world

Last night, I watched as Mike Behe presented a talk at Glasgow Caledonian University’s Carnegie Lecture Theatre. The lecture was titled, Darwin or Design – What Does the Science Really Say?. The event was organized by the Centre for Intelligent Design UK (event website here).

The lecture theatre was filled almost to capacity (about 500 people). Behe was on form, presenting a powerful cumulative, yet accessible, case for design in biological systems. He presented the bare bones of his two core theses, articulated and defended in Darwin’s Black Box and The Edge of Evolution. Behe talked his audience through some of the criteria which we use — as part of our everyday experience — to come to the conclusion of design, arguing that design is immediately recognisable when one encounters a complex and functionally-specific assemblage of parts. Arguing that the appearance of design is not really in dispute at all, he pointed to Richard Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker, in which Dawkins asserts that biology is the study of complicated things which have the appearance of having been designed for a purpose. If life gives the overpowering appearance of having been designed, argued Behe, then one is rationally justified in adhering to one’s intuitions unless and until a compelling reason is given to suggest that it the appearance of design is only apparent — that is, illusory.

Click here to listen CSC Senior Fellow (and sometime ENV contributor) Mike Behe is set to tour the United Kingdom starting this Saturday, speaking on “Darwin or Design? What does the science really say?” This week-long tour is sponsored by the Centre for Intelligent Design of the UK, and residents of Leamington/Warwick, London, Glasgow, Belfast, Cambridge, and Bournemouth should avail themselves of the chance to catch one of Dr. Behe’s evening lectures there. He will also be the main speaker at a day long conference in Oxford. Online registration is required. Visit http://www.darwinordesign.org.uk to register and for more detailed information.

The UK-based Centre for Intelligent Design has just announced a fall lecture tour featuring Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Michael Behe. The tour will include lectures in Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, and London. Here is the group’s press release about the tour, which will take place in November: Controversial ID Scientist tours UK Professor Michael Behe, a key figure in the Intelligent Design (ID) movement, will challenge his critics in a lecture tour of the UK in November. Prof. Behe is one of an increasing number of scientists who believe that modern biochemical evidence undermines the basis of Darwinian evolution. The author of two ground-breaking books on ID – ‘Darwin’s Black Box‘ (1996) and ‘The Edge of Evolution‘ (2007) – Behe’s theory Read More ›

In the latest ID the Future Podcast, I interview Mario Lopez, founder of the Organización Internacional para el Avance Científico del Diseño Inteligente (OIACDI), a group dedicated to promoting awareness about intelligent design (ID) to the Spanish speaking community. The group’s website, OIACDI.org, contains a variety of online resources in Spanish, including articles, news updates, and an ID FAQ in Spanish. OIACDI also recently published a book, Diseño Inteligente: Hacia Un Nuevo Paradigma Científico, which contains articles by leading ID thinkers like William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, Michael Behe, and Stephen Meyer translated into Spanish. As discussed in the podcast interview with Mr. Lopez, a large part of OIACDI’s goal is to network with Spanish-speaking scientists, assisting them in making contributions Read More ›

Last week Stephen Meyer presented his groundbreaking Signature in the Cell at Mackenzie Presbyterian University in São Paulo, one of Brazil’s oldest and most prestigious colleges, as hundreds of students listened.

The Brazilian press was there, as well, giving intelligent design ample coverage. Unfortunately, instead of reporting intelligent design straight (you know, that radical idea of letting the proponents of an idea tell you what it is they actually support), ISTOÉ Independente is cribbing from the American mainstream media, repeating tropes they’ve read from their counterparts at TIME and Newsweek and inserting their bias into the article, mis-defining ID as “based on the idea that a higher entity would be responsible for the creation of all life forms,” calling Behe’s irreducible complexity a “pseudoscientific concept,” and generally painting the main thrust of ID as a program to get religion into American school (which it most emphatically is not — Discovery’s education policy has always been to teach more about Darwin, not mandating intelligent design).

However, when reporter Hélio Gomes lets his subjects speak for themselves, it’s not a bad at all:

The event held in Sao Paulo in the last days brought to Brazil two of the most well-know ID advocates in the United States. Stephen C. Meyer, Ph. D. in History and Philosophy of Science, is one of the movement founders, and one of its most vocal spokesmen. Author of three books, among which the recent “Signature in the Cell” (Assinatura na Célula, unpublished in Brazil), he affirms that his mission in Brazilian lands was simple: “We came to raise a discussion — our work is scientific, and not political or educational”, said Meyer, one of the most active Discovery Institute members, a non-profit research center connected to the conservative sectors of the American society. “As I believe in God, I believe he is the intelligent designer. But there are atheist scientists who accept the theory in other fashions”, concludes the researcher.

Another year, another fossil with some serious media backing. This week it’s a Homo habilis said to be “almost-complete” — of course, the report from the Telegraph also claims that Homo habilis was “previously unknown,” so you might want to take that with a grain of salt.

In fact, you might want to read a bit more before you throw that OMG Missing Link Found! party I know you were planning. (Squatch is going to take it hard when you cancel his first music gig since the Sonics left town.) This is the same species that was reported in an AP article from 2007 which disowned Homo habilis as a human ancestor. As far back as 1999, a paper in Science explained that this species should not even be considered a member of the Homo genus.