Apparently, some fans of the ruins of neo-Darwinism think that President John Lilley’s departure from Baylor relates to intelligent design. So Rack Jite:

Though matters of tenure and logo design (believe it or not) are reported as the reasons, it was about no such thing. Rather it is the revenge of Baptist fundamentalists over encroaching secularism regards Intelligent Design. Ever since ID guru William Dembski resigned in 2000 because Baylor closed the door on his Intelligent Design department room (as it had became the laughing stock of World academia) the Taliban wing at Baylor has been festering to make its move.

and the  Prophet likewise preaches on Rack Jite’s text.

It gives one pause for thought that anyone could believe such foolishness, in view of the fact that

1. Lilley fell out with a number of his academic deans by rejecting an unusual number of tenure causes – essentially slapping the deans in the face and undermining their credibility with their peers. The response was an overwhelming no-confidence vote, and in the wake of that, well, he should have started the job hunt the morning after. Were I a friend, I would give him precisely that urgent advice.

2. I have not heard any evidence cited that the deans who voted against Lilley did so because they supported ID. Indeed, from monitoring a good part of the discussion here, I would say that you couldn’t necessarily predict a person’s support for ID by how they felt about Lilley’s governance or vice versa.

3. I hope that a person who thinks logos and branding are not important has the good sense never to blunder into a fight with Disney, Inc.

An ID sympathizer writes to say, “What struck me about these posts is how deluded and obsessed these people are. The world does not revolve around ID politics, and yet they blame Lilley’s downfall on us!”

Yes, but remember, the whole world is a vast right-wing conspiracy so everything really does revolve around ID politics – it just doesn’t look that way because the ID Taliban has immense power via the Chimpy McBushitler Conspiracy and is so very clever at disguising it.

Also, Just up at Colliding Universes: Read More ›

I notice that at Overwhelming Evidence, Sam Chen announces that a student sympathetic to intelligent design has received the Cassey Luskin Graduate Award, but

The recipient of the 2008 Casey Luskin Graduate Award will remain anonymous for the protection of the recipient….

It’s interesting to reflect on that in view of the many legacy media know-nothings panning the Expelled documentary, insisting that there is no evidence that anyone has suffered discrimination on account of sympathy for design as a feature of nature.

And they wonder why the blogosphere is whacking the heck out of them …

On most of the issues I monitor, the fact is that, agree or disagree, I can no longer get reliable and timely information from these sources. They seem to have hunkered into their bunker, repeating their well-worn beliefs to people who don’t really care.

Also, just up at The Mindful Hack: Read More ›

This just in from Christianity Today. Lilley, you will recall, expelled Robert Marks’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab from Baylor (for that story, go here). July 24, 2008 9:57AM President of Baylor University Fired John Lilley had angered alumni, faculty, and others with tenure decisions. Ted Olsen Baylor University’s board of regents has fired president John Lilley, whose presidency began and ended with disputes over tenure. In 2006, associate professor of church-state studies Francis Beckwith was denied tenure. His appeal became a cause celebre in some evangelical academic circles, and he eventually prevailed. Lilley, however, continued to be viewed with suspicion by some Christian observers. But it was April’s decision to deny tenure to 12 candidates that really set the drumbeats going. Read More ›

First, imagining the unimaginable

American-born Warwick U sociologist Steve Fuller writes to share the news that his book was Book of the Week in Times Higher, where Keith Ward tries to give a reasonable though plodding account of what he is writing about:

… , Fuller argues that there is no reason to call ID non-scientific. It is a good integrating hypothesis – as good as astrology (now disproved) and Darwinian evolution (another grand theory that may soon be disproved). He provides interesting examples of how religiously inspired ID views have driven the work of many eminent biologists, and suggests that ID should be promoted as “an openly religious viewpoint with scientific aspirations”.

That’s certainly not something that the previous Guardian writer even tried to do.

It’s dull, but it’s progress. And it’s interesting that Ward can bring himself to think that Darwinian evolution “may soon be disproved.” I wonder how many Darwinbots will write to protest any such suggestion?

The problem right now is actually a bit deeper and wider though than Ward suggests: Darwinian evolution is in no fit state to be disproved. If it were so, that would be progress. Read More ›

PZ Myers and Abbie Smith have an hour-long video conference here. A few surprising things, not the least of which is neither of them thought to bolster their points with the cussing that characterizes their blogs.

Anyhow, the first 15 minutes they talk about epigenetics, the Altenberg 16 conference, Susan Mazur, and try to downplay the Altenberg theme that evolutionary biology is in a vast state of disarray. Abbie lets us know how little she understands epigenetics and is evidently still laboring under the outdated Dawkins era notion that genes and proteins are everything. PZ, who is more up on the subject, looks a bit aghast after Abbie describes her understanding of epigenetics. If Abbie had been one of us he’d have called her an idiot but since she’s on his side he gently tried to correct her, saying his students have the same misunderstandings and it’s difficult to teach. Abbie rudely interrupts over and over as PZ attempts to explain. Several epigenetic mechanisms were discussed. One that wasn’t touched on, remarkably, was RNA in the cytoplasm. When a cell divides the cytoplasm of the mother is divided up among the daughter(s) and the vast, complex assortment of RNA molecules which participate in and control a huge number of cellular processes (more roles for RNA are constantly being discovered) is inherited by the daughter. Ostensibly this process of dividing up the cytoplasm along with copying the DNA goes back in an unbroken line of cells for billions of years… but I digress.

