Intelligent Design

“A Psychopath Walks Into A Room. Can You Tell? (NPR May21, 2011) Arresting title, that, for an interesting proposition: “Robert Hare, the eminent Canadian psychologist who invented the psychopath checklist, … recently announced that you’re four times more likely to find a psychopath at the top of the corporate ladder than you are walking around in the janitor’s office,” journalist Jon Ronson tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered. Of course, some allowance should be made for the fact that bosses are noticed/hated much more than other folk, and big bosses are larger than life. The effect one comes away with is that psychiatry has not done a better job than traditional wisdom in explaining things like: Why Read More ›

I wish to publicly commend UD commenters ellazimm and Dr Elizabeth Liddle for their seriousness, civility, responsiveness in dialogue, and general positive tone. We need more objectors like these ladies. And, I hope that, increasingly, we will have them. Ladies, well done.   END

Here. This link works. Thanks Mung. Notes on the article here.

In my previous two articles (here and here), I explored some of the background information concerning the integration of retroviral elements into primate genomes and the various arguments for common descent which are based on them. I explored, in some detail, the evidence for common descent based on the shared placement of retroviral sequences. In this final article, I will discuss the two remaining points which are raised in the popular-level article which I have been examining. Read More>>>

There is an interesting item about Peter Singer, ethics and the environment in the Guardian ‘Comment is Free’ by Mark Vernon – Without belief in moral truths, how can we care about climate change? – Peter Singer admits his brand of utilitarianism struggles with the challenge of climate change in a way Christian ethics does not. Singer has previously argued that some animals have more rights than some human beings because of a lack of belief in objective morality. But now he comments that he ‘regrets’ he doesn’t believe in God and that his position is in a ‘state of flux’ because of ethical problems related to environental degradation. A Darwinian approach involving ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking doesn’t give us strong reasons Read More ›

Johnson meant that real Darwinists say what Darwinism entails (materialist atheism) and then Christian Darwinists rush in to announce that we can somehow harmonize it with Christianity by not taking seriously what Darwinists actually say. Explained in detail here. The analogy is to American football.

In The Moral Landscape, for example, new atheist and PhD neuroscientist Sam Harris tackles free will: In The Moral Landscape, for example, new atheist Sam Harris tackles free will:

Many scientists and philosophers realized log ago that free will could not be squared with our growing understanding of the physical world. Nevertheless, mny still deny this fact. … The problem is tat no account of causality leaves room for free will … Our belief in free will arises from our moment-to-mement ignorance of specific prior causes. (Pp. 103-5)

Are we clear about this yet? If not, dozens of examples from other Darwinists are available. And then
Read More ›

Reviewing Elena Mannes’ “The Power of Music: Pioneering Discoveries in the New Science of Song” (The Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2011), Tallis writes,

Ms. Mannes, an Emmy-winning granddaughter of the founders of New York’s Mannes School of Music, is inspired by the possibility that neuroscience may help us harness the potential of music to treat the sick and even to build more harmonious communities. Yet her investigation, based on a PBS documentary that Ms. Mannes produced, gives us little reason to expect that neuroscience will deliver on this promissory note. Read More ›

In his on-going criticism of Jonathan Wells’ new book, The Myth of Junk DNA, evolutionist Larry Moran now asserts that the much discussed vitamin C pseudogene is powerful evidence for evolution and common descent:  Read more

(This contest is now closed for judging. (The first award, for “Why do they do it?”, is announced here. The second award, for “What do you call a guy who reviews/trashes a book without reading it?”, is announced here.) ) I’ve suggested it’s a strategy on the part of people who trash ID-friendly books unread: The reviewer who fails to read the book is not, in a Darwin-obsessed community, held responsible for spreading misinformation. Indeed, the community wants him to do it, to avoid conflict between with their worldview and reality. The problem is, that only explains why he isn’t censured for his action. A more critical question is why would a scientist or scholar actually volunteer to do it? Read More ›

That’s a decision beleaguered governments must increasingly make.

U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., issued today’s 73-page report, “The National Science Foundation: Under the Microscope,” after months of signals from GOP leaders that the agency’s programs would be targeted. – Alan Boyle, “Funny science sparks serious spat” (MSNBC, May 26, 2011)

One hardly expects MSNBC’s Cosmic Log to defend research cuts, and – let’s face it – the silly “space aliens/multiverse/origin of life/Darwin explains tiddlywinks tournaments” projects make the easiest pop science news stories. Boyle knows that as well as anyone. Yethis protest that some silly-sounding projects are not in fact silly has a grain of truth:

The towel-folding robot, for example, is part of a project to see what it would take for robots to handle relatively unstructured tasks ranging from cooking to surgery.

It matters because aged seniors, for example, need inventions that enable them to live safely and comfortably in their homes.

That said, uncritical acceptance of the science lobby’s claim that – of all things, peer review – is the answer is pretty naive. That’s letting the dog decide how many cans of food he needs per day: “An answer,” surely not “the best answer.” So what is? Read More ›

Where people who are prepared to blow $1 million a year on discovering the origin of life … when we hardly have a clue what to look for: Confidence in progress has now been replaced by postulation of change. Progress is achieved and can be welcomed, but change just happens and must be adjusted to. “Adjusting to change” is now the unofficial motto of Harvard, mutabilitas instead of veritas. To adjust, the new Harvard must avoid adherence to any principle that does not change, even liberal principle. Yet in fact it has three principles: diversity, choice, and equality. To respect change, diversity must serve to overcome stereotypes, though stereotypes are necessary to diversity. How else is a Midwesterner diverse if Read More ›

“Child-sized depictions of Charles Darwin to grow on” (May 23, 2011) are discussed by Katherine Pandora, who researches & teaches about science, the public & popular culture at the University of Oklahoma:

I was most amused to find that, despite the fact that the voyage figured extravagantly both in content and in the illustrations of the pile of children’s Darwin books that I had brought home to study, the picture my daughter chose to draw owed nothing to the rainforest theme which would supposedly transfix childish imaginations, but instead depicted a much more sedate locale, fitting comfortably within the domestic backyard setting of a local neighborhood in the northern hemisphere. And here the influence I think of the second unusual Darwin book, The Humblebee Hunter by Deborah Hopkinson kicks in, for in this author’s story the science literally does take place at home, as Darwin’s daughter Henrietta and other family members join her father to investigate how many times a bee will visit a flower in a minute.Once again, this story has fictional elements (while Darwin investigated creatures in his home environment, and the children sometimes assisted, we have no record of the observational study Hopkinson sketches), and the fictionalization allows for a girl “naturalist” to take center stage.

Yes, fiction. Read More ›

Justin Brierley (of the Unbelievable show on Premier Christian Radio) sent me this sketch, which I thought might be of interest, or perhaps amusement, to some of you:

Asked what might disconfirm their theories about how speciation occurs, Darwinian evolutionists reply, “fossil rabbits in the Cambrian”. How about Precambrian? Dave Coppedge (yes, him) observes that No such fossil has ever been found, partly because any stratum containing a rabbit fossil would never have been labeled Precambrian in the first place. – “Precambrian Rabbit or Evolutionary Transition?” (05/25/2011) That said, … evolutionists would be surprised at finding complex non-marine multicellular eukaryotes in Precambrian strata, and this has just been announced in Nature.A team led by Paul Strother of Boston College with help from Oxford University and University of Sheffield has announced “Earth’s earliest non-marine eukaryotes.”1 “Direct evidence of fossils within rocks of non-marine origin in the Precambrian is exceedingly Read More ›