Nicholas Dames asks “Why bother?” (N+1, April 13, 2001) with the humanities these days, offering, Last February, a professor of biology and Harvard PhD named Amy Bishop, having recently been denied tenure by the University of Alabama in Hunstville, released the contents of a nine-millimeter pistol on her colleagues during a departmental faculty meeting. She killed the department’s chair and two others. Three more were wounded. Startling as the homicides were, and though they ratcheted up the common, unglamorous tensions of the tenure process to something fit for a media spectacle, they were hard to read as an allegory for the Problems of Higher Education. Unless, that is, you were unfortunate enough to peruse the reader comments on the New York Read More ›

According to a study just published in Nature, “Complex life left the oceans earlier than thought” and “The eukaryotes spent more time evolving on land” (Jennifer Welsh, MSNBC, 4/13/2011): These freshwater eukaryotes probably came from their oceanic brethren, but the fossil record for these microorganisms is so spotty, it’s hard to tell, Strother told LiveScience. Strother’s team is continuing to sort through samples of microfossils for more examples of the types of complex life that lived at this time.[ … ] They also likely had sex — reproduced by mixing their genomes together, which most eukaryotes do — and many might have created their own energy from the sun. “In some cases they are going to be displacing things that Read More ›

In “Did deadly formaldehyde give life to Earth?”, Clara Moskowitz tells us, “Scientists test the theory in their lab, and say the answer is most likely ‘yes’” (MSNBC4/4/2011): “We may owe our existence on this planet to interstellar formaldehyde,” said researcher George Cody of the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., in a statement. “And what’s ironic about it is that formaldehyde is poisonous to life on Earth.” Cody and his collaborators, Conel Alexander and Larry Nittler of Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, studied carbon-containing meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites for clues about where their organic compounds originated.[ … ] Since this chemical reaction could have occurred naturally, based on what scientists know of the early Read More ›

In “First Comprehensive Gene Map of the Human Brain: More Than 90 Percent Similarity Among Humans” (ScienceDaily, Apr. 13, 2011), we learn: In developing the Allen Human Brain Atlas, the Allen Institute has now thoroughly characterized and mapped the biochemistry of two normal adult human brains, providing opportunities for scientists to study the brain with new detail and accuracy. The data reveal a striking 94 percent similarity between human brains, establishing strong patterns as a critical foundation for translational and clinical research. In addition, data analysis from the two human brains indicate that at least 82 percent of all human genes are expressed in the brain, highlighting its tremendous complexity while also providing an essential genetic blueprint to understand brain Read More ›

At Religion Dispatches, Laurie “Devil in Dover” Lebo reports, “Anti-Science Bill Passes Tennessee House”: The bill, which has yet to pass the Senate, would require teachers to be helped “to find effective ways to present the science curriculum as it addresses scientific controversies.” It also says that teachers may not be prohibited from “helping students understand, analyze, critique and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught.”Those “controversial” theories would include, “Biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” Sources say that many educrats prefer that none of these topics, nor any others that they may from time to time propose, be treated Read More ›

Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, 2 Volume Set

Bernard Wood (Editor)
ISBN: 978-1-4051-5510-6
Hardcover
1264 pages
June 2011, Wiley-Blackwell

Price: US$ 560.00

This comprehensive A to Z encyclopedia provides extensive coverage of important scientific terms related to improving our understanding of how we evolved. Specifically, the 5,000 entries cover evidence and methods used to investigate the relationships among the living great apes, evidence about what makes the behavior of modern humans distinctive, and evidence about the evolutionary history of that distinctiveness, as well as information about modern methods used to trace the recent evolutionary history of modern human populations. This text provides a resource for everyone studying the emergence of Homo sapiens.

The Foreword by Francisco J. Ayala introduces this: Read More ›

Richard Weikart’s essay, “A History of the Impact of Darwinism on Bioethics”* appears in 150 Years of Evolution: Darwin’s Impact of Contemporary Thought and Culture, showing the way that Darwinism has impacted discourse on eugenics, infanticide, euthanasia, etc.: In November 2009, scholars representing academic disciplines from across the globe gathered at San Diego State University to celebrate Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday and the sesquicentennial anniversary of the publication of his On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Out of this event now comes 150 Years of Evolution: Darwin’s Impact on Contemporary Thought and Culture. Edited by Mark Richard Wheeler with the assistance of William A. Nericcio, this compelling, interdisciplinary anthology features studies of interest to diehard Darwin Read More ›

