Intelligent Design

Tom Woodward, author of Doubts about Darwin: A History of Intelligent Design (2003) and its sequel (2006), Darwin Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelligent Design, is coauthor with Dr. James Gills of The Mysterious Epigenome: What Lies Beyond DNA (2012), writes to tell us, Just a quick report from the front lines of the ID/Darwin debate here in Copenhagen, Denmark, as I near the end of a 15-day speaking tour of those two countries. First, for another few hours, you can see a surprise major article in the largest daily newspaper of Denmark, The Jutland Post (Jyllens-Posten), where here you can scroll down to see the headline at least, and a pic of me holding up one of our Read More ›

From Nicholas Kristof at New York Times, who has just discovered  that most “liberals” don’t agree that close-mindedness is a bad thing (he wrote about it recently, and now follows up): Third, when scholars cluster on the left end of the spectrum, they marginalize themselves. We desperately need academics like sociologists and anthropologists influencing American public policy on issues like poverty, yet when they are in an outer-left orbit, their wisdom often goes untapped. In contrast, economists remain influential. I wonder if that isn’t partly because there is a critical mass of Republican economists who battle the Democratic economists and thus tether the discipline to the American mainstream. I’ve had scores of earnest conversations with scholars on these issues. Many Read More ›

From New Horizons:

A friend draws our attention to a current festival in Britain, “How the light gets in,” with presenters in the sci tech area such as: Steve Fuller, one of the few philosophers of science who has tried to write seriously about the ID community (Dissent over Descent) Massimo Pigliucci (one of the Altenberg 16, back when challenging Darwinism wasn’t normal) “This morning, Massimo Pigliucci poses the radical question: does science need evidence?”* Rupert Sheldrake, who challenged Darwinism back in the late 1960s, when it was the sign of a sick mind. Denis Noble, who, many say, is the point man behind the rethinking evolution project (here). See how many others you spot. * An attempted non-radical answer: Not if science Read More ›

From Futurism: When it comes to building at the nanoscale, DNA is the construction material of choice. That may seem a little strange. After all, DNA is nature’s hard drive, encoding the software of life. But the macromolecule turns out to be a very hardy and versatile building material, perfectly suited to building complex structures with dimensions measured in nanometers-what is known as “DNA origami.” Biology has settled on the DNA double helix as the default configuration, but there are many more possibilities. Rearrange the base pairs or insert other molecules, and DNA can twist into just about any shape you could wish for. More. “Biology has settled on DNA?” After due consideration, at a series of committee meetings? When Read More ›

It’s real. From Nature: Survey sheds light on the ‘crisis’ rocking research. More than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments. Those are some of the telling figures that emerged from Nature’s survey of 1,576 researchers who took a brief online questionnaire on reproducibility in research. The data reveal sometimes-contradictory attitudes towards reproducibility. Although 52% of those surveyed agree that there is a significant ‘crisis’ of reproducibility, less than 31% think that failure to reproduce published results means that the result is probably wrong, and most say that they still trust the published literature.More. Excuse me. In community medicine, this is called “denial.” 1. Read More ›

Not that you’d ever guess from the story at Scienmag, but It took nearly a half trillion tries before researchers at The University of Texas at Austin witnessed a rare event and perhaps solved an evolutionary puzzle about how introns, non-coding sequences of DNA located within genes, multiply in a genome. The results, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, address fundamental questions about the evolution of new species and could expand our understanding of gene expression and the causes of diseases such as cancer. … For a long time, scientists have known that much of the DNA within any given organism’s genome does not code for functional molecules or protein. However, recent research has found that Read More ›

Robert Tracinski tells us why the greenies will never admit that they were dead wrong (pun intended) about DDT, even though their mistakes have led to the death of millions: So why not just admit that the hysteria whipped up over DDT was wrong? Because this was the founding issue of the environmentalist movement. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was the first book to convince the common man that “chemicals” are scary and that modern industry and technology were going to destroy us. Banning DDT was the first triumph of the environmentalist movement in using political pressure to override scientific skepticism and impose its agenda by force. http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/27/yes-you-can-blame-the-ddt-ban-for-zika/  

