Science and Culture Today | Page 1316 | Discovering Design in Nature

There is an interesting new education project under construction at Binghamton University. According to The New York Times:

Yet a few scholars of thick dermis and pep-rally vigor believe that the cultural chasm can be bridged and the sciences and the humanities united into a powerful new discipline that would apply the strengths of both mindsets, the quantitative and qualitative, to a wide array of problems.

Now, we’re all for combining the sciences with the humanities. Clearly we should be developing well-rounded students. But what I fear is

Update: Download the US District Court ruling here. The Wall Street Journal Law Blog has more on the story. According to the Associated Press: Yoko Ono has lost her Manhattan legal battle to block the use of John Lennon’s song “Imagine” in a film challenging the theory of evolution. EMI still has a state level suit in New York against Premise Media for the inclusion of Imagine in Expelled, and no word yet when that might be resolved one way or the other. Premise now looks north with plans to launch Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed nationwide in Canada later this month. [Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at Read More ›

Expose hypocrisy. Nearly every argument that Barbara Forrest makes in the evolution debate, when applied fairly, can be turned against her. Keep this point in mind if you ever have to debate Dr. Forrest, because in my experience, this rule holds true under nearly all circumstances. I’ll give three examples from her recent talking points against academic freedom in Louisiana: Of course Barbara Forrest is entitled to track the every move of ID proponents if that is how she wishes to devote her time and her career. But she shouldn’t project her own behavior onto ID proponents, because, well, we don’t really care about tracking the “every move” of Darwinists. Rather, we devote ourselves to more important activities, such as Read More ›

In the debate between dualists and materialists over the relationship between the mind and the brain, materialists often invoke neuroscience to buttress their assertion that the brain causes the mind entirely, without need for an immaterial mind or soul. Indeed neuroscience has demonstrated many examples of correlation between physical brain processes and mind states. Do examples of correlation between brain states and mind states genuinely provide evidence for the materialist claim that mind states are merely brain states?

The wild claims of neuroscientists, such as the astonishing claim by atheist Yale neurologist Steven Novella that “the materialist hypothesis– that the brain causes consciousness — has made a number of predictions, and every single prediction has been validated,” suggest that some materialists, such as Dr. Novella, don’t even understand the core issues in the mind-brain debate.

David Chalmers, a leading philosopher of the mind and a particularly lucid thinker on the matter of consciousness, published a paper in the Journal of Consciousness Studies in 1995 entitled “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness.” The seminal paper has given rise to much debate, and I believe that Chalmers clarifies the important issues in the mind-brain debate in a very important way.

Don’t read into this post too much, but take it as a series of curious observations. We’re often told that Darwinism is like a scientific magic bullet that can solve anything. Darwinists love to quote Theodosius Dobzhansky saying, “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” We’re also told that intelligent design threatens to destroy science. Nonetheless, I can’t help but notice that when engineers design technology to be sold to the public, they prefer to tell them about processes of intelligent design over unguided selection and random mutation. As a silly anecdote, I recently came across this Hyandai car advertisement, stating: “the i30 name has been chosen to reflect the car’s European styling and its all-round Read More ›

The Associated Press has an article on Louisiana’s Academic Freedom bill which quotes a Darwinist professor at Louisiana State University asserting that “biological evolution really is not scientifically controversial.” The article did observe that biologist Caroline Crocker testified in favor of the bill, but left out the fact that multiple other scientists (including professional biologists) also testified that there are scientific problems with evolution. As I recount here, three professional biologists and one chemist, all with Ph.D.’s, testified about scientific problems with Darwinian evolution before Louisiana’s House Education Committee on Wednesday. But the Associated Press chose not to report that fact, instead deciding to serve as a checkpoint to prevent its readers from learning about scientists who doubt Darwin.

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] In Part 1 I explained how Alan Boyle and Sean B. Carroll unashamedly agree that scientists should keep “quiet” about their support intelligent design (ID). In this final response, I will discuss how the scientific evidence cited by Boyle does little to demonstrate the power of the neo-Darwinian mechanism. In Alan Boyle’s attack upon Expelled, he uses biologist Sean B. Carroll as his big gun scientist to attack intelligent design, touting Carroll’s book Making of the Fittest. In that book, Carroll argues that “[t]he argument for design by some external intelligence is eviscerated.” Last year I wrote a response to Read More ›

[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org] We’ve known for a long time that MSNBC’s “Cosmic Log” writer Alan Boyle doesn’t like intelligent design, and in his coverage of Expelled, Boyle is no exception to the “checkpoint” pattern described earlier here on ENV. This time, he’s got scientists from the academy “checkpoint” to back him up. Thus, he feels confident to attack Expelled as, “creepy … campaign ad, aimed at swiftboating science.” Enter Sean B. Carroll, a prominent biologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Boyle’s big gun who also happens to dislike intelligent design. Boyle quotes Carroll in a one-two punch that essentially states that scientists who Read More ›

A new six part series of interviews has popped up on Youtube featuring attorney Ed Sisson. Sisson you may remember was a key player in the Kansas state board of education’s hearings on science standards in 2005. He also happens to have been Dr. Caroline Crocker’s pro-bono attorney when she was ousted from George Mason University for teaching some of the scientific evidence that challenges Darwinian evolution. So, he knows a bit about academic freedom and free open scientific inquiry. The main thrust in this interview is Sisson’s contention that Darwinian evolution should be open to scrutiny, both in the classroom and the courtroom.Sisson wrote to tell us about the video: “Although I gave the talk two years ago, it Read More ›

Download this response as a PDF Opponents of academic freedom in Louisiana have been putting out a smokescreen of misinformation in their effort to kill legislation to protect the rights of Louisiana’s science teachers. Rather than discuss the real issues at stake, they are trying to get their way through misrepresentations, scare tactics, and the demonization of those who support honest discussion of scientific controversies. Their misinformation campaign shouldn’t be allowed to obscure key facts: 1. Louisiana’s academic freedom legislation is not about “creationism.” It’s about protecting the rights of teachers to teach good science. Many teachers remain confused and fearful about what information they can legally teach regarding controversial scientific topics such as evolution. By enacting a limited right Read More ›