Here’s what I told a friend who was complaining about how his national media cover the ID controversy.

Media go through at least four stages in getting comfortable with covering any new issue, including ID:

(There are more than four stages, but no national media that I know of are there yet, collectively, with ID.)

1. First, both print and broadcast media gallop in all directions at once to find traditional sources of support for their existing approaches. Prof. Bumph and Dr. Justzo are leading candidates, as is the entire Society for Circular Solidarity AND the Society for Solid Circularity. Whatever huffing, yelping or caterwauling the esteemed above can provide will certainly be reported. If media can drag foolish politicians in, they will jump at the chance. We KNOW how to cover politicians.

That should settle everything, right? Read More ›

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone–two guys who are not exactly known for refraining from pushing buttons–have made an episode of the show which addresses the topic of opposition to evolution in public schools. It airs tomorrow night at 10:00 EST (9:00 PST) on Comedy Central. Go here for a synopsis and a teaser clip.

Mustafa Akyol is some one you should know. Check out his blog, where he describes this latest development in Turkey: http://www.thewhitepath.com/archives/2006/10/turkish_minister_supports_intelligent_design.php.

It’s hard to find a Darwinist more extreme than P. Z. Myers (though they do exist). Darwinian extremists like Myers are the reason these people are so hard to parody (see http://cedros.globat.com/~thebrites.org/index.htm, The Brites, which has temporarily closed its doors). Have a look at Myers’s most recent escapades: http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/MikeSAdams/2006/10/30/philippians_413. I want to encourage discussion not so much of Myers’s escapades as Mike Adams’s handling of a very hostile situation (exacerbated above all by Myers, who then, apparently, wussed out). I especially want to encourage someone to upload the video and provide a link here.

Accepted July 2006

Physics of Life Reviews

[Update: thanks to Todd for a link to the full paper:]

Self-organization vs. self-ordering events in life-origin models

[Update: IDers Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, and R.L. Olsen were cited as well!! They wrote the book in 1984 which is considered the beginning of the modern ID movement. Also, critical remarks were made indirectly of Dawkins.]

Self-organization vs. self-ordering events in life-origin models

by David Abel and Jack Trevors

Self-ordering phenomena should not be confused with self-organization. Self-ordering events occur spontaneously according to natural “law propensities and are purely physicodynamic. Crystallization and the spontaneously forming dissipative structures of Prigogine are examples of self-ordering. Self-ordering phenomena involve no decision nodes, no dynamically-inert configurable switches, no logic gates, no steering toward algorithmic success or “computational halting”.
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Gareth Cook’s article on the new Harvard origin of life project in the Boston Globe, reads like a press release (except for the very end where he actually quotes Michael Behe). Bill  blogged on it, wondering how seriously they would take any evidence of intelligent design.

Starting with $1 million a year, we are told, Harvard will

bring together scientists from fields as disparate as astronomy and biology, to understand how life emerged from the chemical soup of early Earth, and how this might have happened on distant planets.

On the whole, this “Origins of Life in the Universe Initiative” is good news for the ID guys, first because the Harvard project seems to acknowledge what everyone who looks into the question soon finds out – that origin of life studies have been at an impasse for decades. Read More ›

How much play do you think ID is going to get in Harvard’s new origin of life initiative: President Bush recently said intelligent design should be discussed in schools, along with evolution. Like intelligent design, the Harvard project begins with awe at the nature of life, and with an admission that, almost 150 years after Charles Darwin outlined his theory of evolution in the Origin of Species, scientists cannot explain how the process began. Now, encouraged by a confluence of scientific advances — such as the discovery of water on Mars and an increased understanding of the chemistry of early Earth — the Harvard scientists hope to help change that. ”We start with a mutual acknowledgment of the profound complexity Read More ›

Bench science, like book editing, is independent of content under normal circumstances.

But as Thomas Kuhn points out in Structure of Scientific Revolutions, paradigms determine what counts as evidence.

Mark what follows:

If materialism is assumed to be true and Darwinism is the creation story of materialism, then Darwinism is the best available explanation for the history of life.

So Darwinism is treated as true.

I am NOT saying that that follows logically.

Materialism could be true but its orthodox creation story could be untrue at the same time. Some other materialist story could better account for the evidence, for example. Read More ›

I seem to recall that Stephen Jay Gould, when pressed about his views on evolution before his death, remarked that he was a “Darwinian” or “Darwinist.” Can someone provide me with the exact quote as well as with the exact reference? (The context: I’m writing about punctuated equilibrium being at best a slight variant of Darwinism and that even Gould realized this.) Thanks. –Bill Dembski

Earlier a link to the mp3 audio file of the Quinn v. Dawkins radio debate was posted on this blog. The following link has the transcript. Quinn provides an object lesson in how to take apart village atheists. http://catholiceducation.org/articles/science/sc0086.htm

The Dawkins rampage against religion raises the question why religion in the first place? On strict evolutionary grounds, isn’t religion an adaptation that offers humans survival and reproductive advantages? It’s is not at all clear that atheism offers similar benefits (how many Dawkins-style village atheists were there among our hunter-gatherer ancestors?). Consider, for instance, the following piece by Chuck Colson on the negative sloping demographic trends in Russia. Or does Dawkins also want to target not just religious believers but overpopulation? Perhaps he should make common cause with Eric Pianka, whose fondest dream for the human race is that 90 percent be wiped out by Ebola virus (see here). A Sterile Worldview Vanishing Russia By Chuck Colson Wednesday, October 25, Read More ›

I am Richard Dawkins’ worst nightmare — a former militant atheist and Darwinist, who finally realized that everything he believed about everything that mattered was wrong. My conversion came from many sources, too numerous to outline in a brief post, but one of them was reason and examination of the evidence. Since my conversion I have come to know many wonderful people whose lives have been transformed for good in truly miraculous ways through their religious faith. One of them is the pastor of our church, Gary Kusunoki, who is a true saint in the traditional sense of that word. Gary founded Safe Harbor, an international relief organization. He has repeatedly risked his life to help “the least, the last, Read More ›

At Vere loqui, Martin Cothran notes that Richard Dawkins’The God Delusion, provides ammunition to ID advocates.

ID theorists are familiar with the accusation that ID is both unfalsifiable and anyway, already falsified. (The fact that the two claims can be maintained comfortably at once illustrates the extent to which materialism and Darwinism function as ideologies. In general, all arguments in support of an ideology, even contradictory ones, feel good to the ideologue. He attacks others for not supporting his view even when his view is literally incomprehensible.)

Dawkins will have none of that, however. He wants to be consistent. He accuses the National Center for Science Education of being the “Neville Chamberlain school of evolutionists,” because it misguidedly appeases religious people by insisting that ID is not science (and therefore the religious people should ignore ID in favor of Darwinism). Dawkins would prefer that NCSE attack the religious people’s beliefs. Read More ›

Interesting article in WIRED on the unholy trinity Dawkins-Dennett-Harris. Their atheist extremism may be selling books but is it winning converts? . . . The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it’s evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there’s no excuse for shirking. Three writers have sounded this call to arms. They are Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. A few months ago, I set out to talk with them. I wanted to find out what it would mean to enlist in the war against faith. . . MORE: Read More ›

In preparing a letter to the editor of UVa magazine, I was researching the case of 1996 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Richard Smalley. I was astonished to discover that he delivered an anti-Darwinian speech during a graduation ceremony and apparently received a standing ovation. I also thought it an appropriate time to remember this extraordinary scientist.

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