In his review of ID biochemist Mike Behe’s Edge of Evolution, which caused many to wonder whether he had actually read the book he was reviewing, Richard Dawkins indulged in a long and seemingly irrelevant riff on dog breeding. He hoped to convince his readers that complex and fantastical intracellular machines come about by chance (and mind comes from mud) on account of the vast variety that humans can produce by selective breeding of dogs.

Correspondents have pointed out that Dawkins is counting on his readers’ ignorance of a fundamental fact about dog breeding- that is depends on existing traits and does not introduce new ones. One writes, for example, Read More ›

Kudos to Anthony Sacramone over at First Things for his hilarious (and insightful) take on the latest self help super-bestseller.  See here.  http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=833  Excerpt:  “After all, who wants to believe that they’re at the whim of chance, accident, or worse—a sovereign God? The idea of being either lost in a Darwinian universe or limited by environment, genetics, and luck is much too disheartening. And the prospect of being in the hands of an unsafe Creator, who sends rain on the just and the unjust alike, is absolutely infantilizing.”

My last post included a reference to one of several carnivorous plants whose traps appear to be irreducibly complex. One reader commented that it seems that Michael Behe’s mousetrap actually exists in Nature, and wondered why Behe didn’t mention this example in Darwin’s Black Box. Another reader explained that Behe is a microbiologist, not a botanist. However, these spectacular examples of irreducible complexity have not gone completely unnoticed by botanists; see the very interesting section entitled “The origin of carnivorous plants” (pp 5-6) in the Nature Encyclopedia of Life Sciences article here .

When Botnik approached me about whether it would be all right to post his parody of what President John Lilley of Baylor might be thinking in trying to justify his expulsion of Prof. Robert Marks’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab from Baylor, I thought it mirrored what motivates many academics in wanting to stamp out ID. Besides, it seemed to me so over-the-top that I didn’t think the parody would be lost on anyone. And UD has had its humorous side (witness Galapagos Finch). Clearly, readers of UD fell for it, but so did many people on the other side, judging by all the many emails they sent President Lilley to confirm whether Botnik’s parody actually represented Lilley’s words. In retrospect, it’s Read More ›

As some of you know…
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IDers like to portray evolution as being built entirely on an edifice of darwinian natural selection. This caricature of evolutionary biology is not too surprising. Most molecular, cell and developmental biologists subscribe to the same creed, as do many popular science writers. However, it has long been known that purely selective arguments are inadequate to explain many aspects of biological diversity.

Michael Lynch, May 2005

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Yesterday, the Baylor University administration shut down Prof. Robert Marks’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab because the lab’s research was perceived as linked to intelligent design (ID).

Robert J. Marks II, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor, had hoped that a late-August compromise would save his lab, but the University withdrew from the previous offer yesterday morning. While President Lilley was not at the meeting, an insider senses his hand in the affair, noting that Lilley was the only person with the authority to overturn what the Provost, who was at the meeting, agreed to.

Here is the sequence of events to date: Read More ›

Just this morning I was reflecting on the curious case of Misshelver, whose response to Mike Behe’s Edge of Evolution was to misshelve it in the bookstore. She is, of course, the popular culture version of the academics who need to get rid of gifted astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez – not because he is incompetent, but quite the opposite. He makes a good case for the unusually favourable position of Earth. Now apparently, a number of angry people have also written to the Philadephia Inquirer, rattled that the paper published a positive review of Edge that actually describes its argument, unlike some prominent reviews. If I had no other reason for thinking that Darwinism is losing the intellectual battle, the sheer Read More ›

A recent survey of climate change articles in science journals finds fewer than half of the authors endorse anthropogenic global warming theories. The so-called consensus has now collapsed to a minority position. I love being right. Linked by The Drudge Report:

Breaking: Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory

DAILYTECH

SURVEY: LESS THAN HALF OF ALL PUBLISHED SCIENTISTS ENDORSE GLOBAL WARMING THEORY; COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY OF PUBLISHED CLIMATE RESEARCH REVEALS CHANGING VIEWPOINTS

Michael Asher
August 29, 2007 11:07 AM

In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the “consensus view,” defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes’ work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.

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In any debate on Intelligent Design, there is a question I have long wished to see posed to ID opponents: “If we DID discover some biological feature that was irreducibly complex, to your satisfication and to the satisfaction of all reasonable observers, would that justify the design inference?” (Of course, I believe we have found thousands of such features, but never mind that.) If the answer is yes, we just haven’t found any such thing yet, then all the constantly-repeated philosophical arguments that “ID is not science” immediately fall. If the answer is no, then at least the lay observer will be able to understand what is going on here, that Darwinism is not grounded on empirical evidence but a Read More ›

Paul Nelson highlighted new developments in the Peppered Myth story here. Now Jonathan Wells, a scientist at the Discovery Institute, offers a more detailed analysis in Exhuming the Peppered Mummy. Enjoy!!! A friend of mine tells me that the only things he remembers about evolution from his high school biology course are photos of black and white peppered moths resting on light and dark tree trunks. They were presented as THE classic case of Darwinian evolution in action, explaining how a trait that enhances survival could be acquired through an unguided material process. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, most biology textbooks featured photos of peppered moths (scientific name: Biston betularia) on tree trunks.1 Canadian textbook-writer Bob Ritter Read More ›

Rationalwiki is an online encyclopedia struggling to be born. Judging from the copy I saw August 29, 2007 (which will probably change), it appears to be written by a group of people who see themselves as the guardians of reason, progress, and enlightenment, against “the anti-science movement” and “crank ideas”. Nowadays, theirs is a pretty crowded field, in which hordes of half-educated and indifferently talented placeholders aim their resentment at anyone capable of questioning materialist dogmas. Read more here (but NOT if you are drinking milk, okay?)

Early this year I described how Richard Dawkins interviewed Alister McGrath for the BBC production THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL and then decided to leave him on the cutting room floor (go here). That interview is available at Google Video here. In watching it, ask yourself if it would have made for a less biased program if Dawkins had dropped Ted Haggard and substituted Alister McGrath.

I just heard from a source I think reliable that Stuart Pivar has dropped his lawsuit against PZ Myers. ‘Bout time, too. I stand by my comment of earlier today: Incidentally, I do not expect PZ to lose his pajamas to the Pivar writ. Defamation suits generally require a demonstration of harm. PZ verbally assaults people more or less on a daily basis, and who can really claim to have been harmed thereby other than himself? Had he thought of choosing his targets more carefully and aiming more accurately, he might run risks that are not foreseen in the present case. Let the Internet police itself.

Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama , was chosen the spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan Buddhists as a small child in 1940. (He was believed to be the reincarnation of the Thirteenth Lama.) After a failed 1959 revolt against the 1949 Chinese takeover of Tibet, his government has been exiled at Dharamsala, India, along with tens of thousands of Tibetans. The Lama would be a theocrat if he were not in exile. However, he is not at all most people’s idea of a theocrat. He is an intensely curious man who has made friends with great philosophers of science and scientists, such as Karl Popper, Carl von Weizsäcker, and David Bohm. He also championed interreligious understanding, all the Read More ›