Pat Hayes of Red State Rabble has composed a rather prolix essay in which he sings the praises of Barbara Forrest and her monumental role in exposing ID as repackaged Creationism. Naturally, Pim van Muers at Panda’s Thumb and Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars are chiming in.
Philosophy
Doctor “Doom” Pianka – St. Edwards Transcript
Transcript of St. Edwards Speech MP3 of Seguin-Gazzette Question Stand by for a transcript of the Lamar speech (at the Texas Association of Scientists ceremony) which I’m given to understand makes the St. Edwards speech look rather tame. My take on the St. Edwards speech is it paints Pianka as an alarmist crackpot, and nothing Read More…
Texas Governor Rick Perry Compares Pianka’s Views to Hitler’s
The Gazette-Enterprise The very same day TAS declared its stance, Kathy Walt, press secretary for Gov. Rick Perry, expressed disdain over what Pianka calls his “doomsday talk.†Walt called the scientist’s viewpoints “abhorrent†and likened them to Hitler’s “hate-filled Third Reich.†While some have described Pianka’s words as hyperbole, the governor’s office’s distaste was plainspoken. Read More…
California Class Linkage
The details of the lawsuit: http://www.au.org/site/DocServer/Final_Complaint.pdf?docID=541
The Hate-Monger of the Gaps
[From a colleague:] The problem is that methodological naturalism prevents us from detecting a “hate” crime, since “hate” is an immaterial property had by agents that can only be inferred from behavior, speech, etc. Other minds cannot be observed, just inferred by analogy, like the traditional argument from design. Because it is always possible that Read More…
Confidence in the solvability of currently unsolved scientific problems
[From a philosopher colleague:] I am visiting Harvard, and I was reading the conservative student paper here, and came across an interesting quote from from Richard Wrangham, a biologist, on the gaps in science that Intelligent Design theorists point to: “Given that everything we know about science gives us confidence that these details either have Read More…
Plantinga on the definition of “fundamentalist”
We must first look into the use of this term ‘fundamentalist’. On the most common contemporary academic use of the term, it is a term of abuse or disapprobation, rather like ‘son of a bitch’, more exactly ‘sonovabitch’, or perhaps still more exactly (at least according to those authorities who look to the Old West Read More…
The Pope on the Periphery of ID
[From a colleague:] “Here’s a more complete summary of the Pope’s Wednesday audience. Note the clear emphasis on knowledge of God through reason prior to revelation: “Even before discovering the God who reveals himself in the history of a people, there is a cosmic revelation, open to all, offered to the whole of humanity by Read More…