Below is an article by the NPR Omsbudsman Jeff Dvorkin. In it he addresses the challenges NPR faces in covering ID. Is he writing as a reporter or as an advocate for materialism? How well informed is he about ID? Does the Ombudsman needs and Ombudsman?
Consider these quotes: Read More ›
Not much new here except for some observations about my time at Baylor, observations I was finally in a position to share, not being on the Baylor faculty anymore. –WmAD
William Dembski: An Intelligent Voice in the Design Debate
An interview by Glenda Mathes
(appeared in the 28sep05 vol24, no2
issue of Christian Renewal)Dr. William A. Dembski is one of the most articulate and productive proponents of intelligent design theory. With advanced degrees in mathematics, philosophy and theology, Dembski’s intellectual arguments are making inroads within the scientific community while a more general audience finds his writing understandable.
An astute debater and prolific author, Dembski has written, co-authored and edited several books including: The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design, No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence, Intelligent Design: The Bridge between Science and Theology, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities, The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems, Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe, Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing and Signs of Intelligence: Understanding Intelligent Design.
Dr. Dembski is the Carl F. H. Henry Professor of Theology and Science at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, and the executive director of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design.
Christian Renewal recently had the opportunity to interview him via email.
CR: Dr. Dembski, you write in The Design Revolution: “Intelligent design is not creationism and it is not naturalism. Nor is it a compromise or synthesis of these positions. It simply follows the empirical evidence of design wherever it leads. Intelligent design is a third way” (pp. 26-27). Can you briefly explain for Christian Renewal readers how intelligent design differs from creationism and naturalism and what it offers as a “third way”? Read More ›
Let me encourage you to think seriously about supporting this organization: http://www.scimednet.org. Its mission statement is “To challenge the adequacy of scientific materialism as an explanation of reality.”
UI faculty sign on against intelligent design in science
By William Dillon, Staff Writer
11/16/2005http://www.zwire.com/site/tab1.cfm?newsid=15586126&BRD=2700&PAG=461&dept_id=554314&rfi=6
More than 150 faculty members at the University of Iowa have signed a statement denouncing the use of intelligent design in science. Read More ›
Discovery Institute Welcomes Pope’s Embrace of “Intelligent Project”
Seattle – Discovery Institute president Bruce Chapman hailed an impromptu statement Wednesday by Pope Benedict XVI embracing the “intelligent project” that lies behind nature. “Fooled by atheism,†the Pope said, many people today “think, and try to demonstrate, that everything is without direction and order…â€Â
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science
by Tom Bethell
Regnery, 2005
In science, dispassionate, objective inquiry reigns supreme, and researchers
will readily give up their most cherished views if the evidence proves them
wrong — right? Unfortunately, the answer is no. Read More ›
Fred Plans To Devolve — Bacteria More Respectable
by Fred Reedhttp://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=113836
I read with what would be despair if I cared enough that the courts, this time in Pennsylvania, are again getting their knickers in a knot over Evolution. Oh help. There must be another planet somewhere upon which to hide. Read More ›
This academic year may be pivotal for Cornell University (a school at which I spent half a year doing research on probability theory back in 1986) as its president just spent nearly the whole of his State of the University Address speaking about intelligent design: Read More ›
The Wars Over Evolution By Richard C. Lewontin New York Review of Books Volume 52, Number 16 · October 20, 2005 The Evolution-Creation Struggle by Michael Ruse Harvard University Press, 327 pp., $25.95 Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution by Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd University of Chicago Press, 332 pp. $30.00 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18363 “… Maybe God is lurking out there somewhere but He doesn’t leave any residue in our test tube, so we will be tempted to assume He doesn’t exist. This is a philosopher’s worry that does not, as far as I can tell, correspond to the way people really acquire their views of reality. Some may have had mountaintop conversions at some point in Read More ›
Guillermo Gonzalez, ID theorist extraordinaire, spoke last night (9/28) at University of Northern Iowa (UNI). He was invited to speak there by the local chapter of Sigma Xi back in August. When the biology professors there caught wind of it in mid-September, they organized a petition statement very similar to the one organized by Hector Avalos et al. at Gonzalez’s home institution, Iowa State University (reported on this blog earlier — go here). As a result, the local media was extremely interested in his talk. Indeed, it was reported in just about every major Iowa paper. Not surprisingly, the auditorium was packed. When Gonzalez arrived last night, he found that someone had posted outside the auditorium a huge blowup of the petition statement with all its signatures and a signup sheet for people to add their signatures. Read More ›
The Dover Area School District trial about the teaching of ID starts today, and you can expect a lot of press coverage concerning it. Yesterday evening, the BBC interviewed me and Robert Boston of Americans United for Separation the Secularization of Church and State regarding Dover (it was a telephone debate). Boston was following the script of the Secular Coalition for America to a tee: ID is biblical creationism with biblical references omitted (so what do you do with Plato, Aristotle, and Antony Flew?); ID has no presence in the scientific community (so what do you do with the recent peer-reviewed publications?); yeah, but 99.9% of publications reject ID (but just moment ago you said it was 100%); etc. Dealing Read More ›
Historical Development of the Distinction between Bio- and Abiogenesis.
Robert B. Sheldon
NASA/MSFC/NSSTC, 320 Sparkman Dr, Huntsville, AL, USAABSTRACT
Early greek philosophers laid the philosophical foundations of the distinction between bio and abiogenesis, when they debated organic and non-organic explanations for natural phenomena. Read More ›
In The Design Revolution, I characterized theory change as follows: Read More ›
Michael Shermer had an op-ed in the LA Times a week and a half ago. I’m reprinting a fuller version of it here with his permission and including some commentary in italics. Thanks, Michael. Read More ›
THE CASE AGAINST INTELLIGENT DESIGN.
The Faith That Dare Not Speak Its Name
—THE NEW REPUBLIC—
by Jerry Coyne
Post date: 08.11.05
Issue date: 08.22.05
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050822&s=coyne082205