Here’s a report on the recent Prague ID conference by someone on the ground from our side — quite a different perspective from the AP report that appeared in the NYTimes and elsewhere.

On Saturday, October 22, 2005, almost 700 people from 18 nations gathered in Prague (Czech Republic) for a conference on “Darwin and Design”:

http://www.darwinanddesign.org

The conference was organized by Charles Thaxton, co-author of the now classic *The Mystery of Life’s Origin* (1984), and his wife, Carole. (The Thaxtons had originally planned to hold the conference several years ago, but their plan was put on hold when Charles lost his leg to cancer.) Read More ›

Provine Talks on Intelligent Design Debate
Defends theory of evolution
October 26, 2005
by Brian Kaviar
Sun Staff Writer

From http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/10/26/435f266296320

William Provine, the C.A. Alexander Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, gave a lecture entitled “Evolution and Intelligent Design” at Alpha Delta Phi fraternity last night. The lecture came on the heels of Interim President Hunter R. Rawlings III’s condemnation of the push to teach intelligent design in public schools during the his State of the University Address. Read More ›

Denyse O’Leary on her blog is arguing that Stephen Jay Gould would never have signed on with the National Center for Science Education’s Selling Evolution’s Project Steve, whose signatories agree that “there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence” (go here for the NCSE’s announcement of Project Steve, and go here for O’Leary’s blog entry disputing that Stephen Jay would ever have signed on to this project). Read More ›

October 24, 2005 ‘Intelligent Design’ Supporters Gather By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 4:23 p.m. ET PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) — Hundreds of supporters of ”intelligent design” theory gathered in Prague in the first such conference in eastern Europe, but Czech scholars boycotted the event insisting it had no scientific credence. About 700 scientists from Africa, Europe and the United States attended Saturday’s ”Darwin and Design” conference to press their contention that evolution cannot fully explain the origins of life or the emergence of highly complex species. MORE

[Note: Even though I own the domain name overwhelmingevidence.com, I cannot take credit for these songs — I wish I could, but I can’t.]

OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE
(to the tune of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”) Read More ›

The single most important factor in determining future population is the total fertility rate (TFR). The TFR is defined as the average number of babies born to women during their reproductive years. A TFR of 2.1 is considered the replacement rate; once a TFR of a population reaches 2.1 the population will remain stable assuming no immigration or emigration takes place. When the TFR is greater than 2.1 a population will increase and when it is less than 2.1 a population will eventually decrease, although due to the age structure of a population it will take years before a low TFR is translated into lower population. [For the TFRs of all countries, click here and scroll down for the relevant Read More ›

Here’s a fun piece about monkeys typing Shakespeare. It’s been out for a decade but it’s worth worth looking at in case you haven’t seen it (and worth taking a second look at even if you have): http://www.nutters.org/docs/monkeys.

Go here: http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/intelligentdesigncase/dovertrialtranscripts.htm.

Here’s a note from a colleague in the biological sciences: I’ve been following this issue off and on for about 20 years, but I haven’t been in the thick of it like you. Has it ever been this hot in the scientific community or the public at large? I get the sense we have entered into a completely new realm, one from which there will be no return. It seems the activation energy for a generation-long, painful, Kuhnian shift has been ignited. I don’t know, but I can’t see this going back to the same old status again. When university presidents have to make long-winded appeals for faculty to bring everyone back into line. When dismissal and denigration are seemingly Read More ›

On October 21, President Hunter R. Rawlings III of Cornell University issued a “State of the University Address” that was devoted entirely to, as he perceives it, the threat of ID (go here for his address). Cornell’s IDEA Club has now officially replied (go here).

In 2002, Samuel Chen, then a high school sophomore in Pennyslvania, invited Michael Behe to speak at his high school (the event is described here under the title “Darwin’s Dictatorship”). Chen has since graduated and is now a college student at Baylor. Here are his thoughts about the ongoing ID trial Kitzmiller v. Dover — it’s the vitality of younger scholars like him that is going in the end to win the day for ID:

Intelligent Design, Education, and Liberty: What is Going on in Dover?

Dear Friends,

As many of you are now aware, the issue of intelligent design and evolution has continued to escalate in various settings across the United States of America. State legislators have proposed bills and heard testimonies while school districts and state school boards have changed science standards. The debate is currently being spotlighted in Dover Area School District in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Read More ›

Design theorists who are religious believers are often charged with duplicity for not explicitly identifying the intelligence that they claim is responsible for certain forms of biological complexity with the God of their religious faith. But this charge is itself ill-intentioned. As far as the science of ID goes, there is no way to get from the data of nature to the God of, say, Christianity (or any other deity for that matter). Moreover, there is no reason to think that even if the God of Christianity (or of any other religious faith) is the source of creativity behind the world, that such a God acted immediately without the aid of intermediate teleological organizing principles (i.e., through secondary causes that Read More ›

Okay, it’s finally becoming clear why all the backlash against ID. No, it’s not that ID is raising the wrong questions. No, it’s not that ID has been shown to be false (certainly Kirschner & Gerhart haven’t shown that). It’s that IDs proponents are, in the words of Marc Kirschner, “ill-intentioned.” Ah, yes, the old “argument from wickedness,” a favorite tool of scientific refutation.

Missing links
Proponents of Intelligent Design have exploited a vexing question at the heart of Darwin’s theory. Now, say two leading biologists, scientists can – and must – answer back.
By Peter Dizikes | October 23, 2005 Read More ›

[From a colleague:] Marc W. Kirschner and John C. Gerharrt are important players in the evo-devo movement. They have a new popular book that is just out titled The Plausibility of Life (Yale, 2005). It summarizes a good deal of work in their earlier textbook and several important articles. In the new book, the authors go much further here in admitting that life and evolution are indeed implausible on the standard neo-Darwinian interpretation. They call their own position “facilitated [meaning non-random] phenotypic variation” (as opposed to facilitated genetic [neo-Lamarckian] variation, which they deny). They hem and haw to a certain extent, and try to soften the blow to their neo-Darwinist colleagues, but in many places they say that non-random, functionally Read More ›

[From a colleague in Germany:] Recently your name in connetion with ID did appear in several (liberal) newspapers here in Germany, mostly of course accompanied by unqualified critic. You surely experience this yourself often enough in the US, lately I saw e.g. a scientist and ID-opponent on the O’Reily Show (Fox News) directly attacking ID and you. O’Reily tried to defend a bit, but he is no scientist. . . . As a representative of our German Anti-ID-Artciles, I have attached one from the “Süddeusche Zeitung” from July 12th 2005 [for the article, go here]. We see this whole movement as a stirring up of the (atheistic) science community also here in Germany. I would no go so far to Read More ›