Intelligent Design

Dennis Venema writes at BioLogos: The fact that several amino acids do in fact bind their codons or anticodons is strong evidence that at least part of the code was formed through chemical interactions My grandchildren have a set of magnetic letters and a magnetic whiteboard to stick them to.  Suppose I stuck several letters on the whiteboard in the following configuration: MY DOG WAGGED HIS TAIL AND JUMPED IN THE CAR This is code just like the genetic code.  The word “dog” is not a dog.  The word “car” is not a car.  Those words signify dog and car.  That is the essence of a code, one thing arbitrarily signifying another. Now, the letters that make up the code Read More ›

Pos-Darwinista writes to say, I came across this rather strange report: Abstract The European Network for Health Technology Assessment (EUnetHTA) guidelines for health economic evaluations represent a consolidated view of non-binding recommendations for assessments of the relative effectiveness of pharmaceuticals or other health technologies. EUnetHTA views itself as the scientific and technological backbone of the development of health technology assessment in the European Union and among its member states and other partners. Unfortunately, the standards for health technology assessment proposed by EUnetHTA do not meet the standards of normal science. They do not support credible claims for the clinical and comparative cost-effectiveness of pharmaceuticals. In rejecting thestandards of normal science the guidelines put to one side the opportunity not only to Read More ›

Tom English writes: Folks, there is no empirical evidence that intelligence exists. Psychologists and ethologists refer to it as a hypothetical construct, and define it operationally. Intelligence may play the role of a cause in a model, but it is merely an abstraction of unidentified causes. Well.  One is tempted to agree with Tom’s first sentence at least if it is constrained to apply to materialists ranting on the Internet.  But “no evidence” Tom?  What about the post you just wrote.  Was that not a product of your intelligence?  If Tom gives the standard materialist answer, he would say “no, that post is nothing but the product of the amalgam of physical causes that resulted in a twitchy bag of Read More ›

Maybe, if even The Atlantic has articles with this title: The Multiverse Idea is Rotting Culture There’s no way we could ever carry out any experiment to test for the multiverse’s existence in the world, because it’s not in our world. It’s an article of faith, and not a very secure one. What’s more likely: a potentially infinite number of useless parallel universes, or one perfectly ordinary God? There’s nothing wrong with faith, but if it’s not recognized for what it is then monsters start to spawn, not in some distant reality, but right here. No religion is complete without a moral code, but how do you live ethically in our shapeless foam of worlds, invisible to telescopes but throbbing Read More ›

Statistician William M. Briggs reports an amazing medical case where the

“skull was filled largely by fluid, leaving just a thin perimeter of actual brain tissue.”
Here’s the kicker: And yet the man was a married father of two and a civil servant with an IQ of 75, below-average in his intelligence but not mentally disabled…

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From Steven Novella at Neurologica blog, in response to science writer Katie L. Burke, who argues that the term is counterproductive: Burke concludes that, rather than labeling something pseudoscience, we should describe exactly what it is and how it fails. This is a false choice, however. We can do both. I completely agree that we should not substitute a label for an actual description or analysis of something. This is good advice in any intellectual arena. This is just not what good skeptics and science communicators do. We do give a detailed analysis of exactly why a claim is wrong, and exactly what brand of pseudoscience it is. Suggesting we don’t betrays an unfamiliarity with the vast majority of popular Read More ›

The Kingdom of Speech In “Piecing together a celebrity scientist,” Tom Bartlett writes re Tom Wolfe’s recent book, The Kingdom of Speech might seem an unlikely project for a white-suited literary legend who hung out with Ken Kesey back in the day and later wrote best-selling novels in the social-realist vein. But it actually fits nicely alongside two other books in the Wolfe ouevre: The Painted Word, and From Bauhaus to Our House, both extended essays that send up pretension in the worlds of art and architecture, respectively. My paperback copy of The Painted Word bears the following cover blurb: “Another Blast at the Phonies!” Wolfe is on the hunt for phonies here, too. In the first half of the Read More ›