Who said that? Phillip Johnson? Mike Behe? Nope. Materialist atheists Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, in What Darwin Got Wrong (London: Profile Books, 2010), p. xxii: … we’ve been told by more than one of our colleagues that, even if Darwin was substantially wrong to claim that natural selection is the mechanism of evolution, nonetheless we shouldn’t say so. Not, anyhow, in public. To do that is, however inadvertently, to align oneself with the Forces of Darkness, whose goal it is to bring Science into disrepute. Well, we don’t agree. We think the way to discomfort the Forces of Darkness is to follow the arguments wherever they may lead, spreading such light as one can in the course of doing Read More ›

Historically, not a rare event. Here Rabbi Moshe Averick does an interview with host Ken R. Unger,a “true Renaissance Man”, who notes Atheists sound real smart until they come up against someone who knows science better than they do. Today’s guest, Rabbi Moshe Averick, is just that kinda guy. His book Nonsense a High Order: The Confused and Illusory world of the Atheist takes on top atheists and he usually comes out on top. Learn why he believes Intelligent Design is more scientific than the outdated pseudo science of Evolutionary Theory. Broadcast starts here.

In my last post I demonstrated that Leslie Orgel coined the phrase “specified complexity.” Then I demonstrated that William Dembski uses the phrase in an identical sense. This placed Mathgrrl on the horns of a dilemma. She can stick with her assertion that the concept of “specified complexity” is meaningless, but if she does that she has to admit that materialist hero Orgel was employing a meaningless concept. Or she can admit that Orgel’s concept of “specified complexity” is meaningful, but if she does that she has to admit that ID proponent Dembski’s use of the concept is legitimate. What is a good materialist to do? Dance, evade and obfuscate of course! Now Mathgrrl writes: “I have said nothing about Read More ›

In the face of charges from a frantic Darwinist, Paul Nelson points out that he is not “quote mining” when he quotes Lewis “Six Impossible Things” Wolpert making the same argument as himself: Read More ›

Bradley Monton, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, offers: So does intelligent design count as science? I maintain that it is a mistake to put too much weight on that question. Larry Laudan got the answer right: If we would stand up and be counted on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like “pseudo-science” and “unscientific” from our vocabulary; they are just hollow phrases which do only emotive work for us. If our goal is to believe truth and avoid falsehood, and if we are rational people who take into account evidence in deciding what to believe, then we need to focus on the question of what evidence there is for and against Read More ›

[If so, give your UD news staff a chance to duck before you tell their wives … Like, we just report, okay … ] Apparently worried by a recent trend toward critical thinking, the evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Covalence has republished a 2002 article by Christian Darwin stalwart George Murphy on what’s wrong with the idea that there might be evidence for design in nature; Just as the Son of God limited himself by taking human form and dying on a cross, God limits divine action in the world to be in accord with rational laws which God has chosen. This enables us to understand the world on its own terms, but it also means that natural processes hide Read More ›

Here, Barry Arrington notes that MatthGrrl seems to think that specified complexity is a meaningful term if Leslie Orgel uses it to mean A, but not if Bill Dembski uses it to mean A.

This reminded me of something, couldn’t think what it was for a while, then remembered…

For a while, one heard the claim that ID advocates invented the Marx-Freud-Darwin triad of materialist influences evident in your Sunday Fishwrap.

That was an unlikely scenario in my experience because, in order to communicate with a broad audience from a minority position (which they apparently do if you believe the frantic screeds of the Darwin lobby), they must riff off an accepted cultural link.

Well, they did. Here it is, in a textbook written a person who, to the best of my knowledge was a thoroughgoing Darwin advocate at the time, Read More ›

Paul Nelson has fun at Evolution News and Views with diagrams and “ontogenetic depth”: Understanding Ontogenetic Depth, Part I: Naming Versus MeasuringI was supposed to do this a year ago — well, long before that, too — but a glacier passed me on the interstate, and then I ran out of gas, got so depressed that I threw my notes into a box, and…oh, never mind. Let’s get started. After the second entry in this series (part II), we’ll open up the comments section for your responses. 1. Introduction: Why A Biological Distance That’s Currently Impossible to Measure, Ontogenetic Depth, Nevertheless Really Matters to Evolutionary Theory Then he has fun with the latest download of P. Z. Myers: I have to Read More ›