In the thread to my last post the following question was asked: “How are creationism and Darwinism commensurable.” In other words, what key traits do the two share, if any?
Here is my answer: With both creationism and Darwinism, the faith commitment is primary and the evidence is secondary.
Before exploring my answer further, let us define terms. Read More ›
A news article featured on Yahoo! News today reported that Pope Benedict has now affirmed that “God’s mind was behind complex scientific theories such as the Big Bang, and Christians should reject the idea that the universe came into being by accident The article further reports, “The universe is not the result of chance, as some would want to make us believe,” Benedict said on the day Christians mark the Epiphany, the day the Bible says the three kings reached the site where Jesus was born by following a star. “Contemplating it (the universe) we are invited to read something profound into it: the wisdom of the creator, the inexhaustible creativity of God,” he said in a sermon to some Read More ›
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In my previous post, I highlighted a recent peer-reviewed paper which challenged a key tenet of neo-Darwinian evolution — specifically, the causal sufficiency of gene duplication and subsequent divergence to account for the origin of novel biological information. In this follow-up blog, I want to consider some of the case-studies examined in the paper and relay some of the conclusions drawn. Read More>>>
1915 was a momentous year for science. That was the year Einstein published The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity, in which he demonstrated that Newton’s theory of gravity was wrong or at least substantially incomplete. Newton’s theory had dominated physics for over 225 years, and, to the great surprise of many, it had fallen. With the benefit of hindsight it is easy to be complacent about the inevitable success of Einstein’s theory, but history shows that general relativity was not accepted immediately by the scientific community. In fact, many scientists clung tenaciously to Newton, and there was fierce resistance to the new theory. Read More ›
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| Refurbishing the observatory |
I asked young astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez how things were going, after Iowa State University rejected his tenure in a case that stank to high heaven.
He replied,
Things are going well. I’ve started an astronomy minor program here at Grove City College and the refurbishment of the college’s new (old) observatory is essentially done. Here’s our observatory web page.
While it is more difficult to find the time to do research here, I have managed to squeeze out a few papers (2 in 2010).
Remember that, folks. Trolls and their lackeys don’t run the world (yet). You can still get in some good research and avoid their odious claptrap.
More on Gonzalez: Read More ›
Personally, given the resources of geological time, I feel confident that sooner or later that hypothetical chimpanzee sitting at a typewriter, will one day type Hamlet. – D. V. Ager, The New Catastrophism: The Importance of the Rare Event in Geological History, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1993, p. 149. Confidence in confidence alone is a heartwarming thing if nothing depends on it. Hat tip: Stephen E. Jones.
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is scientifically unlikely. The idea that all of biology just happened to arise spontaneously over long time periods (yes, that is what the theory of evolution says) is not motivated by the scientific evidence. This can be seen at all levels of biology including, more prominently in recent years, at the molecular level. A good example of this is the scientific evidence on proteins, and what it says about evolution. Read more
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (First Amendment to The United States Constitution.)
Did you know that two-thirds of public universities and private colleges in the United States have official policies that clearly violate the First Amendment? Some examples:
Read More ›
In 1959, the physicist-novelist-UK science policy advisor CP Snow gave his famous Rede Lecture at Cambridge, where he canonized ‘the two cultures’ , a long-standing and — to his mind at least — increasing distinction between the mindsets of those trained in the ‘arts’ (i.e. humanities, social sciences) and the ‘sciences’ (i.e. natural sciences, engineering). Even back then, and certainly more so now, there was another ‘culture’ that was increasingly set adrift from the rest of academic knowledge — theology. For example, it would be interesting to learn whether most academics believe that theology constitutes a body of knowledge — and, for that matter, whether most theologians themselves believe that their knowledge applies to more than just fellow believers. After Read More ›
[O]ne needs to relax Darwin’s criterion from this: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” to something like this: If a complex organ exists which seems very unlikely to have been produced by numerous, successive, slight modifications, and if no experiments have shown that it or comparable structures can be so produced, then maybe we are barking up the wrong tree. So, LET’S BREAK SOME RULES! Of course people will differ on the point at which they decide to break rules. But at least with the realistic criterion there could be evidence against the unfalsifiable. At least then people Read More ›
Buried in the most recent scientific literature there is a story of love, sex, and intrigue that has all the makings of a hearty Mills & Boon novel. The central characters of this plot are not lovers wrapped in each others arms but fruit flies that choose their sexual partners according to the microbiota that line their guts (1,2). Lactobacillus plantarum is the ‘cupid gut bug’ that seems to have greatest influence on sexual preferences (1,2) And it appears to do so by influencing the release of a class of Drosophila pherormones known as cuticular hydrocarbons (1,2). For evolutionists this finding is cited as one possible avenue through which speciation might take place in Drosophila (1,2). For those of us who are critical of such work however there exists one small but important catch. That is that the sexual preferences observed are easily eradicated by simply treating fruit flies that had been raised on different diets, with antibiotics (1,2). In other words no genetic changes that would ensure irreversible reproductive isolation, and hence speciation, have taken place. Read More ›
Well, it seems that the silly season is upon us. A study conducted earlier this month by the University College of London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (directed by Professor Geraint Rees) reveals a startling correlation between between people’s political beliefs and the size of two specific regions of their brains: the amygdala and the anterior cingulate cortex. Among those who describe themselves as liberal, or left wing, the gray matter of the anterior cingulate cortex is significantly thicker; whereas for those who regard themselves as conservative, or right wing, the amygdala is relatively larger. The study has been widely reported in the press, but has yet to be published. Believe it or not, the study was commissioned by a British actor and comedian, Colin Firth, who wanted to know if it was possible to identify people’s political belief from the structure of their brains. For example, could scientists predict whether a person was left or right wing, just by looking at their brains?
The general standard of reporting in the media on Professor Rees’s study has been so poor that I thought readers would benefit from a more critical analysis. Read More ›
Over recent months, papers challenging key elements of Darwinian theory — the kind of papers which are supposed not to exist — have increasingly been slipping through the net and finding their way into the peer-reviewed literature. One such paper, “Is gene duplication a viable explanation for the origination of biological information and complexity?,” authored by Joseph Esfandier Hannon Bozorgmeh and published online last week in the journal, Complexity, challenges the standard gene duplication/divergence model regarding the origin of evolutionary novelty. Read More>>>
Alister McGrath makes some interesting comments on the need for prediction in science, noting that a natural theology may be possible on the basis of accommodation within an ‘inference to the best explanation.’ He writes; ‘…some theories concern entities or situations in which predictions may seem inappropriate or simply impossible. If natural theology rests primarily upon accommodation [and not prediction], it is in good scientific company.’ McGrath, (2009) A Fine Tuned Universe, Louisville: Westminster John Knox, p.60 McGrath is still a keen Darwinist and not really a friend of ID, but it does imply that ID can be justified on the basis of accommodation and need not necessarily seek justification on the basis of explanatory power.