Weren’t hard enough on Tom Wolfe, author of The Kingdom of Speech From Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True: This weekend, National Public Radio (NPR) host Scott Simon interviewed renowned author Tom Wolfe about Wolfe’s new book The Kingdom of Speech. You can hear the five-minute interview here. I just now listened to it, but several exercised readers emailed me yesterday complaining about Wolfe’s criticisms of evolution—criticisms that weren’t called out by Simon. Oh dear. “Anti-science” strikes again. Jerry treats us to a long rant about the facts of “evolution” (as he understands them). But if interviewers like Simon derailed the discussion by stopping for demands for fidelity to same we would never get to hear what Wolfe has Read More ›

From Tom “Bonfire of the Vanities” Wolfe’s interview with NPR on his new book, The Kingdom of Speech: The Kingdom of Speech is Tom Wolfe’s first non-fiction book in 16 years. Wolfe tells NPR’s Scott Simon that speech is “the attribute of attributes,” because it’s so unrelated to most other things about animals. “We’ve all been taught that we evolved from animals, and here is something that is totally absent from animal life,” he says. More. … On whether he’s worried that creationists will begin to cite his work as scientific proof I wouldn’t think so, because there’s not a shred of whatever that depends at all on faith, on belief in an extraterrestrial power. In fact, I hate people who go Read More ›

Here: “It’s not a coincidence that the great pop icon of Science made his name hosting a children’s show.”  

From Richard P. Grant at Guardian: How many science communicators do you know who will take the time to listen to their audience? Who are willing to step outside their cosy little bubble and make an effort to reach people where they are, where they are confused and hurting; where they need? Atul Gawande says scientists should assert “the true facts of good science” and expose the “bad science tactics that are being used to mislead people”. But that’s only part of the story, and is closing the barn door too late. Because the charlatans have already recognised the need, and have built the communities that people crave. More. How convenient that the world is divided neatly between “charlatans” and Read More ›

From Got Questions: Answer: Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (also known as Pastafarianism) is a “religion” created by a man named Bobby Henderson. Mr. Henderson created this satire in protest of the Kansas State Board of Education’s decision to teach intelligent design as an alternative to the theory of evolution. In essence, he was asking, “If foolish religious ideas like that of Intelligent Design have to be given equal time in high school biology classes, then why can’t other foolish religious ideas be taught alongside with it?” So, in protest, he made up a silly set of religious beliefs and demanded that they be given equal time in biology classes alongside the theories of evolution and Intelligent Design. His point seems to Read More ›

Chapter 6, “Is God Really Good?” of my new Wipf and Stock book Christianity for Doubters is almost the same as the “Epilogue” of my 2015 Discovery Institute Press book In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design. What does the problem of pain have to do with intelligent design? A lot, I think, because after 40 years of promoting intelligent design, it is obvious to me that many of the strongest opponents of design, for all their talk about defending science, are completely immune to scientific arguments, they will never look objectively at the scientific evidence until they can find answers to some very legitimate theological questions they have, three of which I try to address in chapters Read More ›

US presidential candidate Mike Pence is— says Phil Plait at Slate— a creationist: Which is pretty much like being a witch, I guess. You know anyone picked by Trump to be his running mate almost certainly will have a problem with established science, of course, but it turns out Pence is also a young Earth creationist. And one with a lot of conviction about it, too. In 2002, while a congressman from Indiana, he gave a short speech on the floor of Congress denying evolution, and used quite a few misleading, if not outright false, claims. It’s a curious feature of US politics, as seen from Canada, that American media—in the face of serious present-day problems—continue raising a stink about Read More ›

Sometimes a materialist will post a comment, and I will read it and then just sit there with my mouth literally agape, wondering at the sheer stupidity on display.  I got that treat today when Rationalitys bane posted this gem: we are much better off not pretending that morality is objective and live our lives knowing that we all bear responsibility for everything that we do in our lives. Jack Kreb quoted RB’s little aphorism and added:  “Excellent statement.” So let me get this straight fellas.  Morality is entirely subjective.  If this means anything, it means that we are not accountable to any standard of objective moral truth, because no such standard exists.  According to my dictionary “responsibility” means “the state Read More ›