Intelligent Design

Jane Harris Zsovan, author of Eugenics and the Firewall talked to Uncommon Descent recently about her book on the controversial topic of social Darwinist eugenics in Western Canada in the mid-twentieth century.

Part I is here.

Denyse: You mentioned the silent American eugenics film The Black Stork (1917) (P. 16):

A young man and woman are considering marriage; eugenicist Harry J Haiselden warns that they are ill-matched and will produce defective offspring. He is right; their baby is born defective, dies quickly and floats into heaven.

Courtesy the Moral Uplift League in Baltimore. (Floats into heaven? Well, that gives an oomph to “uplift”, I guess.) Yes, I’d heard of that one, but long forgotten. Looked it up again. And, sure enough, here’s something, from a book called The Black Stork (Oxford, 1999) I’d never heard before – about the famed Helen Keller: Read More ›

The metanarrative that pervades materialism goes something like this: science (especially physics), as it grows, will continue to replace more and more spiritual ideas, until all we are left with are physical ideas. Unfortunately for the materialists, the history of science instead shows that physics itself only grows as it embraces spiritual ideas and incorporates them into our knowledge of reality.

Information on the forthcoming five-day UK intelligent design conference, which runs from July 18th to 22nd in Malvern, Worcestershire,  and details on how to apply, can be located here.

The programme is aimed primarily at a generalist audience with expertise across the relevant disciplines. Students or graduates in education, engineering, medicine, law, business, IT, theology, the arts and related disciplines are also encouraged to apply. Participants do not need to have a specialist background in science.

The summer school will run from Monday lunchtime to Friday lunchtime. There will be three presentations each day and an evening seminar which will feature a current issue related to Intelligent Design. The afternoons from Tuesday to Thursday will provide free time for sightseeing and other activities. A detailed programme will be available in due course.

The sessions will focus on: Read More ›

According to David Shiga (New Scientist 18 May 2011), they’ve been repurposed after the recent shutdown* when state funds dried up: “Alien-hunters focus in on habitable planets”:

Astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, the SETI Institute of California, and the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory are listening for alien signals from dozens of planets in the so-called “habitable zone” of their stars, the first time a targeted search of this kind has been undertaken.

“We’ve honed the list to the really exciting exoplanets,” says team member Dan Werthimer of UC Berkeley

Essentially, they are looking for planets in habitable zones. Read More ›

… figure out what they want to you say, then say it, acting like you believe it.

Why? Microbiologist Caroline Crocker, author of Free to Think, having been driven from George Mason University for pointing out problems with Darwinism, found all academic doors closed. She was appointed to head up the IDEA Center

… but difficulties arose. Read More ›

In “Intelligent Design Making Headway into Texas Public Schools”, Eryn Sun reports at Christian Post (May. 13 2011): Reading the following, I am not sure that’s good news: Read More ›

Heidelberg man (Wikipedia)

A recent post on Uncommon Descent correctly pointed out that Neanderthal man was not a primitive species of human being, but a race of people who buried their dead and had larger brains than ours. Consequently, evidence that some modern people have Neanderthal DNA in their genes does not constitute evidence for the common ancestry of humans and apes, per se. Indeed, Casey Luskin made this very point in an article on Evolution News, in response to claims by evolutionists Karl Giberson and Francis Collins in their book The Language of Science and Faith (InterVarsity Press, 2011, pp. 43-44) that evidence for a genetic connection between modern humans and Neanderthals bolsters the case for “common ancestry.”

Now, I happen to believe that humans and apes do in fact share a common ancestry, although I would add that the development of the human brain since humans and apes diverged must have been intelligently guided, and I would also argue that nothing about the human brain can explain intentionality or free will. But what I’d like to discuss today is the question of whether Heidelberg man, the presumed common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern human beings, was also a true human being.

“Why does this matter?” I hear you ask. Because if Heidelberg man wasn’t a true human being, then we’d have a very odd situation indeed: two distinct races of human beings (Neanderthals and us) both diverged from a non-human ancestor. Heidelberg man certainly had a brain capacity in the modern range, but as yet we do not know whether he was capable of language, art or religion.

In a 2009 article entitled Evolution of the Genus Homo (Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 2009. 37:67–92, doi: 10.1146/annurev.earth.031208.100202), anthropologists Ian Tattersall and Jeffrey Schwartz write:
Read More ›

In “Out-of-Africa migration selected novelty-seeking genes” (New Scientist, 06 May 2011), Aria Pearson tells us, “AS HUMANS migrated out of Africa around 50,000 years ago and moved across the planet, evolution may have latched onto a gene linked to risk-taking and adventurousness.” Once treated skeptically, the idea “stands up to rigorous analysis,” due to minor differences in gene frequencies:

The study suggests that some small portion of the behaviours that characterise populations may be down to genetics, and that cultural actions like mass migration can modify our genes, says Matthews.

