Science

Last month, I blogged about a pre-med student who recently took the MCAT and found emotionally-charged pro-evolution-biased language on reading comprehension questions. As he concluded, the MCAT exam is “just supposed to be a way to evaluate how you process information, and they don’t want to influence your reasoning by making you answer emotionally charged questions. This passage was distracting while I was taking the test. It was distracting because it’s about an emotionally controversial topic, and I don’t agree with everything they said. This crosses the line.” Following that post, another pre-med student (who is about to matriculate into medical school) contacted me and had this to say about the distracting pro-evolution bias on the MCAT: I sat for Read More ›

Note: This is one of a series of posts excerpted from my book, Billions of Missing Links: A Rational Look at the Mysteries Evolution Can’t Explain. When it comes to citing examples of purposeful design, nearly every author likes to point out the hen’s egg. It’s really quite remarkable. Despite having a shell that is a mere 0.35 mm think, they don’t break when a parent sits on them. According to Dr. Knut Schmidt-Nielsen, A bird egg is a mechanical structure strong enough to hold a chick securely during development, yet weak enough to break out of. The shell must let oxygen in and carbon dioxide out, yet be sufficiently impermeable to water to keep the contents from drying out. Read More ›

Naturalism: A Critical Analysis
Edited by William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland
With contributions by William Lane Craig, William Dembski, Stewart Goetz, John E. Hare, Robert C. Koons, J. P. Moreland, Paul K. Moser, Michael Rea, Charles Taliferro, Dallas Willard, David Yandell
Routledge, 2000, 286 pages
ISBN: 0-415-23524-3

This impressive volume contains critical essays on naturalism from the perspectives of theology, ethics, cosmology, ontology, and epistemology. Various Discovery Fellows make contributions including Robert C. Koons, J.P. Moreland, William Lane Craig, and William Dembski.

Koons begins by noting that there is a simple correlation between existence and the requirement of some non-natural first cause. He observes an irony that science thinks it requires naturalism, when our very ability to practice science, due to the orderly, reliable, and predictable behavior of the universe implies a non-natural intelligent cause. Scientific dependence upon naturalism is self-refuting.

Does the biology textbook Explore Evolution manufacture false controversies about evolution, while ignoring real ones?

That’s what biologist and science writer John Timmer claimed in a post earlier this week at Ars Technica. Timmer attended a two-day symposium on evolution at Rockefeller University and noted the many debates brewing there. “Evolution clearly has no shortage of controversies,” he concluded . But those real controversies have “no overlap,” he claimed, with the “ostensible” (i.e., fake) controversies supposedly “manufactured” by Explore Evolution. Bottom line for Timmer: while students may, or may not, need to learn about controversies in evolution — he leans strongly towards “not” — Explore Evolution is misleading at best, and the academic freedom bills being introduced around the country aren’t needed.

Darwinists have long made an argument from ignorance, where our lack of present knowledge of the function for a given biological structure is taken as evidence that there is no function and the structure is merely a vestige of evolutionary history.  Darwinists have commonly made this mistake with many types of “junk” DNA, now known to have function.  In contrast, intelligent agents design objects for a purpose, and therefore intelligent design predicts that biological structures will have function. Here’s where it gets interesting: Functionless structures may have been originally designed but were later rendered functionless by natural processes. For example, if you leave a laptop computer on the top of a mountain for 1000 years where it is exposed to Read More ›

“Denialist” has become the slur du-jour of materialists. Dr. Stephen Novella, ardent acceptist, takes me to task for denying the truth of his personal materialist ideology of mind-brain causation. He believes that the brain causes the mind entirely, without remainder. I believe that the brain causes the mind partly, with remainder. He’s a materialist, I’m a dualist. That makes Dr. Novella angry:

Dr. Egnor must be tired of always being wrong – or at least he would be if he had the insight and intellectual honesty to see how persistently wrong he is. Alas, so far he has not demonstrated such insight. I have been engaged in an ongoing blog debate with Dr. Michael Egnor, who writes for the propaganda blog…Egnor has mangled most of his arguments, has misrepresented my opinions, has cruelly assaulted logic (as you can see he has a proper home at the Discovery Institute) – but now he demonstrates that he is incapable of reading a simple sentence and comprehending its meaning…His arguments are persistently wrong. He has not acknowledged his prior egregious errors – which is evidence for lack of insight and/or intellectual dishonesty. He completely misrepresented what I wrote -so either he did not understand it, or didn’t care. Egnor has mangled his arguments and abused logic. These are NOT personal attacks – these are legitimate criticisms of his behavior.

My “cruel assault on logic” and “incapability of reading a simple sentence” have seduced me into very bad behavior…denialism:

The mainstream media’s “framing” of the evolution-debate would have us believe that Darwin-skeptics are the ones who make religious arguments and try to push religion into the science classroom. But the evidence shows that the Darwinists are often the ones who push religion — and in an unashamed manner, at that. A recent UC Irvine news article reports on a lecture given by leading evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala where he suggested that religion should be discussed in science classes. Ayala said, “the fact that science is compatible with religion is an important thing to state in science classes.” He continued making religious arguments for evolution, contending, “The theory of evolution is better for religion than intelligent design.” But the most Read More ›

According to today’s ScienceDaily, “New Evidence Suggests a Symbiogenetic Origin for the Centrosome.”

But the evidence suggests no such thing. Instead, it points to the willingness of evolutionary biologists to believe just-so stories, and to the ideological corruption of the National Institutes of Health and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

Biologic Institute director Douglas Axe has an intriguing and worthwhile essay posted online, “Leaping into Trouble,” where he points out that: Darwinists have always recognized the existence of an intuitive barrier that prevents many of us from joining them. Human understanding of complex things is strongly shaped by our experiences with human technology. You don’t have to be an engineer to appreciate in some way the extraordinary difficulty of getting physical systems to perform extraordinary tasks. Technology doesn’t just happen. It only comes with sizable investments of genius and diligence, along with more than a little patience. Read more here.

Note: This is the first of a series of posts excerpted from my book, Billions of Missing Links: A Rational Look at the Mysteries Evolution Can’t Explain. Velvet worms are thought to be descended of insects, but the evidence for this is scanty; they look a lot like worms, and they have remained unchanged for millions of years. They live along fallen leaves in tropical forests and have two nozzles, one on each side of their head, which can fire off a very quickly drying glue at their prey. These two sprays crisscross back and forth, as if lassoing the victim. Once the victim is securely ensnared, the worm bites a hole in its body, injects digestive juices, and then Read More ›