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More complicated than previously thought… gee, ya think? 😛 A new review in Science by Lemons and McGinnis that surveys Hox gene clusters in different lineages shows that the control of the Hox genes is much, much more complicated than previously thought. Source

Infected with postmodern drivel or instead tired of Darwinian drivel?

This story has been of ongoing interest. Here is the latest.

SSHRC doubts the science of evolution
In rejecting a proposed study, the eminent science council shows it has become infected with postmodern drivel
By Dan Adleman

In the summer issue of Humanist Perspectives, Gary Bauslaugh reports that the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) has rejected Dr Brian Alters’ application for a grant to study the “detrimental effects of popularizing anti-evolution’s ‘Intelligent Design Theory’ on Canadian students, teachers, parents, administrators and policymakers.” Read More ›

News from Finland

I just learned the following from a colleague in Finland: 1. The first Finnish edition of your book [i.e., Intelligent Design] has been sold out (1500 copies) 2. 30% of Finns do not believe in Evolution — which shocked our educators Both statistics are surprising. Finland is a country of only about 3,000,000, so proportionately the book has way outsold its American counterpart (which sold about 60,000 copies here). Also, for a country as atheistic and materialistic as Finland, to have this level of disbelief in standard evolutionary theory is indeed shocking.

The biggest ID event to date — sponsored by medical doctors

On Friday evening, September 29, 2006, several of us (Mike Behe, Jonathan Wells, Ralph Seelke and I — I was a last minute add on) spoke to a crowd of almost 4,000 people at the University of South Florida’s Sun Dome in Tampa, usually devoted to sports events such as basketball games. The event was sponsored by Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity (PSSI). It was organized by Tom Woodward (author of Doubts About Darwin), Rich Akin, and some hard-working volunteers. The audience consisted mainly of people interested in learning about ID — students, faculty, and parents. There were a few Darwinists present, who contented themselves largely with handing out leaflets (“ID Is Not Science”) and shouting “Darwin” as they Read More ›

Sketches from the Toronto ID conference – okay, a bit of context – 2

A commenter, from my first post-conference sketch, asks,

Denyse: thanks for your first anecdotal response. I have read elsewhere (on this blog?) that the current generation may simply have to die off, given the faith system/creation myth of naturalism/darwinism. A key issue then is what the young people think, both graduate and undergraduate students. What were the objectives of the organizers? How evenly balanced were the ID friendly and evolution friendly speakers? What was the temper of the questions asked? Finally, how well received was the notion of a testable creation model?

Well, the blog’s imputed elsewhere may have been thinking of Thomas Kuhn’s quotation from Max Planck,

“a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it” (Kuhn, 1962).

I call Planck right in this, especially when a system – whether it is the Ptolemaic universe or Darwinism – is a creation story or validation of religion of some kind.

Let’s not forget Ben Wattenberg reminding Richard Dawkins on NPR of his own words in The Selfish Gene,

Living organisms had existed on earth without ever knowing why for 3,000 million years before the truth finally dawned on one of them. His name was Charles Darwin.

– Richard Dawkins on Ben Wattenberg’s PBS Think Tank (1996)

Wattenberg’s comment was “That sounds to me like a religious statement. That is a – that is near messianic language.”

Dawkins, of course, denied that, saying Read More ›

Sketches from the Toronto ID Conference 1

Two top-of-mind events, for now:

(In the order of remembrance of things past, not necessarily long term importance)

1. The depth of the crisis with Darwinian evolution became apparent to me when I watched and listened to the Darwinian biologists present.

For these people, Darwinism is a cult. They simply cannot understand objections to Darwinian evolution as actual objections. For example, the fact that very few instances of speciation are actually observed makes it very difficult to test Darwinian evolution against other kinds. This may be an accident, to be sure, but it is an accident with consequences. It means that the “overwhelming evidence” that supposedly exists for Darwin’s theory is really just overwhelming belief on the part of people like themselves.

