Science

Today’s Fox News website had this little story, entitled Climate Scientists Plan to Hit Back at Skeptics. In the article, Stanford University climate researcher Paul R. Ehrlich had this to say about global warming skeptics:

“Most of our colleagues don’t seem to grasp that we’re not in a gentlepersons’ debate, we’re in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules,” Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said in one of the e-mails.

Its worth noting Ehrlich’s use of the phrase “merciless enemies”. In other words, challenge the preferred dogma, and you’re not just ignorant – you’re an enemy, and thus, by extension, deserving of any and all ad hominem attacks hurled your way. One can almost hear “let me assure you, we haf vays to make you accept the dogma!” Read More ›

According to Jerry Coyne, atheistic evolutionists and ID proponents have at least this in common — they can expect no bribes from the Templeton Foundation. Read Coyne’s post on the topic here.

I would like to direct our wonderful readers here at UD to an interesting new website www.originofeverything.com. Their purpose: “Origin of Everything is dedicated to providing leading viewpoints, evidence and arguments for both Intelligent Design and Scientific theories associated with the origin of the universe, life and related subjects. Origin of Everything is designed to promote critical thinking and evaluation ascribable to the concurrent presentation of relevant content for each topic in the Science and Intelligent Design sections. Convenient links allow researchers to quickly navigate between sections without loosing focus. Like these theories, Origin of Everything is a work in progress and is continually enhanced and updated. If you would like to contribute, please email ooe@originofeverything.com.” Please, take a look Read More ›

Michael Ruse is not happy with Jerry Fodor’s new book (described here at UD). As Ruse begins his review in the Boston Globe: “What Darwin Got Wrong is an intensely irritating book….” . Here is the conclusion of Ruse’s review: The Darwinian does not want to say that the world is designed. That is what the Intelligent Design crew argues. The Darwinian is using a metaphor to understand the material nonthinking world. We treat that world as if it were an object of design, because doing so is tremendously valuable heuristically. And the use of metaphor is a commonplace in science. Why then do we have these arguments? The clue is given at the end, when the authors start to Read More ›

TED granted Jill Tartar her wish to: “empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company”. TED and Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has set up SETIQuest.org to:

. . . make vast amounts of SETI data available to the public for the first time. It will also publish the SETI Institute’s signal-detection algorithm as open source code, inviting brilliant coders and amateur techies to make it even better. . . . You are officially invited to join the search for extraterrestrial life. . . .With available cloud storage and processing resources, we can prov de digital signal processing experts and students with a lot of raw data … and invite them to develop new algorithms that can find other types of signals that we are now missing,”

The Challenge for ID
1) Is SETI’s methodology valid? Read More ›

Not content with their virtually complete hegemony over public school science education, now the Darwinists have a new ploy to eradicate ID from scientific consideration: just re-classify it away. In a petition, some PSU science students are demanding the complete re-classification and re-shelving of ID related books to a non-science category. Apparently the instigators of this petition believe that the mere presence of an ID related book on a science shelf serves to further confuse an already confused public about what is and is not science. Citing a recent survey by the NSF that “70 percent of Americans do not understand the scientific process,” the petition claims that “further confusion surrounding what is and is not science is particularly problematic.” According to the petition, (and the NSF), the general public is just to stupid to know the difference between “real” science, and philosophy masquerading as science. Read More ›

I’d like to critique Jason Rosenhouse’s critique of Stephen Barr’s critique of ID. I know, round and round we go, where we stop, no one knows. Rosenhouse appreciates the first paragraph of Barr’s analysis, but is disappointed with the rest. I am disappointed with it all. But Rosenhouse does make a few good points in taking stock of the ID movement’s influence with the public:

I hope he is right about no one being moved toward religious belief by ID writing, but I do not think he is. The ID folks are tapping into deep intuitions people have that complex, functioning structures do not arise from natural, non-intelligent causes. Many are already uncomfortable with the naturalism of modern science and see evolution as dehumanizing and implausible. They like the idea that modern science can provide some rational support for theism. My experiences at ID gatherings suggest to me that an awful lot of people are being led just where they want to go. Certainly the public opinion polls show a great deal of sympathy for ID, to the point of wanting it taught next to evolution in science classes.

