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“The fact is materialism is stalled. It neither has any useful hypotheses for the human mind or spiritual experiences nor comes close to developing any. Just beyond lies a great realm that cannot even be entered via materialism, let alone explored.” (xiv)

Canadian neuroscientist Mario Beauregard notes at the beginning of his book The Spiritual Brain, co-authored with journalist Denyse O’Leary, that he belongs to a small minority of nonmaterialist neuroscientists. He is upfront about the fact that he “went into neuroscience in part because [he] knew experientially that such things [religious, spiritual, and mystical experiences (RSME)] can indeed happen.” Driven by his curiosity about what is happening to the brain during RSME, Beauregard and his colleague studied the spiritual experiences of Carmelite nuns, coming to the conclusion that it is more likely that these mystics are directly experiencing a reality outside of themselves.

MSNBC loves to promote the view that humans evolved from anthropoid ancestors (see here or here for a couple examples). Now MSNBC has created an online exhibit (and accompanying article) entitled “Before and After Humans” that not only promotes standard views of humans evolution, but also supports transhumanism: the view that humans will evolve into a new, higher species. MSNBC’s “possible futur[e]” for the human species goes something like this: Within one million years, global gene mixing eliminates the races and the “Unihumans” develop a global “monoculture.” That sounds reasonable enough. Next some global catastrophe kills off large portions of humanity, and the “Survivalistians” must adapt to extreme conditions, evolving “night-vision” and “radiation-shielding skin.” If that sounds a little weird, Read More ›

“Baylor University has proven yet again that academic freedom has been thrown off campus and academic persecution is now the norm,” said Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin in reaction to Baylor University’s deletion of a professor’s research website, which focused on evolutionary systems and informatics. “It is simply unconscionable that a major university would so trample a scientist’s right to freedom of scientific inquiry,”

Baylor University has taken offline the Evolutionary Informatics Laboratory website that had been administered by Robert Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor, because the administration claimed there were anonymous complaints linking the lab to intelligent design.

As I’ve noted before, it is often only after Darwinists report a new fossil discovery that they retroactively admit how little they previously knew about a given evolutionary transition. This happened again recently as a team of paleoanthropologists reported finding 6-7 million year-old fossil gorilla teeth that Nature News claimed “helps to fill in a huge gap in the fossil record.” Accompanying this find, however, was a striking admission of ignorance regarding the evolution of humans: “The human fossil record goes back 6 to 7 million years, but we know nothing about how the human line actually emerged from apes,” the researchers said in a statement on Wednesday that accompanied publication of their study in the journal Nature. “Chororapithecus gives Read More ›

Regular visitors to ENV know well the recent trials and tribulations of astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, who was denied tenure in spite of his stellar credentials. Now it seems the rest of the world will learn about Gonzalez’ persecution for being a proponent of intelligent design. Expelled, the forthcoming film that explores the academic persecution of pro-ID scientists, apparently will be featuring some of Gonzalez’s story. After his tenure was denied earlier this year, a faculty member at ISU on the tenure committee admitted he voted against Gonzalez because of his support for, and research into, intelligent design theory. While he didn’t teach about ID in his classes at Iowa State University, Gonzalez did co-author an important ID book, The Privileged Read More ›

Newsweek has a Global Literacy Quiz testing general knowledge, based, of course, on their reporting. The questions under the Science heading are bold, ranging from the age of the universe to stem cell research to Darwinian evolution:

The Seattle Weekly is one of those free newsprint advertisers that you find in bins on street corners in most major U. S. cities. Their editorial boards usually consist of people too far to the left even for the establishment media, and as sources of news they’re probably about as reliable as Minju Choson, the official organ of the Democratic People’s Republic of [North] Korea. But homeless people make good use of them.

The August 29, 2007 issue of The Seattle Weekly features an article quoting Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE). Despite its name, the NCSE is not about teaching science but indoctrinating students at public expense in Darwinism, the creation myth of modern secularism. Whenever critics of Darwinism raise their heads, the NCSE rushes in to bop ’em, kind of like a carnival game. Except that when the NCSE bops someone on the head it usually means the end of that person’s career in science teaching.

The peppered myth died several years ago when scientists discovered that photos of peppered moths on tree trunks – used in most biology textbooks to convince students of Darwinian evolution – had been staged. Now, in a lecture in Sweden on August 23, 2007, Cambridge University biologist Michael Majerus has disinterred the corpse. He announced that by looking out his window at moths in the back yard he had found new evidence that peppered moths are “proof of Darwinian evolution,” that humans invented God, and that there will be “no second coming; no helping hand from on high.” No, this was not on “The Simpsons.” This really happened. To read more about how someone could think that moths in his Read More ›

CSC Senior Fellow David Berlinski talks about the evolution of cows from whales. This short clip is just a sample of a much longer interview available from Access Research Network.