Science

Are we talking religious fundamentalists or Darwinian fundamentalists? The Fundamentalist Attack on Science: A Problem That Won’t Just Disappear Morris, Stephen (2006) The Fundamentalist Attack on Science: A Problem That Won’t Just Disappear. In [PSA 2006] Philosophy of Science Assoc. 20th Biennial Mtg (Vancouver): PSA 2006 Contributed Papers. Full text available as: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002954/01/IDPSA.doc.

Excuse the bad pun.

http://news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS/html4ever/2006/060914DeWoodyVole.html

As for genetic evidence…unfortunately it appears our knowledge is fairly limited.
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I debated Lee Silver last year at Princeton and reported it on this blog (for a video of the debate, go here). Silver is a Princeton bioethicist with a Ph.D. in biology. He and Peter Singer are soulmates. Fundamentalists? We? Bad science, worse philosophy, and McCarthyite tactics in the human-embyro debate. An essay by Patrick Lee & Robert P. George We have in many places argued for the humanity and fundamental dignity of human beings in the embryonic stage of development and all later stages. In defending embryonic human life, we have pointed out that every human adult was once an embryo, just as he or she was once an adolescent, and before that a child, and before that an Read More ›

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Quantum computers are a reality and they indirectly speak to the issue of intelligent design and the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of Quantum Mechanics.

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There’s a big “evolution of religion” conference coming up in Hawaii: http://www.evolutionofreligion.org/index.php. Daniel Dennett is among the featured speakers. Here’s a brief description of another featured speaker: On Sunday evening the Rev. Michael Dowd, who has been called “North America’s evolutionary evangelist,” will share his experience of teaching and preaching a sacred, meaningful view of cosmic, biological, and human evolution to secular and religious audiences of all ages and across the theological spectrum. You think ID might be a welcomed perspective at this conference?

Paul Myers, no longer content to shoot himself in the foot, is now focusing on more vital parts of his anatomy. Check out the following: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/09/ken_miller_creationist.php. Ken Miller is the best friend Myers and his merry band of atheists ever had, putting a veneer of respectability and religious tolerance over the village atheism of Darwin’s most ardent followers.

Furious evolution debate hits famed Kenyan museum
Lillian Omariba
AFP
September 5, 2006

NAIROBI — The global debate between scientists and conservative Christians over evolution has hit Kenya, where an exhibit of one of the world’s finest collections of early hominid fossils is under threat.

As the famed National Museum of Kenya (NMK) prepares to re-open next year after massive EU-funded renovations, evangelicals are demanding that the display be removed or at least shunted to a less prominent location. Read More ›

Thanks, Denyse, for the previous post. The following schematic from that same site deserves a separate entry. Here finally is proof positive that science is self-correcting!

[There’s] a new 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that approaches the issue of teaching origin-of-life theories in public schools from a new angle . . . Few are aware that the courts have ruled atheism is a religion for the purposes of the First Amendment in 2005 and thought about its implications on the teaching of origin-of-life theories in public schools. In brief, evolution becomes both a religious and scientifc theory (using the court’s definition of scientific theory), and abiogenesis becomes purely a religious theory. That being the case, these atheist origin-of-life theories should be treated the same as any other origin-of-life theory. Anything less is unconstitutional. Visit the website at http://originoflifefairness.org for much more information and the links/facts to back it Read More ›

Wired interview with Lee Smolin on his upcoming book: The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next From the interview: “Smolin says that string theory is unconvincing — maybe even nonscientific — and that physicists have embraced it at the expense of other promising research.” “… But string theorists say they could probably invent versions of the theory that work either way. We’d have to change our notion of what science is to accommodate this proposition. You just can’t do science on that basis.” “Science moves faster when there is plenty of debate and controversy.” “But the disagreement is not about whether string theory is worth pursuing. It’s about whether Read More ›

God and science: You just can’t please everyone
A Review of Francis Collins’s The Language of God

By Steve Fuller
From NewScientist 26 August 2006, p. 48.

