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In a sparkling, concise and controversial new biography of the co-discoverer of evolutionary theory, historian Michael A. Flannery tells a largely unknown story that has been embarrassing Darwinians in the know for almost a century and a half.
Read More ›The most recent issue of Synthese contains a variety of condescending articles against intelligent design (ID). But a few articles do attempt to make actual critiques of ID. The problem is that they don’t accurately represent the actual arguments of ID proponents. Can’t these top-rate philosophers rebut ID without misrepresenting the arguments? The article by Niall Shanks and Keith Green repeatedly misrepresent intelligent design as appealing to “divine agency.” It’s all based on a commonly used misquote of Bill Dembski’s that many ID critics, especially Barbara Forrest, love to use. Speaking of Barbara Forrest, she has a condescendingly titled paper in the issue called, “The non-epistemology of intelligent design: its implications for public policy.” From the very first sentence, her Read More ›
As I wrote about recently, in mid-2010 the philosophy journal Synthese published an excellent critique of neo-Darwinian evolution and self-organization by Richard Johns. Johns’ article did not argue for intelligent design (ID), but it was critical of the sacred cow of biology. It seems that somebody may have asked the Synthese to offer penance that sin: The latest issue of Synthese is devoted to covering intelligent design, but they strangely they published not a single article by a proponent of intelligent design. Instead they published an issue where many (though not all) of the articles are full of demeaning and condescending sneers against ID, as well as many outright misrepresentations of ID. It feels like it was scripted by the Read More ›
According to news articles, the University of Kentucky (UK) has settled the discrimination lawsuit filed against it by Martin Gaskell, an astronomer who was denied a job due to his perceived doubts about neo-Darwinian evolution. The case was scheduled to go to trial on February 8th, but today counsel for both sides filed a joint motion to dismiss the case pursuant to the settlement. According to the Associated Press: The university has agreed to pay $125,000 to Martin Gaskell in exchange for Gaskell dropping a federal religious discrimination suit. Gaskell claimed he was passed over to be director of UK’s MacAdam Student Observatory in 2007 because of his religion and statements that were perceived to be critical of evolution. Court Read More ›
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Last year I wrote about how convergent genetic evolution is highly unlikely under neo-Darwinism, but makes perfect sense if you allow common design. An article in ScienceDaily titled “In Bats and Whales, Convergence in Echolocation Ability Runs Deep,” points to evidence that, in my opinion, might be best explained by common design. According to the standard mammalian phylogeny, the common ancestor of bats and whales was not capable of echolocation. Thus, the ability to echolocate must have evolved independently, and bat and whale echolocation is often cited by evolutionists as a textbook example of convergent evolution. However, the ScienceDaily article reports that these similarities are not just phenotypic but extend down into the level of the gene sequences: two new Read More ›
A recent article in The Scientist titled “The Devolution of Evolution” states: Nearly 40 years ago Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote: “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” How is it, then, that so few newly minted PhDs in the biological sciences have taken any formal graduate school courses in evolution or biodiversity? This fosters a knowledge gap that can become difficult to fill by “osmosis” later in a scientific career. Consider the two to five years of intense postdoctoral work, followed by the even more challenging process of earning tenure. Success requires complete dedication to a specialized field of knowledge for professors who then act as advisors for the next generation of scientists, judge hundreds of submitted Read More ›
Tantalus Prime and I have been discussing abortion. Tantalus takes exception to my observation that human life begins at conception. He believes that the humanity of a human zygote/embryo/fetus isn’t a scientific fact, but merely a matter of linguistics:
The exact moment at which a fertilizing egg becomes human… is a horrible scientific question! Is asking the exact size beyond which a stream becomes a river a good scientific question? Of course not, because this is not an empirical problem but one of definition. Define the term human however you want, but don’t pretend it is an empirical question to be solved. Scientists can’t even agree on what constitutes a living organism, so what makes you think pinpointing the demarcation between human being and not human being is easily solved in a testable and falsifiable manner….
Tantalus doesn’t like to mix definitions with his science. Especially definitions that aren’t congenial to his ideology.
Yet a human embryo is surely something. But I’m not going to ask Tantalus that nasty beginning of life question. I’ll ask Tantalus a different question, hopefully one that he finds less irritating:
What is a human embryo?
There would seem to be 5 different things that a human embryo in the womb could be:
Let’s explore Tantalus’ dilemma:
Read More ›