Over at ARN, David Tyler has a blog post entitled We must “understand that there is no serious scientific challenge to evolution.” It references an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The article was authored by Eugenie Scott and Nicholas Matzke of the National Center for Science Education, an organization whose sole purpose appears to be the promotion of Darwinian orthodoxy in publicly funded education, and the suppression of any and all scientific dissent from any aspect of the “theory,” by any means available.

David Tyler:

Eugenie Scott and Nicholas Matzke, from the National Center for Science Education, offer their analysis of how ID is making “a serious challenge not in the world of science, but in the world of public educational policy.” It is a paper that reworks the NCSE position without contributing any new ideas to the debate.

These authors reveal an unqualified confidence that evolutionary theory has the answers. It is “replete with explanations for complex biological structures.” It “continues to make progress in explaining such fascinating structures”. They assert that there is “no serious scientific challenge to evolution.” Underpinning theory are “fertile and unifying evolutionary principles.”

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Here, for example, from Science Question of the Week from the Goddard Space Flight Center, on the position of the North Star, ever the friend of mariners:

Polaris or the North Star is nearly directly above the North Pole (it’s actually about 1 degree away from the celestial pole). You might think that with all of the stars in the sky, it shouldn’t be that unusual for a given star to rest above the pole, but really, it’s an extremely unlikely occurrence. It’s even more unlikely that our pole star would be relatively bright – second order magnitude. If you divided the night sky into squares that are one degree latitude by one degree longitude in size, there would be 41,253 square degrees in our night sky. There are approximately 2,000 stars that we can see on the clearest night, and perhaps 6,000 different stars are visible to us throughout the year, but only 50 of these are as bright or brighter than Polaris. The chances of a star like Polaris occupying a place over the pole are about slim indeed – about 1 in 1,000. Nevertheless, Polaris defies the odds and has become our guiding light.

Anybody know the odds on that? Read More ›

What are the issues surrounding the Gonzalez tenure case? Dr. Moore discusses stategies for removing top researchers from research univeristies because they are openly Christian. The key, as Dr. Moore explains, is clever application of policies dealing with diversity, tolerance and academic freedom. Read More.

Wallace Arthur, head of the zoology department at the University of Ireland and evolutionary biology researcher, reviews in Nature (Vol 447|17 May 2007) the book From Embryology to Evo-Devo: A History of Developmental Evolution. There were some breaths of fresh air in the review [my emphasis]: Third, and most important in my view, the origin of novelty is becoming one of the major themes of evo-devo. Attention is shifting from the retention of the old (as in recapitulation) to the creation of the new (be it an eye, a leg, a feather or even a whole body plan). Both the historical and the current importance of novelty emerge repeatedly in the book. How do novelties arise? We can’t yet agree Read More ›

You can’t make this stuff up. Here’s what some Japanese scientists have done with bacteria. I think we’ve officially reached the “information age” of evolutionary biology.

A team of neurobiologists led by Bjorn Brembs of Free University Berlin have found experimental evidence in fruit fly behavior indicating that these much-abused bugs may have an element of free will. A report on the study in LiveScience notes that:

For centuries, the question of whether or not humans possess free will — and thus control their own actions — has been a source of hot debate.
“Free will is essentially an oxymoron — we would not consider it ‘will’ if it were completely random and we would not consider it ‘free’ if it were entirely determined,” Brembs said. In other words, nobody would ascribe responsibility to one’s actions if they were entirely the result of random coincidence. On the other hand, if one’s actions were completely determined by outside factors such that no alternative existed, no one would hold that person responsible for them.

Read More ›

Charles Townes was the co-inventor of the laser and winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in physics. Jason Rennie of the SciPhi Show had an absolutely marvelous interview with Townes recently. This interview had many quotable gems from Townes.

Here is the link:

Charles Townes

Do you have CD player or other optical device which uses a laser? You can credit Townes for that!
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Stephen Webb has an excellent review of David Sloan Wilson’s Evolution for Everyone here.  It opens as follows:  The dirty Darwinian secret is now out of the closet: If evolution is true, then it must be true about everything. Most Darwinians used to be very restrained about the relevance of their theory for cultural and moral issues, for obvious reasons. If evolution is true about everything, then randomness and competition are the foundations for the highest human ideals as well as the lowest organic life forms. Scientists have trouble enough restricting Darwinism to biology. What if that restriction is unscientific? What parents would want their children being taught that Darwinism explains not only speciation but also altruism? Some Darwinians take Read More ›

Refuges for life in a hostile universe
G. Gonzales, D. Brownlee and P.D. Ward
Scientific American, October 2001, p.60-6

Et tu, Brute?

I have posted much more information about the denial of tenure to ID-friendly astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez here. For example, If you are a Christian or theist or anyone who thinks that the universe shows evidence of meaning, purpose, or design, listen carefully to what I am about to tell you: You need to think carefully about wasting time, energy, and money in the Western academic system IF, by chance, whatever you are doing undermines materialism. and Come to think of it, here’s a business op for Gonzalez’s U: Just think what your official astronomers could charge for naming a planet after some airhead! [or blockhead]

The letter here will be sent to the ISU President (in about 10 days), with cc to the Ames Tribune and possibly other media outlets. For further background, see the May 12 story at www.evolutionnews.org and the links from this story. If you are a university engineering or science professor and would like to co-sign the letter, please e-mail me at sewell@math.utep.edu.

Guillermo Gonzalez, Privileged Planet astronomer and longtime target of atheist materialists, has been denied tenure. Fact sheet folllows.

Update:

For some background on the Gonzalez case (I will update more later), visit Bipod at Telic Thoughts:

So let’s get this straight. Hector Avalos, an atheist at Iowa State University, is leading a crusade of Scientific McCarthyism against Guillermo Gonzalez. The stated reason by Avalos: “”We certainly don’t want to give the impression to the public that intelligent design is what we do.” Now Avalos and the other 120 signers of the document will deny that they’re doing anything inappropriate, but let’s be serious. This is Scientific McCarthyism in a cheap tuxedo;-)

“Mr. Avalos said the statement was not intended to silence Mr. Gonzalez, or to get him fired…”

Sure. Then why single him out?

To respectfully protest this decision:

Dr. Gregory L. Geoffroy
President, Iowa State University
1750 Beardshear Hall
Ames, Iowa 50011-2035
(515) 294-2042

president@iastate.edu

It is barely conceivable that the Iowans have shame, even if “evolutionary psychology” has not discovered it yet. Heck, if I were a contributor to their alumni fund, I would be overwhelmed with shame.

Now back to the fact sheet: 

 Here is a fact sheet I have just received:

Biography of Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez

Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Iowa State University (ISU).

Born in Havana, he and his family fled from Cuba to the United States in 1967, where he earned a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Washington in 1993. Author of nearly 70 peer-reviewed scientific papers and co-author of a major college-level astronomy textbook, Dr. Gonzalez’s work led to the discovery of two new planets, and he has had his research featured in Science, Nature, and on the cover of Scientific American. Read More ›

If anyone whose comments have been showing up right away after submission is finding them being delayed or never showing up at all it’s probably because the third party service we use to keep spam (unwanted advertisements) out of the commentary is unpredictably flagging a lot of legitimate comments as spam. If it’s any consolation even authors and editors here (myself included) are getting comments held up for no discernable reason.

Has Charles Darwin got a new bulldog? In an interview with Alison St. John, who is hosting the Tom Fudge talk show on KPBS in San Diego, Randy Olson once again gives his classic spiel touting ‘Flock of Dodos’, which Alison depicts as a “delightful odyssey”, and which Randy heartily agrees. Go here for the interview. In comparing his quest to humorously, but factually chronicling the Intelligent Design vs. Evolution controversy, Randy cites both science and his work as ‘story telling’ (no argument there, with regards Darwinian theory), but inserts the caveat that the works of scientists, “are constrained by this ugly little thing called the truth”. ‘Flock of Dodos’ circumvents this constraint, in my opinion. As he’s done in Read More ›