Marcus Munafò, a biological psychologist at the University of Bristol, UK, cautions that variations in the DRD4 gene are numerous and complex, making its exact behavioural effects hard to pin down. But he agrees that it is likely that some differences in behaviour have been generated by genetic selection.

If a characteristic is usefully identified as genetic, shouldn’t it offer a stronger signal than this? And shouldn’t analysis be more rigorous than this? Read More ›

Here’s a quick question. What four adjectives would you associate with the country of Sweden? If you’re a secular humanist, you’ll probably answer: tolerant, equitable, well-educated and prosperous – or something along those lines. Indeed, atheists have long praised Sweden as a secular society, whose example other nations would do well to follow (see here, here and here). I suppose they like the thought of living in a society where Intelligent Design theory cannot be discussed in biology classes, and where even faith-based schools are not allowed to teach that religious doctrines are objectively true, as that would be tantamount to “proselytizing.” Well, as they say, there are two sides to every story. The flip side of Sweden’s much-vaunted secular Read More ›

Few things in that area show much promise, but this one does.

Two economists have spent some time studying precommitment, the idea of freely choosing what’s right and ten instructing others not to listen when you say you have changed your mind. The first well-known precommiter was Homer’s Odysseus (1000  BCE), who

has been warned about the Sirens, whose seductive song leads sailors to destruction, but he wants to hear it anyway. So he gives his men earplugs and orders that they tie him to the mast, ignoring all subsequent pleas for release until they are safely past the danger.

– Daniel Akst, “Commit Yourself: Self-control in the age of abundance” Reason , May 2011

As Akst tell it, Read More ›

Apparently, “Satan” has noticed our interview with Nancy Pearcey, author of Saving Leonardo (here), and he is cheesed. He describes Uncommon Descent as “an equally dangerous blog.” Not for lack of trying, Yer Scorchership.

I give UD’s Denyse credit for having come up with this insightful observation. In another UD thread I came across this link. It represents the Episcopal church’s views on ID, and it is full of misinformation and misrepresentations. The proponents of the Intelligent Design Movement assert that it is possible to discern scientifically the actions of God in nature. Wrong. Anyone familiar with any basic ID literature would not make this blatant misrepresentation. I therefore must assume that the author of this claim never took the time to investigate ID, and probably got his ideas from the popular press. …the great majority of scientists say that claims of “Intelligent Design” have not been backed up by valid scientific research and Read More ›

Wintery Knight reminds us of ID “godfather” Phillip Johnson’s view of theistic evolution (sometimes called Christian evolution or Christian Darwinism): Read More ›

A friend insists that this song by Oklahoma’s Carrie Underwood underscores and responds to design in the universe: This performance occurred several weeks ago, and then went viral. Five and a half million hits on YouTube; I’m sure some of you must have seen and heard it. The lyrics in the first stanza are certainly relevant to the design inference. Your mileage may vary. Check it out. One response was “I am not religous at all…but it is impossible after hearing this song? not to feel something… truly unbelievable.” Song’s history here. A classic, very influential rendition here. Lyrics here.

but by Oxford “philosophy lecturer and fellow atheist” Daniel Came:

… for refusing to debate William Lane Craig, who has debated many “new atheists”.

Prof Dawkins maintains that Prof Craig is not a figure worthy of his attention and has reportedly said that such a contest would “look good” on his opponent’s CV but not on his own.

[ … ]

Prof Craig is a research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, in California, and the author of 30 books and hundreds of scholarly articles on Christianity.

He has debated with leading thinkers including Daniel Dennett, A.C.Grayling, Christopher Hitchens, Lewis Wolpert and Sam Harris.

[]

In a letter to Prof Dawkins, Dr Came said: “The absence of a debate with the foremost apologist for Christian theism is a glaring omission on your CV and is of course apt to be interpreted as cowardice on your part.

“I notice that, by contrast, you are happy to discuss theological matters with television and radio presenters and other intellectual heavyweights ….”

– Tim Ross, “Richard Dawkins accused of cowardice for refusing to debate existence of God,” The Telegraph (14 May 2011)

Toldjah. When Dawkins was riding high, he could get away with this. Not any more: Read More ›