But there they sit, placid with overwhelming belief, like pious grannies – and mistaking it for overwhelming evidence. Read More ›

Jonathan Wells Party in DC October 11, 2006

For those in the Washington, DC area, the Discovery Institute announced the following on their public website: Author Lecture with Jonathan Wells You are invited to meet Jonathan Wells for a special reception, discussion and booksigning at Discovery Institute’s Washington DC office, located at 1015 Fifteenth Street, NW Suite 900, on Wednesday, October 11th from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. Refreshments will be served, and copies of the book will be available for purchase at a discounted rate. There is no cost to attend. To register, contact Logan Gage at lgage@discovery.org or call (202) 558-7085. I’m planning on being there. Hope I get to meet some of you all.

Unveiling overwhelmingevidence.com — give us your young people . . .

The Darwinists have had your young people long enough to shape, subvert, and corrupt. Send them to www.overwhelmingevidence.com and mobilize this sleeping giant! The old guard is not going to change. The hope of the future lies with our youth. The new overwhelmingevidence.com site is modeled on Xanga and Myspace and aimed at concentrating the power of youth to throw off the indoctrination that is being shoved down their throats by groups like the NCSE and enforced by inept judicial rulings like those of Judge Jones (note the image of Jones on the splash page). The NCSE, the ACLU, Jones, etc. have effectively disenfranchised our young people when it comes to the teaching of biological origins. Today’s high school and Read More ›

Question re High Ross speaking in Toronto …

In the comments box to my post of yesterday, someone wrote re Hugh Ross speaking at the ID conference in Toronto: I also find folks like Hugh Ross who’s speaking there in Toronto somewhat unsavory (if I may use such a word). He should be a big supporter of Intelligent Design, yet his article in the first issue of Salvo (http://www.salvomag.com/subscribe.html) was just terrible. Y’all should have a look in preparation for the conference—or is there still hope to win him over and so even we had better be nice? From Denyse: Well, Hugh Ross is currently our guest in Toronto, so we will give him a polite hearing no matter what he says. My own view is that Ross Read More ›

Gil Has Never Grasped the Nature of a Simulation Model

Tom English challenged me with this:

I say categorically, as someone who has worked in evolutionary computation for 15 years, that Gil does not understand what he is talking about. This is not to say that he is trying to mislead anyone. It is simply clear that he has never grasped the nature of a simulation model. His comments reflect the sort of concrete thinking I have tried to help many students grow beyond, often without success.

The reason for Tom’s lack of success is that he, and Darwinists in general, try to explain everything with an overly — indeed catastrophically — simplistic model. Here’s what’s involved in a real-world computer simulation:

Read More ›

E. O. Wilson has been transferred to the make-nice platoon?

BIll Dembski wrote,

E.O. Wilson thinks that after years of reaming religious believers he can now ingratiate himself with them. Fine. Let him and his colleagues give up their monopoly on the teaching and government funding of materialistic evolutionary theories.

Can E. O. Wilson really save the world?
Ivan Semeniuk
New Scientist, 30 September 2006

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19125711.300-can-e-o-wilson-really-save-the-world.html

Often cited as Darwin’s true heir, E. O. Wilson has an audacious planet-saving strategy: to unite evangelical Christians and scientific secularists

Oh, and the ID cause is going belly up according to a recent Ken Miller talk, as quoted in  another Dembski post below.

Okay, so why have I been running around these last few days getting ready for a conference on ID at the University of Toronto? (which so far has not been cancelled – it would never have been cancelled  due to lack of interest, but due to admin fear)

There’s a stack of stuff here I haven’t even read yet, to do with ID, and I don’t have time to blog in general, and don’t have a moment to call the shots on who will win the Liberal leadership race in Canada, even though I am supposed to broadcast on that later today.

This is a pretty lively dead, if you ask me. 

Anyway, re E. O. Wilson, swatched above, here’s what an old comrade Nancy Pearcey (www.npearcey@aol.com) says about what it really means when people who have sneered at religious folk in the past suddenly start to make nice:

 … the strategy here is what Phil Johnson described as switching off between the offensive and the defensive teams.  When Darwinists are feeling confident, they send out the offensive team, which takes the Dennett/Dawkins line that evolution has debunked religion. 

When they realize that for PR purposes they have to tread more carefully, they send out the defensive team, which takes the line that religion is fine as long as it stays in its place.  The important question is how they define its place.  Just like Gould, this SciAm editorial puts all the real facts on the side of Darwinism, while defining religion as a comforting gloss people can put on the facts of materialistic science if it makes them feel better. 
Religion can be tolerated if it helps weaker folks “reconcile” themselves to the hard-edged materialism that the real scientists are courageous enough to hold. 