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Premier Radio, one of the UK’s leading Christian radio stations, has been featuring several interviews/debates in recent weeks on matters related to ID, some of which have been flagged here and here. The most recent one bears the title of this post and was aired last weekend (6th Feb), in which I debated the question with the historian Thomas Dixon, who basically holds that while we may have needed God to do science, we don’t need the deity anymore. My own view is that if we mean by ‘science’ something more than simply the pursuit of instrumental knowledge, then that quest still doesn’t make much sense without the relevant (Abrahamic) theological backdrop.  I continue this line of argument in a Read More ›

Philosopher at Large, Dr. Jerome Ravetz has a fascinating exploration of moral and peer review issues on ClimateGate as “Post-Normal science” at Watts Up With That

. . .
At the end of January 2010 two distinguished scientific institutions shared headlines with Tony Blair over accusations of the dishonest and possibly illegal manipulation of information. Our ‘Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035′ of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is matched by his ‘dodgy dossier’ of Saddam’s fictitious subversions. . . . The parallels are significant and troubling, for on both sides they involve a betrayal of public trust. . . .
Climategate is particularly significant because it cannot be blamed on the well-known malign influences from outside science, be they greedy corporations or an unscrupulous State. This scandal, and the resulting crisis, was created by people within science who can be presumed to have been acting with the best of intentions. Read More ›

I wonder if Richard Dawkins actually knows any watchmaker. No actual horologist would take his notion of the Blind Watchmaker seriously in accounting for complexity, even as an analogy. If the analogy that is used won’t, in and of itself, work, then it doesn’t explain what it intends to illuminate by using it as an example of comparison. If there cannot be a blind watchmaker, there cannot be an analogy for a  blind watchmaker shedding light on some other mystery. It would be like saying the mechanism of natural selection accounting for evolution creating complexity and biodiversity is analogous to a blind abracadabra. It explains nothing.  But for those who are really interested in the language of watchmaking, and how absurd it is that it should be conducted by a blind and dumb process as Richard Dawkins contends (blind because it has no “purpose” or “end” in mind, and dumb because it has no mind, no Intelligent Design) then these videos may interest you. And of course we keep in mind that the living organism, down to the nano-technical scale within even the most “simple” cell, is staggeringly more complex than any watch ever designed.

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Check it out here. Scientific hubris, especially with Climategate and evolution, has reached a breaking point. I expect the corruption of science will find increasing exposure in coming days. ———————————————- Issue highlights include: “What do scientists know?” by Joseph Farah, on the difference between a scientific consensus and a political one “History of climate gets ‘erased’ online” by Chelsea Schilling, exposing the scientist who has altered more than 5,000 Wikipedia entries to hype the global-warming agenda “Politicizing science” by Thomas Sowell, who warns that when government gets involved, “do not expect the disinterested search for truth” “Science bulletin: ‘Sun heats Earth!’” by Jerome R. Corsi, who profiles the Russian scientist whose research forecasts global cooling “We’ve been had!” by Walter Read More ›

Whenever I hear the phrase “overwhelming evidence” or “overwhelming scientific evidence,” my antennae go up and I know that someone is trying to sell me something. Last night, if you were watching the networks, you heard the following remark: I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. But even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future — because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. I’d like to encourage people to post in the comments to this thread other examples where the phrase “overwhelming [scientific] evidence” is Read More ›

Dr. Dembski and Dr. Meyer have made the top of the list of ID science breakthroughs for 2009: On this episode of ID the Future Casey Luskin interviews Dennis Wagner, executive director of the Access Research Network discussing ARN’s top 5 Darwin and Design science stories for 2009. Listen in to learn how the work of Stephen Meyer and William Dembski topped the list of ID science accomplishments for 2009. Meyer and Dembski Breakthroughs Top ID Science Stories fo… Intelligent Design The Future

Apparently round two of the controversy over the California’s Science Center’s cancellation of Darwin’s Dilemma is getting ready to take place. This was reported and discussed here back in October, as well as here and here in December.

Now, a California State Senator is calling the constitutionality of the censorship into question. Read More ›

In the last year and a bit I’ve done a lot of work in trying to understand and then critique the approach of Dr. Denis Alexander of the Faraday Institute in Cambridge (UK). I know that many readers of UD are familiar with Alexander’s big-selling work, “Creation or Evolution – Do We Have To Choose?”. This book is probably (alongside Francis Collins) the work with the most traction by Darwinists seeking to argue from a Biblical Christian viewpoint. I’ve previously drawn attention to IVP’s “Should Christians Embrace Evolution”. In this post I want instead to draw attention to my own response, “Creation or Evolution – Why We Must Choose”. If you don’t want to read the blurb and just want Read More ›