Science

Smithsonian Distances Itself From Controversial Film
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/01/AR2005060101986.html

By Tommy Nguyen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 2, 2005; Page C01

The controversy over the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History’s decision to allow a documentary based on “intelligent design” — the theory that life is so meticulously complex that a divine intelligence must have designed it — to be played at one of its theaters ended in compromise yesterday: The film will be shown, but the screening fee required by the museum (in this case, $16,000) won’t be accepted and the museum will withdraw its customary co-sponsorship. Read More ›

Have a look at the video at the following site: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/index.html. Is there any design-theoretic significance that on a logarithmic size-scale, we’re close to the middle of the known physical universe? Regardless of the answer to this question or whether there even is an answer, you’re in for a treat if you haven’t seen such a “power of ten” video in the past.

Two ID books were selected among Christianity Today’s 2005 Book Awards: in the category of Apologetics/Evangelism, Lee Strobel’s The Case for a Creator; in the category Christianity & Culture, my book The Design Revolution (another of my books Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology received that same award in 2000). Awards like this are no doubt gratifying to the books’ authors. But more important from my vantage is that ID books being given these awards indicates that our message is getting out. For the complete list of CT 2005 Book Awards, go here.

Denis Alexander is a molecular biologist with very solid credentials who is based at Cambridge University. He is also a theistic evolutionist who has written several books on the relation between science and Christian faith. His most recent is Rebuilding the Matrix (with Zondervan). Even though he is a critic of ID, he helped one of my ID colleagues who got shafted by another Cambridge lab. I therefore feel a sense of gratitude to him. Read More ›

Looking for 10 Fine Journalists
Setting Up the Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science and Religion
By Julia Vitullo-Martin

“It’s a pleasure to meet a man who’s got an asteroid named after him,” said Cathy Lynn Grossman, the religion correspondent for USA Today, extending her hand to Owen Gingerich, research professor of astronomy at Harvard and a member of our advisory committee. We were interviewing semi-finalists for the Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in New York. “Oh, that’s nothing,” replied Gingerich. “I have dozens of friends who have asteroids named after them. Mine is small, just about the size of Manhattan. But it has a mind of its own and follows an eccentric orbit, of which I’m very proud.” With that rather wonderful summary of one scientist’s outlook on asteroids and life, the fellowship interviews proceeded. Read More ›

Check out the following stories at MSNBC and World Magazine: go here and here respectively.

Here’s an interesting piece in Nature about the possibility that anthropomorphism might still have some place in the natural sciences. Given the reductionism of the present age, such a move is both radical and atavistic, hearkening back the old notions of scala natura and humans as microcosms reflecting in miniature the truth of the macrocosm. Read More ›

Four Opinions on the Hearing in the Sunday KC Star
Posted on Sun, May. 08, 2005

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Jed Macosko and I for the last two years have been working on a Festschrift volume for Phillip Johnson (he is 65 this June). The volume, titled A Man for This Season, is now in production with InterVarsity and should be published early 2006. For the introductory material to this volume, including our preface and Sen. Rick Santorum’s foreword, go here. For initial critical response, go here.