Read More ›

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/views/story.html?id=711a0b47-29d5-426d-a273-a270817b000e&p=1

Shermer’s attack was brought on by a comment of Rabbi Reuven Bulka, published in the Citizen on July 7. Bulka had written:

“By the way, for the record, I have no problem with evolutionary ingredients in creation. This can co-exist quite comfortably with intelligent design, or God’s design, which is stretched out on an evolutionary canvass.” http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=efe4cbf9-dd5d-4e33-b1ed-0c0334095047&p=2 Read More ›

Paul Giem’s comment to my Faith and Reason post below is so good, I thought it deserved its own post. Read on to see how Paul demonstrates decisively that in the origin of life context (OOL) the materialists’ faith commitment is the sort of blind-leap-in-the-dark-in-the-teeth-of-the-evidence stretch of which they delight in accusing theists of making.

Read More ›

A friend writes to say that nonsensical materialism is now being marketed to engineers, via IEEE, the largest professional engineering society in the world, with over 365 000 members.

This article, “I, Rodney Brooks, am a robot”, appeared in the IEEE Spectrum which is the magazine that goes to all members:

The American Physical Society alleged that Lord Monckton‘s paper Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered was not peer reviewed when Monckton in fact thoroughly revised his paper in response to APS peer review. Monckton immediately demanded retraction, accountability and an apology.

The Editor of the American Physical Society‘s Forum on Physics and Society launched a debate on global warming, inviting Lord Monckton to submit a paper for the opposition. After news that a major scientific organization was holding a debate on IPCC’s global warming, someone at the APS posted an indirect front page disclamation plus two very bold red disclamations in the Forum’s contents, and into the paper itself:
————————-

The following article has not undergone any scientific peer review. Its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.

By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley . . .”

————————-

Alleging that a Peer of the Realm violated scientific peer review – when in fact Lord Monckton had spent substantial effort responding to the APS’s peer review – is just not done! As circulated by Dr. Benny Peiser to CCNet, and as noted by Dennis T. Avery at ICECAP,Lord Monckton responded immediately, emphatically demanding redress and an apology as follows: Read More ›

Amazon.com is selling it for the pre-order price of $18.90.

Coming this October… Book description (pre-order for $9.60 at Amazon): “Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin,” writes Richard Dawkins, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” This little book shows that atheism must seek intellectual fulfillment elsewhere by decisively demonstrating the need for intelligence in explaining life’s origin. This is the best overview of why traditional origin-of-life research has crashed and burned and why intelligent design is necessary to explain the high-tech engineering inside the cell. It is no longer possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist because life’s origin requires an intelligent cause—this book shows why.

To look at this account of the religious fervour surrounding Barack Obama by Michael Medved, one would think so. Consider

Author Garen Thomas makes similar observations in “Yes We Can: A Biography of Barack Obama”, a newly published book for children. “There has emerged a new leader who seems to be granting Americans a renewed license to dream. Barack Obama has proven repeatedly that he can touch people from all genders,” (not just both of them, you’ll note, but all of ‘em), “political affiliations, and across racial divides. There are few times in your life when you have a real opportunity to alter the course of history and put civilization back on a course toward prosperity and unity for all races and genders.” All of them—again. “If you were to look at dates in your history books, you might see centuries pass before something remarkable and worth noting occurred, when one person or a group of people stood up for change, making an enlightened leap in the evolution of the human story.”

It goes on. Take your anti-nausea prescription before you follow it up.

Now, some, including Logan Gage at the Discovery Institute, think that innate religiosity proves that religion is an innate human impulse. I have never agreed with that, and in The Spiritual Brain neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and I made clear that there is no innate religious impulse.  Here’s the skinny:

If you have a human mind, you naturally wonder about stuff like

– Are there laws that govern the universe? Can I influence them in any way?

– Could beings greater than myself be in charge of what happens? Can I contact them?

– I know I will die, but what will happen then? What happened to my parents and grandparents?

– Does it matter how I live? Can I change anything by thinking or praying about it?

– Why do bad things happen to good people?

And so forth.

I am not convinced that we need anything more than a human mind to ask these questions because the mind will generate them when in contact with reality, for the same reasons as mathematics works.

If I am wrong, I would like to hear a reasonable explanation why that is so.

Also, at the Post-Darwinist:<< Read More ›

Is Susan Mazur writing a book that exposes the Darwin industry instead of protecting it?

Her e-book title is “Altenberg 16: An Exposé Of The Evolution Industry”
Sunday, 6 July 2008, 12:32 pm | Article: Suzan Mazur

—–

<oreword

Introduction

Chronology

Evolution Tribes

1 The Altenberg 16

2 Altenberg! The Woodstock of Evolution?

3 Jerry Fodor and Stan Salthe Open the Evo Box

4 Theory of Form to Center Stage

5 The Two Stus

[ and further … ]

Susan, you mean, no more of the “dancing with the biologists” on Galapagos rubbish (and, person who wrote that silliness, you know who you are … ) A real accounting at last? Read More ›

I’ve been covering the ID controversy for about seven years now, as one of only a handful of journalists to make a specialty of it.

Along the way, I have encountered several j’s who were scared off by threats of career ruin. I thought that too bad.

If your stories are consistently about stuff that’s in the news, it’s actually hard to ruin your career covering them.

When people ask me whether ID is making an impact, I usually focus on three criteria I developed back then and monitor routinely: Read More ›

Roy Spencer is a global warming skeptic and the author of the hypothesis that the water cycle acts as the earth’s thermostat. In a previous article I attributed that hypothesis to “the father of climatology” and that was incorrect. The father of climatology is Reid Bryson. He is a global warming skeptic though.

Roy Spencer is just as qualified (if not moreso) as Bryson. From wiki:

Roy W. Spencer is a principal research scientist for University of Alabama in Huntsville. In the past, he served as Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Spencer is a recipient of NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement.

Anyhow, I only knew Spencer from the climatology work and I just happened to see an article he wrote about evolution and ID. I reproduce it below the fold…

Read More ›