Science

Education Week has this article expounding on the fruitfulness of campaigns designed to educate our youth in the theory of evolution.

When a federal court in 2005 rejected an attempt by the Dover, Pa., school board to introduce intelligent design as an alternative to evolution to explain the development of life on Earth, it sparked a renaissance in involvement among scientists in K-12 science instruction.

Now, some of those teaching programs, studies, and research centers are starting to bear fruit.

The National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, and other groups have increased research investment on identifying essential concepts for teaching evolution, including creating the Evolution Education Research Centre, a partnership of Harvard, McGill, and Chapman universities, and launching the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the subject, Journal of Evolution: Education and Outreach.

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My review of Cordelia Fine‘s new book, Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference: The gender wars take no prisoners. In 2005, suggesting that there might indeed be innate differences between men and women derailed the career of Harvard president Larry Summers. He reemerged, years later, as President Obama’s sometime finance guru). Meanwhile, a host of neuroscientists report differences between the brains of men and women that, they say, account for different abilities and career choices. Psychologist and author Cordelia Fine disagrees with the neuroscientists. In Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, she has no time for the “special powers” that pop brain science currently imputes to the female brain, reminding Read More ›

Once upon a time there was this bright philosopher and Fine writer who immersed herself in the pop culture sludge of the breathless (this just in!) latest findings of neuroscience on human nature, in this case the supposed differences between the way men and women think. Differences that, Fine argues, are poorly supported.

What I learned from Cordelia Fine’s latest book: Add time on an fMRI scanner to a mediocre mind carrying out a conventional research program and you end up with fodder for Cowsmoopolitan. Fine found that the men vs. women studies were too badly done to be conclusive. Her survey removes all doubt as to how many magazine and newspaper editors, stuck for a Sunday featurette, ever even wonder about such matters.

She goes on to challenge neuroscientists on the ethics of passively allowing these shenanigans:

… neuroscientists who work in this area have some responsibility for how their findings of sex differences in the brain are interpreted and communicated. When this is done carelessly, it may have a real and significant impact on people’s lives. Many neuroscientists do appear to be aware of this. They are appropriately cautious about interpreting sex differences to the brain, and may also take the time to remind journalists of just how far we are from mapping sex differences in the brain onto the mind. (And of course they may find their work being misrepresented, regardless, others, however, as we have seen, are more cavalier.) ” – from Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (p. 173)

On a less heartening note, she adds, Read More ›

Dr. William Dembski will be debating Christopher Hitchens at the Prestonwood Baptist Church Nov. 18th, 2010. “Does a Good God Exist?” will be the topic debated. The debate will be held from 8:40 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. There will be a live webcast of the debate. Dr. William Dembski, Research Professor in Philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, is a leader in the Intelligent Design community and is a Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. His most comprehensive treatment of intelligent design to date, coauthored with Jonathan Wells, is titled The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems. In November of 2009, he published a book on theodicy titled The End of Christianity: Read More ›

Al Mohler, my former boss at Southern Seminary in Louisville, has excellent theological instincts. On his blog today, he put his finger on what’s driving the theistic evolutionists at BioLogos: The BioLogos approach to the issue is now clear. They want to discredit evangelical objections to evolution and to convince the evangelical public that an acceptance of evolution is a means of furthering the gospel. They have leveled their guns at the Intelligent Design movement, at young earth creationism, and against virtually all resistance to the embrace of evolution. They claim that the embrace of evolution is necessary if evangelicalism is not to be intellectually marginalized in the larger culture. They have warned that a refusal to embrace evolution will Read More ›

Jack Krebs at Panda’s Thumb claims that I have “come clean” as a young earth creationist. There are a couple of problems with his announcement: (1) It’s not true, and (2) there’s nothing in my words that he quoted to justify his claim. Krebs seems to think that my recent statements clarifying my views represent either a compromise or a “retraction” of my earlier views. But that is false. It’s a matter of public record that I am an evangelical Christian. I have publicly defended the complete trustworthiness and inerrancy of Scripture; but my comments in The End of Christianity led some to believe otherwise. The purpose of my recent statement was to make it clear that I believe in Read More ›

The thesis expressed in the title of this “opening bat” post is plainly controversial, and doubtless will be hotly contested and/or pointedly ignored. However, when all is said and done, it will be quite evident that it has the merit that it just happens to be both true and well-warranted. So, let us begin. Noted Harvard evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin inadvertently lets the cat out of the bag in his well-known January 1997 New York Review of Books article, “Billions and Billions of Demons”: . . . to put a correct view of the universe into people’s heads we must first get an incorrect view out . . .   the problem is to get them to reject irrational and supernatural Read More ›

Frank Tipler writes at Pajamasmedia: The current battle for America is, as Angelo Codevilla has recently emphasized in his seminal essay, a war between the majority of Americans and America’s ruling class. This conflict is a reflection of a battle between the two greatest scientists of the past two centuries, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. Einstein famously claimed that “God does not play dice with the universe,” whereas Darwin claimed that God does, indeed, play dice with the universe. Codevilla pointed out the self-image of the ruling class rests on its belief that humans are the unforeseen outcome of chance mutations acted upon by natural selection. Not so. God decreed the evolution of humans before time began. The ruling class Read More ›

For the full program, go here.

Richard Dawkins takes Ray Comfort out of context: Dawkins says he doesn’t debate Creationists, yet he debates what Creationists say quite often. Should Dawkins avoid debating Creationists when they are the subject of his lectures and speaking engagements?

The debate is happening today, Sept. 7th, at the Fixed Point Foundation.

Our next debate features famed atheist Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and Dr. David Berlinski, author of The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions.  The question being debated: What are the implications of a purely secular society?  It promises to be a formidable clash of titans.  In addition to being highly entertaining and witty, these two men have a serious message they want to communicate.

The Does Religion Poison Everything? Debate begins at 7 p.m., September 7.

The luncheon, reception, and debate all take place at the Sheraton Birmingham Hotel:

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Sometimes I think atheists are simply having arguments with themselves – or, more precisely, with phantoms bred by their own ignorance. It’s easy to see why atheism does not make more headway, even in modern secular society: Once atheists begin to spell out the sort of deity they are rejecting, it becomes clear that they don’t know what they’re talking about.

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