__k-review

The Waco Tribune Herald today published an op-ed, keeping the spotlight on Baylor University’s crusade to stifle research questioning Darwinism or supporting intelligent design.
Aside from the fact that they got both the author and the professor’s name wrong (Mark Ramsey is the author, Robert Marks is the professor), the op-ed continues to showcase the censorship used by the Baylor administration to suppress intelligent design.

What a difference a month, and a couple likely internal memos, can make. Last month I discussed the fact that newly reported Homo erectus fossils predated fossils of “Homo” habilis, meaning that habilis could not possibly have been an evolutionary link between the Australopithecine apes and our genus Homo. When the press covered that story, Harvard biological anthropologist Daniel Lieberman was quoted in the New York Times stating that those fossils “show ‘just how interesting and complex the human genus was and how poorly we understand the transition from being something much more apelike to something more humanlike.’” It’s a fascinating admission, and I wrote at the time, “Daniel Lieberma[n] apparently did not get the memo about refraining from making Read More ›

The Baylor student newspaper continues to report on the story of the shut down of distinguished professor Robert Marks’ evolutionary informatics website due to aonymous complaints that it was pro-intelligent design. Baylor president John Lilley refused to speak with Expelled filmmakers about the suppression of intelligent design scientists and scholars. Filmmakers had to settle speaking to a public relations reprsentative and the Dean of Marks’ school. “With both of them it was really limited because they have a certain line they are holding, which the issues are all about procedures and not about the content,” Mathis said, “and all the information we have seen says that that’s not true.”Mathis said the main indication to him about the issue being about Read More ›

Earlier this summer, Mike Gene posted on Telic Thoughts a YouTube video where a contestant on a French version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” was asked a question where he had to decide whether it was the Sun, or the Moon that revolved around the Earth. The contestant (see below) wasn’t sure, so he polled the audience for the right answer. After the poll, 56% of the French audience thought the Geocentric model of the Solar System was correct, i.e. they thought the sun revolved around the earth, rather than visa versa. After much deliberation, this French contestant went with the majority vote and decided that the Sun revolves around the earth. What does this say about scientific Read More ›

According to the Baylor student newspaper:

Troubled by the Baylor administration’s removal of an intelligent design Web site from a Baylor server, a producer from the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is planning a Thursday trip to campus in hopes of meeting with President John Lilley.

Distinguished professor Dr. Robert Marks’ personal research Web site on evolutionary informatics was taken down from a Baylor server last month, and producers of Expelled want to speak to Lilley about it.

“We are disturbed with what happened with Dr. Marks,” executive producer Walt Ruloff said. “He was working on some really vital research.”

I just found out about a debate tomorrow that will be of interest to any of you in the Penn State area. Dr. Michael Shermer and Dr. Paul NelsonEvolution vs. Intelligent Design – A DebateThursday, September 20, 20077:30 p.m. – Wolf Kuhn Theatre – Misciagna Family Center for Performing ArtsClick here for more details.

In July, I noted that Francisco Ayala wrote an article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describing evolution as “randomness and determinism interlocked in a natural process” where “is no entity or person who is selecting adaptive combinations.” Clearly, some theists might find that such descriptions of evolution contravene their religious beliefs. Indeed, there are a number of recent examples of scientific papers promoting evolution alongside anti-religious sentiments: It seems that none of these scientists got Eugenie Scott’s memo to not promote evolution alongside materialistic philosophy. While I may not agree with what these Darwinists assert, and personally hope that more scientists would take Eugenie Scott’s advice to leave out materialistic philosophy when promoting evolution, it seems that Read More ›

On a very important question that goes to the heart of the debate about Darwinism and intelligent design, Dr. Jeffrey Shallit is exercising his right to remain silent. Dr. Shallit had recently used the example of S.E.T.I. research on a blog post in which he ridiculed author and editor Tom Bethell for defending intelligent design. Mr. Bethell pointed out that it’s perfectly appropriate for scientists use the inference to design under certain circumstances, and he believes that biology is one of them. Dr.Shallit ridiculed him, calling him a “blathering buffoon”, a ‘liar’, ‘gullible’, ‘dishonest’, and ”simply stupid’ and categorizing his views as “Idiocy”. I was taken back by Dr. Shallit’s incivility and lack of professionalism- he’s a professor responsible for teaching students appropriate standards of discourse, for goodness sake- and I responded to his post.

I replied that the analogy between the inference to design in S.E.T.I. research and the inference to design in biology was to some extent valid, and asked Dr. Shallit a question:

If the scientific discovery of a ‘blueprint’ [in a signal from space] would justify the design inference, then why is it unreasonable to infer that the genetic code was designed?

It’s a simple enough question, and it gets to the heart of the debate over intelligent design. If the receipt of a coded signal from space – for example a blueprint to build a complex device- would be immediately recognized as designed, why do Darwinists insist that the inference to design in biology isn’t at least a reasonable inference, open to the same kind of scientific investigation to which we would subject a coded ‘blueprint’ signal picked up by a radio telescope?

I have twice asked Dr. Shallit, a leading professor of computer science who studies and teaches information theory, to answer this simple question, which after all, hinges on information theory. These are Dr. Shallit’s replies:

[Editor’s note: This was the preface of a three-part series responding to Dr. Dawkins. The full article responding to Dr. Dawkins, A Response to Dr. Dawkins’ “The Information Challenge”, can be read here.] Want to learn about how Darwinian evolution generates new information? This video clip, which includes the raw footage of the original question, shows how Richard Dawkins responded, in context, when the question was directly posed to him during an interview. Phillip Johnson described this interview as follows: “In response to the question, Dawkins hesitated for at least eleven seconds, an agonizingly long time in the context of a video interview, before he finally gave a completely irrelevant reply about the transition between fish and amphibians. The creationists Read More ›

Darwinist Dr. Jeffery Shallit posted an odd response to my comments on his ridicule of Tom Bethell. Mr. Bethell had reiterated the differences between intelligent design and creationism, and he pointed out that the inference to design was valid for some kinds of scientific research. Dr. Shallit, in his post entitled “Bethell the Baffoon”, offered little meaningful refutation of Mr. Bethell’s observations. Instead, Dr. Shallit called Mr. Bethell, explicitly or by clear implication, a “blathering buffoon”, a ‘liar’, ‘gullible’, ‘dishonest’, and ”simply stupid”. He categorized Mr. Bethell’s views as “Idiocy”.

Keep in mind that Dr. Shallit is a full professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, editor in chief of Journal of Integer Sequences, author of scores of research papers, several textbooks and fifteen book reviews. He graduated cum laude from Princeton. He is professionally, though not rhetorically, distinguished.

Dr. Shallit takes issue with my observation that he called Mr. Bethell a liar: