quillette: But why do we specifically need free speech in science? Surely we just take measurements and publish our data? No chit chat required. We need free speech in science because science is not really about microscopes, or pipettes, or test tubes, or even Large Hadron Colliders. These […]
Coursera vid by “Darwinism is wrong” prof banned from YouTube
| March 28, 2018 | Posted by News under academic freedom, Culture, Darwinism, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design |
This vid. Here is a 6:57 pm EST live link from a different lecture making largely the same points. Download it if you can. Otherwise, Feel the Smug. You will be living with the tenured Smug the rest of your crappy lives.
“Burning” climate change dissenters
| March 28, 2018 | Posted by News under academic freedom, Climate change, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Science |
From Peter Rees at Quadrant: The Little Ice age was quite severe in Europe from 1550- 1700. After the prosperity and plenty of the medieval warm period, the LIA led to impoverishment, crop failure, starvation and a resurgence in witch burnings. Every misfortune was an excuse to accuse someone of being a witch working under […]
Scientists who laboured in comparative obscurity who made a big difference
| March 18, 2018 | Posted by News under Intellectual freedom, Science |
Science historian Michael Flannery kindly writes to offer a list (in case anyone was tempted to measure achievement by invites to yada yada talk shows): 1) Girolamo Fracastoro (aka Fracastorius) proposed a form of germ theory of disease in his On contagion and contagious disease in 1546 over 300 hears before Pasteur. 2) Josiah Clark […]
Toxic snow has claimed Stone Age artwork: Willendorf Venus banned from Facebook
| March 3, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
Since reinstated. That’s what comes of hiring toxic snowflakes to make decisions. No, really: From Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason: A pudgy little figure with wide hips and ample breasts, the Venus of Willendorf was discovered in 1908 but originally dates to the Stone Age. One of the oldest surviving art works in the world, […]
The intellectual dark web: Increasingly, a refuge from approved stupid noise
| March 1, 2018 | Posted by News under academic freedom, Culture, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
From Douglas Murray at the UK Spectator: Of course the intellectual dark web partly thrives because it does not have the limitations of the traditional media. For any public intellectual or thinker the experience of a Newsnight or Channel 4 News studio is always the same. The evening is wrecked by having to travel to […]
Biology is real, if not popular: Lone scientist squares off with social justice warriors
| March 1, 2018 | Posted by News under academic freedom, Culture, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Naturalism |
Remember Heather Heying, wife and co-belligerent of Bret Weinstein in the science vs. snowflakes wars? Guess what happened when she tried saying in public what everyone knows? Daily Wire: On February 17, Portland State University held an event to discuss viewpoint diversity moderated by PSU philosophy professor Peter Boghossian, with a panel including former Evergreen […]
C. S. Lewis and J. R.R. Tolkien on science and authoritarianism
| February 25, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Politics/policy and origins issues, Science |
From Mike Kugler in Northwestern Review: Long before Tolkien began writing The Lord of the Rings and Lewis converted to “mere Christianity,” their suspicions of modern science, the heart of the modern worldview, and anxiety about Europe’s future were latent. The Great War illustrated terribly how well-grounded were their concerns. Later, in the 1930s, Europeans […]
Can Wikipedia be fixed? (And, should we care? [Is it time to walk away and lock it out like a virus?])
By 2012, the longstanding Encyclopedia Britannica had published its last print edition. Microsoft’s Encarta has long since bitten the dust, and so has Collier’s notable effort. Wikipedia, like it or lump it — mostly the latter — seems to have taken over that go-to first source slot. Indeed, for a great many subjects a Wikipedia […]
At Nature: Change how we judge research. Hmm…
| February 10, 2018 | Posted by News under academic freedom, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Peer review |
From Stephen Curry, professor of structural biology and assistant provost for equality, diversity and inclusion, at Nature: The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) … Conceived by a group of journal editors and publishers at a meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) in December 2012, it proclaims a pressing need to […]
Creationist speaker Ken Ham disinvited from university campus
| February 10, 2018 | Posted by News under academic freedom, Creationism, Culture, Darwinism, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design |
From Todd Starnes at Townhall: The Todd Starnes Radio Show obtained exclusive emails between the UCO [University of Central Oklahoma] Student Association and Answers in Genesis explaining why they had to rescind the invitation and opt out of a signed and legally binding contract. “We are currently getting bombarded with complaints from our LGBT community […]
Canadian psychologist takes on the howling post-modern void, largely alone
| February 8, 2018 | Posted by News under academic freedom, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Psychology, Science |
From Denyse O’Leary at MercatorNet: Unhinged criticism of the man has obscured the merits of his book: Professor Jordan Peterson, author of the top-selling 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, is beginning to look weary in the face of the waves of hatred he has endured recently. Two years ago, he was almost […]
Re, Seversky: “a lot of this reads like complaining because science isn’t coming up with observations and theories that you like . . . “
Sometimes, an issue comes to a head, and there is then need to deal with it. The headline inadvertently shows that we are at such a juncture and the post yesterday on time to take the lead is therefore timely. For, the underlying problem at work on ID is that there is an often implicit […]
From Slate: The end of truth, and science, is NOT in sight
| January 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Mind, Psychology |
From Daniel Engber at Slate: Ten years ago last fall, Washington Post science writer Shankar Vedantam published an alarming scoop: The truth was useless. … This supposed scientific fact jibed with an idea then in circulation. In those days of phantom Iraqi nukes, anti-vaxxer propaganda, and climate change denialism, reality itself appeared to be in […]
How litigation undermines the ability of science media to provide honest results
| January 14, 2018 | Posted by News under Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Media, Science |
From skeptical science journalist Alex Berezow at American Council on Science and Health: Consider Mark Jacobson, the climate scientist who is suing a prestigious journal for $10 million because it hurt his feelings. There is good reason to believe that the lawsuit will be dismissed, but not before lawyers have collected a nice fee for […]
At RealClearScience: Failed psychological theories go through six stages
| January 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intellectual freedom, Intelligent Design, Psychology |
From Ross Pomeroy at RealClearScience: With the publication of his exhaustingly researched and skillfully reported article, “LOL Something Matters,” science writer Daniel Engber convincingly demonstrated that the “backfire effect,” the notion that contradictory evidence only strengthens entrenched beliefs, does not hold up under rigorous scientific scrutiny. Bluntly stated, the “backfire effect” probably isn’t real. Of […]
