Logan Paul Gage

If you have not seen it already, you will enjoy playing with this random mutation generator. You will see how wonderful the Darwinian process is at taking your text and moving on to ever-greater levels of complexity.

Recently Francis Collins, the renowned scientist and harmonizer of Darwin and faith, lectured before a packed auditorium at George Mason University in Virginia. One attendee and avid ENV reader, unimpressed with the harmonization, sent me this report:

TIME magazine this week has an interesting discussion between Richard Dawkins, author most recently of The God Delusion, and Francis Collins, author of The Language of God. It is worth reading. Two observations:

I find myself in yet another odd alliance. I guess NRO‘s John Derbyshire would side with me over Leon Kass (whom, once again, I greatly respect for the solid anti-reductionist arguments he has made). Scientific observation can and should affect one’s view of what it is to be human. (Derbyshire and I simply disagree about the strength of Darwinian claims.) He lists “Biology” as one of the major things shaping his view of “the human condition.” He writes:

This past Thursday, October 26, Dr. Leon Kass, learned intellectual and former Chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, presented a paper before an excellent group of intellectuals at the American Enterprise Institute (Stephen Barr, Eric Cohen, Joseph Bottum, Charles Murray, and Marcello Pera, among others). Dr. Kass had many good things to say about the false nature of scientific reductionism and how it goes against everything we know about reality from everyday life. He also denied that random mutations and natural selection were the whole story to life’s evolution. That said, I took umbrage with one major point Kass made.

From blogger Amy Welborn:

Your readers may be interested in the following… David Quinn, a well known Catholic commentator and journalist here in Ireland debated Richard Dawkins on Irish radio last week on the reasonableness of religious belief. Dawkins is a formidable debater, but David Quinn absolutely embarrassed him — he had Dawkins on the ropes from the outset. It is a rare moment when Dawkins is left speechless and is well worth listening to.

The debate can be downloaded by going here…. The debate starts at 7min 57 seconds into the programme and lasts for about 18 minutes.

The CATO Institute event with Michael Shermer and our own Senior Fellow, Jonathan Wells, is now available online. Here are a few notes.

Friday’s Opinion Journal from the Wall Street Journal had a great piece: “Under the Microscope: When science and politics become worlds in collision.” Among other things, this piece noted that “This was a banner week for American science.”

Scientific American is carrying a new piece by Michael Shermer on “Why Christians and conservatives should accept evolution.” Shermer is a libertarian, agnostic Darwinist, so it is curious that he would make this argument. It reminds one of Eugenie Scott‘s lectures in churches. (Recall that they are both original signatories of Humanist Manifesto III.) But perhaps this is all the more reason to hear Shermer’s argument. After all, if ID advocates and their detractors merely speak to their natural constituencies, this controversy-that-does-not-exist will go nowhere. Shermer makes six quick arguments.