Science and Culture Today | Page 1386 | Discovering Design in Nature

The upcoming Darwin vs. Design conference at Southern Methodist University (SMU) has triggered controversy because some Darwinists are intolerant of discussion of ID taking place too close to their campus offices. When the DvD conference was held in Knoxville recently, the Knoxville News reported that an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, Michael Gilchrist, was so concerned that he “petitioned Oak Ridge National Laboratory to remove Darwin vs. Design from its technical calendar.” Gilchrist was quoted saying that “It is fine for people to think of these things, but it’s a problem when they present it as science.” It seems that for Gilchrist, he’s OK with any view about ID being promoted as long Read More ›

William Dembski reports that Ken Miller responded to the BBC Documentary and my recent claim that he misrepresented Dembski’s work. In short, Miller now claims he wasn’t talking about Dembski and passes the blame on to the BBC for misleading editing and blames “Discovery Institute” for believing what the documentary plainly said. Most of Miller’s response blames the BBC documentary’s editors for making it appear as if he were talking about Dembski by sandwiching Miller’s comments between narrator’s comments stating Miller is rebutting Dembski, and interspersing Miller’s comments with numerous shots of Dembski. Directly after Miller’s comments, the narrator said, “For Miller, Dembski’s math did not add up.” But does Miller’s explanation of the situation now “add up”? Readers can Read More ›

Is Darwinism indispensable to modern medicine? As I noted in an earlier posts here and here, Darwinists usually use three arguments to assert that Darwin’s theory of random variation and natural selection is indispensable to medicine. They claim that Darwinism is necessary for comparative medicine, or that it is necessary for molecular genetics, or that it is necessary for understanding bacterial resistance to antibiotics. All three fields of medicine are obviously important, but Darwinism, understood as the theory that all biological structure arose by random variation and natural selection, is not necessary to understand any of them. In this post, I’ll deal with the first question: is Darwinism essential for an understanding of comparative medicine and comparative biology? No, it’s not.

It’s been amusing–and revealing–to observe the recent debates between many in the Darwinist internet community and a professor of neurosurgery, Michael Egnor. A few simple questions have incurred a deluge of ad hominem attacks upon Egnor, mocking his name by calling him an “Egnoramus” who writes “EgnorRants” and using post titles like, “Egnorance: The Egotistical Combination of Ignorance and Arrogance.” In fact, Darwinist attacks upon Egnor are nothing new. Last summer a Darwinist wrote that “Michael Egnor is a Crappy Neurosurgeon Who Will Cut out Your Brain and Eat It,” and compared Egnor’s arguments to taking “a big ol’ steaming s*** on a piece of paper and want[ing] that taught as science.” More recently, Egnor pointed out the viciousness of Read More ›

Today, ENV contributor Dr. Michael Egnor will be on Janet Parshall’s America to discuss the recent Newsweek article The Evolution Revolution. Dr. Egnor will be on for the second half of the first hour of the three hour program, which is carried nationwide. You can find a local station here. Members can stream the program directly from Parshall’s website.

Science Daily reports:

Researchers from the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) today announced the publication of several studies from the Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition (GOS) in PLoS Biology detailing the discovery of millions of new genes, thousands of new protein families and specifically the characterization of thousands of new protein kinases from ocean microbes using whole environment shotgun sequencing and new computational tools.

This is extraordinary and exciting research, but what does any of this have to do with evolution news?

For as long as Darwinian biologist and Brown University professor Kenneth R. Miller has attacked intelligent design (ID), design proponents have refuted him. While there are occasions where Miller has wisely dropped his refuted objections, more often he will keep trotting out the same stale arguments. His tendency to hold onto his misconceptions means design theorists have to continually point out how he misrepresents their arguments. Several of these responses to Miller are worth revisiting, and because we’ve recently had some new rebuttals to Miller, we’ve now put together a list of links to some of the best:

The issue of academic freedom when it comes to intelligent design just won’t seem to go away. Darwinists are completely unable to tolerate any views of science that don’t completely align with their own. This past week saw the science departments at Southern Methodist University throw a tantrum because we rented an auditorium on their campus and plan to have pro-intelligent design speakers present their case for ID (see Darwin vs. Design conferences). You’d think we were sacrificing puppies with chainsaws, given the way they reacted.

The Dallas Morning News is reporting the current view of academic freedom amongst scientists protesting the conference:

While some who are leading the protest acknowledge the need for free speech and academic freedom, they say this event doesn’t qualify.

Some speech should be freer than other speech, apparently. The DMN also reports that “[o]ther biologists compared the conference to a presentation by Holocaust deniers.” Well, that settles it then, as we’ve quickly arrived at that productive point in the debate where one side accuses the other of being Nazis. So much for civil discourse on intellectual issues.

DALLAS–Darwinists at Southern Methodist University issued a demand this week that the university withdraw permission for a scientific conference about intelligent design to be held on campus.

Discovery Institute and the SMU Christian Legal Society obtained permission to rent McFarlin Auditorium for a two-day conference on “Darwin vs. Design,” featuring presentations by the nation’s leading intelligent design scientists. The Departments of Anthropology, Biological Sciences, and Geological Sciences reacted with a letter objecting to the university’s agreement to host the conference. The Institute described the letter as an effort to censor scientists and stifle debate.

On Friday, March 23, 2007, the Royal Statistical Society, the British Society for the History of Mathematics, and the British Society for the History of Science will sponsor the Karl Pearson Sesquicentenary Conference to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of the founders of mathematical statistics.

The papers to be presented are a cornucopia of praise. The abstracts describe Pearson as a “Renaissance man” who created “the modern world view.” Yet several of Pearson’s most important contributions to the modern world view get no notice at the conference.