Denying the real conflict between religion and science is a sure formula for confusion, finds STEVE FULLER.
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Let me start by declaring an interest: I am that Steve Fuller who gave evidence for the defence in the trial over whether intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in school in Dover, Pennsylvania, last year. And books like this persuade me that I did the right thing.

*The Language of God* is by Francis S. Collins, director of the Human Genome Project for the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He became a born-again Christian after reading C. S. Lewis’s *Mere Christianity* as a biochemistry graduate student. Collins is now part of the American ScientificAffiliation, a group of 3000 Christians which aims to render science consistent with its beliefs.

Collins’s mission is to deny any real conflict between God and Darwin. He wants to square things for scientists who don’t want intelligent design on their doorstep but who also don’t want to examine their own beliefs too closely. Read More ›

Two replies to the insufferable Jim Downard: (1) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/08/the_vampires_heart_a_response.html (2) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/08/anticipatory_erudition_a_respo.html On avoiding design inferences: Before you infer intelligent design, keep in mind that grass-cutting shears share an extremely high similarity with scissors which are used to cut paper. Since a paper stencil was apparently used in the origination of the grass-pattern, it’s likely that a pair of scissors was used to cut the stencil. This makes it plausible to assume that the grass-cutting shears were co-opted from scissors, because both are clearly homologous structures based upon their similarity. Moreover, paper is made of plant material, and grass a plant. This could account for the origin of the stencil itself. Finally, Virginia has metal resources which could account for the Read More ›

NATURE ALERT: Volume 442 Number 7104 pp719-846 Revival in Iran p719 Whatever its motivation, Iran’s support for education and science is to be welcomed. 10.1038/442719b Full Text | PDF Whatever its motivation??? How about this motivation: Let’s get really good at science and give our children outstanding educations so that we can destroy the infidel and end western democracy. Iran’s support for education and science is to be welcomed — yeah, right. (For the grammatically challenged, this is two positives equaling a negative.)

You may recall that summer of 2003 Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett proposed a new “happy” designation for themselves as atheists — a term that does for atheism what “gay” does for homosexuality (the comparison is theirs!). They decided on the word “bright.” For Dawkins’s and Dennett’s opeds, where they originally made this proposal, go here: www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bright/bright_index.html. A band of D&D devotees ran with their idea of recasting atheism’s image to form www.the-brights.net. Nonetheless, some D&D supporters thought this was a bit much (see, for instance, Chris Mooney’s piece at CSICOP: www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/brights). All in all, I would say Dawkins’s and Dennett’s proposal of “the brights” never really took off — until now. It appears there is a quasi-secret society inspired Read More ›

Terry Mirll sent me the following predictions and anti-predictions related to materialism.

If naturalistic materialism is true:

1. We are nothing but the sum of our parts. Our bodies are wholly explicable in terms of nature, and there is no aspect of our bodies that cannot be described in purely naturalistic terms, nor any means of describing ourselves other than naturalistic ones. Human beings are simply organic beings and nothing more, composed of organs which are composed of cells which are composed of molecules which are composed of atoms which are composed of sub-atomic particles (and, if string theory is valid, the particles are composed of various strings of energy), and that’s it. We are thus material beings and not spiritual ones. We have no souls. Consciousness is therefore nothing but a curious offshoot of biochemistry, a higher reasoning function of our brains that has arisen from the natural advantage afforded to us by both the size of the human brain and its level of complexity. It is NOT evidence that Man is a creature imago dei, but rather evidence of the power by which natural selection operating in tandem with random genetic mutation can operate.

THEREFORE, I PREDICT that scientists will one day construct a device capable of transporting a human body across vast regions of space–a device comparable to the “teleporter” as portrayed in the “Star Trek” TV series. It will disassemble a living human body at a molecular or sub-molecular level, transport those small bits of living organic material at high speed across great distance, and reassemble them to their original macroscopic configuration, with no ill effects to the body it has transported.

IF, HOWEVER, after several hundred years of scientific advance no such a device will have been formulated, this fact should be taken as an indication that naturalistic materialism is not true. Read More ›