Barry poses the debate topic: A soldier amuses himself by ripping a baby from his mother’s arms and tossing it in the air and catching it on a bayonet. Resolved, it is self-evident that the soldier’s action is wrong in all places and at all times. However, Barry restricts the range of answers by not allowing anyone to assert whether it would be right or wrong if God commanded the killing. As many of us know, God, according to the Old Testament, did indeed command the killing of babies. My position is that in the ordering of baby killing God was wrong and therefore cannot be a trusted source of moral absolutes. If the Old Testament is a true accounting Read More ›

At the Beyond Expelled worldview conference, Nancy Pearcey explored the impact of evolution vs ID. She describes skeptic Michael Shermer’s conversion to evolution & Scarlett Johansson’s acting on belief in evolution.
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The intelligent design of life

Nancy Pearcey tells crowd that Darwinism has evolved into more than just a theory (with VIDEO)
Rachel Kyler, Thursday May 8th, 2008

NICEVILLE — Not religion pitted against science, but philosophy against philosophy.

In a truly liberal education system, that’s how academic Nancy Pearcey says educators would approach intelligent design and the theory of evolution.

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Tim Woods of the Waco Herald Tribune dropped another bombshell when he revealed yesterday,

Baylor University’s faculty senate Tuesday passed a “failure of shared governance” resolution sharply critical of the administrative style of President John Lilley.

The action came during a meeting lasting three hours and 45 minutes, after which senate chairman Matt Cordon said faculty morale has been low for months. The senate voted 29-0 in favor of the resolution, with two members abstaining. (May 7, 2008)

Denial of tenure to profs supported by their departments was a top grievance:

This spring, 12 of 30 professors eligible for tenure were denied by Lilley and Provost Randall O’Brien. The pair cited as a reason substandard research when viewed “through the lens of (Baylor) 2012,” O’Brien has said.

Baylor faculty claim tenure guidelines were changed after their tenure notebooks were filed.

The vote was 29-0, with two abstentions. So not one of the 31 senate members supports the administration.

One way of looking at it: The worst Lilley can do is convert two abstentions to nays. Can’t get worse.

Uncommon Descent was actually nicer to Lilley Read More ›

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) has a new set of entries as a result of Ben Stein’s EXPELLED. And then there are some, like Richard Dawkins, who have a long history in the IMDb:

ID is merely a politically motivated agenda that is meant to further the cause of the far right Republicans.

One common objection against ID is that it is merely a tool of the scary Right Wing political party. As the theory goes, the Religious Right is attempting to get ID snuck into classrooms in order to subvert science, progression, women’s rights, alternative religions to Christianity, secularism, and even wants to attack your grandparents (just like robots).

The only problem(s) with this theory? There are those of us who believe in ID who aren’t Christian, religious, or even Republican.

Now, for myself, I am a very religious Christian…but I’m not a Republican. I consider myself to be independent and even side with the Democrats quite a bit. I believe Global Warming exists and has been heavily influenced by human activity. I believe we need to do what we can – within ethical and practical limits – to help improve the environment. I think the government needs to watch out economically for those who can’t watch out for themselves. I even toy with the idea that state’s have the right to allow civil unions (and everyone now gasps). I don’t want prayer in public school as I think everyone has a right to his or her own religious beliefs. I think we should leave Iraq. Yet, I support ID.

I can think, off hand, of many ID proponents that are Jewish, Muslim, agnostic, or simply refuse to hold to any ideology.

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Over at Panda’s Thumb, they are taking issue with the values for selection probabilities of neutral and advantageous mutations that Sal has taken from Kimura and Ohta’s “Theoretical Aspects of Population Genetics”. Since there was a link that provided a ‘look-see’ inside the book, I did so. Well, what I found was very fascinating.

Kimura and Ohta give a very brief overview of the entire field of population genetics up to the time of their writing (1971), distinctly admiring the pioneering work of R.A. Fisher, but not following it because it uses a more sohpisticated “branching process”, and because his model assumes an “infinite” population size. So they write the following:
“. . . [Haldane’s] results allow us to make statements as ‘it takes about 1,000 generations until the gene frequency changes from 0.7% to 99.3% with selective advantage s= 0.01’. . . .

“More than 30 years after publication of Haldane’s paper (1927b), we have finally begun to understand more about the fate of individual mutant genes in terms of the powerful diffusion methiods based on the Kolmogorov forward and backward equation (cf. Kimura 1964). In particular, the average number of generations until extinction, and also the time until fixation of an individiual muatant gen in a finite population have been workd out (Kimura and Ohta 1969a,b).” Read More ›

Many scholars believe Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is the greatest novel ever written.  I don’t know if that is true.  I am not qualified to judge, but I do know the novel moved me as no other ever has.  So I was intrigued when SteveB referred to a passage from the novel in a comment to my earlier post.  In this passage Ivan is exploring man’s capacity for cruelty, and he says to his brother Alyosha (warning, not for the faint of heart):

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This is cross posted from my own site, The Christian Watershed. To read the rest, please follow the link at the bottom.  Let me preface this by saying that even though I show how Christianity fits the criteria for warrant, I believe any theistic belief can fit this criteria. In other words, Christianity does not have an exclusive claim on this theory, but theism does. Furthermore, I am not saying one cannot be a naturalist in epistemology (that is, use evidence or believe in natural causes), but merely that one cannot even begin to acknowledge evidence as a form of truth until one is an external realist (i.e. a Theist in their metaphysic).  One of the biggest accusations levied against Read More ›