Even icon Carl Sagan doesn’t get a pass these days. From Cara Giaimo at Atlas Obscura: Throughout human history, people have struggled with two competing impulses: the desire to make a mark for future generations, and a deep confusion about what, exactly, that mark should be. The Golden Records, though probably the most extreme manifestation of this impulse, are far from the first. “There have been time-capsule type experiences ever since humans have measured time,” writes librarian William Jarvis in Time Capsules: A Cultural History. It’s easy to make fun of time capsules, but, as Jarvis details, it’s much harder to fill them with the kind of material that will actually stand the test of time. Often, the things we Read More ›

In another thread, after a lengthy debate about whether or not we treat morality like it is a subejctive preference or an objective commodity, Zeroseven graciously admits: Fair enough. I don’t disagree with most of what you say. I agree we behave as if morals are objective. But I don’t agree that this is because they are objective. … I see the argument of objective morals in the same way. Its a nice way to look at a human process for making decisions about the world. But of course its a pure fiction. First, I’d like to thank Zeroseven for having the courage to admit what few moral subjetivists will; all sane people act as if morality refers to an Read More ›

Every so often, Richard Dawkins hits the target. Here’s his take on the junior jackboots of Asshat U Washington Times: “There seems to be a tendency among some students – perhaps the less intelligent – to suppress free speech,” Mr. Dawkins said in an interview with the Australian on Monday. “I hope it doesn’t last long.” More. There are two reasonable opinions about whether the SJWs are dim. Some would say they know how to get on very well after the collapse of the traditional humanities, and aim at careers in enforcement of Correctness of some kind. Of course, one hardly need be a genius for that. In fact, a lack of genuine curiosity is a great asset. But what’s this Read More ›

The global warming hype, unlike the nutrition freakout or the far side of Darwinism, could actually be true. But the behaviour of the proponents tells against that. From Willie Soon and István Markó at : Increasingly, we are seeing more and more outrageous and aggressive anti-scientific claims that anyone who is not willing to embrace the dangerous global warming bandwagon and to condemn its culprit, CO2, is actually the equivalent of a Holocaust Denier. This sort of name-calling, loud self-promotion and fact twisting actions, closer to political rodeo than to healthy scientific debates, are simply telling us that our opponents have already lost their fallacious arguments and are getting short on any real scientific facts. Professor Albert Einstein had it Read More ›

In response to Vincent Torley’s Leading thinker on human evolution admits: we’re more than just an ape, Anaxagoraswrites at 2: I feel reassured that at least some scientists understand that humans are unique. Most laymen allready knew that. Yes, and that’s the critical mass of the stinking corruption that infests science media on this subject today: Everyone knows it’s true, yet science media continue to shovel garbage at us, such as that chimpanzees are entering the Stone Age or can handle high-level abstractions. No one is supposed to ask: If so, why are they still swinging in the trees? If the purveyors of this stuff are sane, they must realize that it cannot be true. But they must also know Read More ›

Dr. Ajit Varki is Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Cellular & Molecular Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. He is a confirmed evolutionist, but at the same time, interestingly, an ardent believer in human exceptionalism. Last April, Professor Varki and Professor S. Joshua Swamidass gave a presentation at the university, organized by the Veritas Forum, called, Common Ground in Science: A Conversation Between a Christian and an Evolutionist. Professor Swamidass has written a blog article about Dr. Varki’s presentation, in a recent post titled, More than just apes. Professor Varki highlighted two unique human traits during his talk: First (at 6:10), humans are the only known species that has out-competed all other sibling species (e.g. Neanderthals and Denisovans) Read More ›

Well, this’ll be interesting. Darwin vs. Boyle. From Suzan Mazur at Huffington Post: — In an attempt to do damage control, one of the organizers of the Royal Society paradigm shift meeting (not Denis Noble) sent me an email, which follows, asking that I stop referring to the Royal Society meeting as such. Why? Because he speaks for scientists who think they can control the scientific discourse as it was controlled at the time of Darwin. They are embarrassed. They don’t want to be seen as sitting on scientific evidence and feeding the public old science — which they are — and so they circle the wagons and deride those outside the circle who dare to point out that there is Read More ›