The depressing thing isn’t that Wilson tries it on. Read More ›

Ken Miller up to his old tricks . . .

This just in from a colleague and posted with his permission. For the record:

  1. I did not withdraw from the Dover case — the Thomas More Law Center fired me over a perceived conflict of interest relating to my role as academic editor of the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (the publisher of the book in question — OF PANDAS AND PEOPLE). I was frankly looking forward to being deposed by the ACLU and staring them down at the trial. Perhaps another trial is in the offing, and Ken and I can finally have our day in court.
  2. The Vise Strategy was first announced here and posted on my designinference.com website after the trial (http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.11.Vise_Strategy.pdf), yes, but I wrote it for the Thomas More Law Center prior to the trial to assist them in their preparation (I didn’t post it till afterward so as not to advantage the other side).
  3. For a movement that is in its death throes, I, as one of its principal advocates, am looking at more speaking engagements than I can fulfill and very generous honoraria (I suspect more than Ken Miller receives). A good gauge for when a movement enters death throes is when people stop talking about it being in death throes and simply ignore it as something that is of no consequence and indistinguisable from something that doesn’t exist. In short, when Ken Miller stops giving public talks against ID, we’ll know that the movement is in its death throes (that, or he’ll have converted to our side).

Wednesday’s annual Cultural Lecture by Ken Miller at
the NIH was on ID vs. SCIENCE. As told in mainly a
historical narrative, we were taken to Bill Dembski’s
blog, shown files from the Discovery Institute, the
cover of “The Lie” by Ken Ham, cartoons from Answers
in Genesis, shown textual modifications in “Of Pandas
and People”, arguments from horse, whale and fish
fossils, chromosmal differences between humans and
chimps, and accounts of the Dover trial—which
included deposition lawyers finding a smoking gun at a
Texas hotel, as Bill Dembski mysteriously didn’t
show—he speculated that DI told everyone but the 3
pro-ID witnesses to drop out of the trial, because
they realized that no one could actually defend ID in
a court of law. It was a tour de force 1 hr roller
coaster that was quite emotion grabbing, and I’m
leaving out the funniest part, which was his showing
his appearance on “The Colbert Report”. While that had
comedic value, it was interesting that he used that
clip to show how the issue of Darwinism quickly
changes to religion, as though Stephen Colbert asks
his questions in sincerity and not for hilarity. Read More ›

ACLU Alarmed Over Well Going Dry

The Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005 passed by a 244-173 house vote Tuesday. The bill bans the award of attorney fees in establishment clause cases (like Kitzmiller v. Dover). The ACLU has turned establishment clause cases into a cottage industry for underemployed lawyers. Naturally, they are quite alarmed at this turn of events. More at Stop The ACLU.

Can’t we all just be friends?

E.O. Wilson thinks that after years of reaming religious believers he can now ingratiate himself with them. Fine. Let him and his colleagues give up their monopoly on the teaching and government funding of materialistic evolutionary theories. Can E. O. Wilson really save the world? Ivan Semeniuk New Scientist, 30 September 2006 http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19125711.300-can-e-o-wilson-really-save-the-world.html Often cited as Darwin’s true heir, E. O. Wilson has an audacious planet-saving strategy: to unite evangelical Christians and scientific secularists Often cited as Darwin’s true heir, E. O. Wilson has an audacious strategy for saving the planet: encourage evangelical Christians and scientific secularists to unite in caring for the ecosystems and biodiversity that he calls the Creation in his latest book. Ivan Semeniuk asked him if Read More ›

A Realistic Computational Simulation of Random Mutation Filtered by Natural Selection in Biology

All computational evolutionary algorithms artificially isolate the effects of random mutation on the underlying machinery: the CPU instruction set, operating system, and algorithmic processes responsible for the replication process. If the blind-watchmaker thesis is correct for biological evolution, all of these artificial constraints must be eliminated. Every aspect of the simulation, both hardware and software, must be subject to random errors. Of course, this would result in immediate disaster and the extinction of the CPU, OS, simulation program, and the programmer, who would never get funding for further realistic simulation experiments.