As the prior article here talks about some moonbats in the Swiss government have concocted a set of rights for living things that even includes plants’ rights. This appears to be relevant to some other hot-button topics here in recent days. First of all it occurs to me that for the holocaust to happen it was a necessary factor for plants to have their right to life stripped from them. It’s really the first step down a slippery slope that ends with people having the right to life stripped from them. David Berlinski take note. We don’t want to overlook this in the future when we round up the usual suspects for holocaust scapegoating. The second thing that comes to Read More ›

In “The Silent Scream of the Apsparagus,” old-fashioned liberal and publisher Wesley J. Smith charts the course of “rights” to its inevitable conclusion: plant rights, at least in Switzerland:

A few years ago the Swiss added to their national constitution a provision requiring “account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms.” No one knew exactly what it meant, so they asked the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to figure it out. The resulting report, “The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants,” is enough to short circuit the brain.

A “clear majority” of the panel adopted what it called a “biocentric” moral view, meaning that “living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive.” Thus, the panel determined that we cannot claim “absolute ownership” over plants and, moreover, that “individual plants have an inherent worth.” This means that “we may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger, or if our actions do not endanger the species, or if we are not acting arbitrarily.”

The committee offered this illustration: A farmer mows his field (apparently an acceptable action, perhaps because the hay is intended to feed the farmer’s herd–the report doesn’t say). But then, while walking home, he casually “decapitates” some wildflowers with his scythe. The panel decries this act as immoral, though its members can’t agree why. The report states, opaquely:

“At this point it remains unclear whether this action is condemned because it expresses a particular moral stance of the farmer toward other organisms or because something bad is being done to the flowers themselves.”

What is clear, however, is that Switzerland’s enshrining of “plant dignity” is a symptom of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization, causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns.

Friends who freak out over how crazy all this is are, I believe, missing the point. It’s not crazy at all if you keep one thing in mind: Someone must be paid full time to enforce the many new rules. Read More ›

Cross posted over at “The Christian Watershed.” A few years ago I was an assistant coach to a high school debate class. One common thing that must be drilled into the heads of high school debaters is to do their best to avoid insulting the other team. I didn’t always follow this advice in high school which led to me making amazing arguments that the other team simply couldn’t refute, but losing the round because the conceited nature of my style. The point being – even if you make good arguments, it doesn’t mean a thing if people can’t see past the insults and arrogance you present.I now turn to the current debate over the movie Expelled. There’s a difference between being ‘quirky’ or ‘witty’ and down right insulting. Unfortunately it seems the critics of Expelled have simply helped to fulfill the accusations the movie makes against Darwinists.

“It’s completely stupid!”

“It’s idiotic!”

“Only someone who is brain damaged could possibly believe this movie!”

These are the accusations I have heard against the movie. None of them make an actual claim against the content of the movie, other than “how dare they compare Darwinism to the Holocaust.”

Read More ›

Robert Meyer provides thought provoking insight into the major issues surrounding Expelled.
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Ben Stein’s Dangerous Idea
Robert Meyer, May 6, 2008, New Media Alliance – Robert E. Meyer

Ben Stein has a dangerous idea. His idea is that professors and teachers who express skepticism about Darwinism are likely to find themselves not granted tenure, castigated and ridiculed, and disqualified from the opportunity to have research papers published.
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Having reviewed the movie myself, it appeared that Stein was trying to make the case for academic freedom, not attempted to convert anyone to a particular ideological position.

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In Bass Ackwards Darwinism (below) my friend DaveScott writes:

 “Good people do good things.  Evil people do evil things.  Knowledge (like Darwinian evolution and the recipe for dynamite) is inanimate and can be employed by good people for good things and evil people for evil things.”

The issue is not whether “good” people do good things.  Of course they do.  That’s why we call them “good.”  The issue is not whether “evil” people do evil things.  Again, of course they do.  That’s why we call them “evil.”  The issue is what do we mean when we say “good” and “evil.”  From the answer to that question everything else about our ethics follows.

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Critics of the ID movement often complain that we’re fabulously well funded by right-wing extremists and in it for our own aggrandizement. Fortunately, money leaves a trail. When one follows it, Darwinists seem to be doing much better financially than ID theorists (perhaps an indication that they are serving Mammon more faithfully). Let’s consider a few better off Darwinists: (1) Saint Charles himself. By present standards, Darwin would probably have been worth about US$20 million. He was a gentleman scholar who lived very comfortably. (2) Francisco Ayala. A recent New York Times article indicated that Ayala and his wife Hana own 6,000 acres of vineyards in California. Even with the real estate market as it is, the Ayalas seem to Read More ›

Another fascinating book I’m finding hard to put down is David Sedley’s masterful treatment of ancient Greek debates about intelligent design, Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity (University of California Press, 2008). What Sedley means by “creationism” is not the Henry Morris / ICR / AIG variety, although philosophically of course there is conceptual overlap. Rather, as he puts it, What I intend by creationism is…the thesis that the world’s structure and contents can be adequately explained only by postulating at least one intelligent designer, a creator god. (p. xvii) The existence of such debates outside the historical sphere of biblical authority, Sedley argues, is of more than passing interest, and provides his main motive for writing the book. His Read More ›