Origins and Science

Mon - December 3, 2007

The Guillermo Gonzalez Case: Not Just Rhetoric

Some of the more vocal opponents of Intelligent Design have accused the Discovery Institute and other ID supporters of overstating the Guillermo Gonzalez tenure case. Gonzalez was denied tenure this year at Iowa State University, which essentially amounts to being slowly sacked from his position. His academic credentials were strong, his publishing record exemplary, and his grant funding high. He and the Discovery Institute said it appeared to be his position on Intelligent Design that got him in trouble, which if true means his academic freedom was seriously infringed. Not so, said detractors: you're making this up to try to reinforce ID by a rhetorical, public relations ploy.

But yesterday the Des Moines Register said, "Not so." It would be hard to sell the accusation that they did it to shore up the ID/Discovery Institute position.

Posted at 12:21 PM Read More |

Fri - November 30, 2007

Intelligent Design Discussion at the Newseum

C-Span 2's airing of Drs. Michael Behe and Patricia Princehouse, "Close Up at the Newseum," just ended. The two of them took part in a moderated discussion before a crowd of high school students from Utah, Michigan, Louisiana, California, and perhaps other states not mentioned. What the professors said was not nearly as interesting as what the students had to say.

Posted at 08:17 PM Read More |

Wed - November 14, 2007

Intelligent Design: What's New?

What's new in the Intelligent Design controversy? Little and much.

Posted at 08:45 AM Read More |

Wed - November 7, 2007

"New paper on oxytocin reveals why we are generous"

From EurekAlert:

"In the research, [Paul G.] Zak and his colleagues gave doses of oxytocin and a placebo to participants, who were then offered a blinded, one-time decision on how to split a sum of money with a stranger who could accept or reject the split. The results were overwhelming: Those given oxytocin offered 80% more money than those given a placebo."

Posted at 06:31 AM Read More |

Sun - October 28, 2007

"Bright Scientists, Dim Notions"

From the NY Times (free registration may be required). Interesting.

Posted at 07:45 AM Read More |

Mon - October 15, 2007

"Clever..."

Joseph Bottum has recently reminded me of this, reported a couple of years ago by Stephen Barr:

Posted at 04:23 PM Read More |

Jerry Fodor Wonders About Natural Selection

Jerry Fodor is raising doubts about the explanatory power of natural selection. Peter Williams comments here on how this might be viewed from an Intelligent Design Perspective. For my part, I'm fascinated by what Fodor said about evolution and mind:

Posted at 04:02 PM Read More |

Wed - October 10, 2007

Panda's Thumb and "Panic"

Yesterday at Panda's Thumb PvM (Pim van Meurs) asked,

Doesn’t [John] West comprehend that in case of evolution, religious beliefs do not matter unlike with ID where the lack of scientific relevance and the entanglement with religion makes ID unconstitutional to be taught as science in public schools. [sic]

Posted at 11:40 AM Read More |

Fri - October 5, 2007

Your Introduction to "Neurotheology"

"Neurotheology"--that's what Scientific American calls "Searching for God in the Brain."

"Researchers are unearthing the roots of religious feeling in the neural commotion that accompanies the spiritual epiphanies of nuns, Buddhists and other people of faith."

Posted at 10:44 PM Read More |

Sun - September 30, 2007

"Wordless" Proof: Materialism Fails

Note 9/30/07 3:20 pm: See the comments for corrections to this post.

Mathematicians often amuse themselves and teach their students with "wordless proofs," demonstrations of the Pythagorean theorem, for instance, or properties of triangular numbers. A little study, and if your mind is up to speed you ought to be able to just see that the theorem has to be true.

I just read something that leads to a conclusion that's just as clear and obvious--a proof that materialist theories of mind cannot be true. This proof is not wordless, for it starts with a paragraph that Time Magazine senior writer Michael Lemonick wrote. I found it in Beauregard's and O'Leary's The Spiritual Brain (page 115). But as in mathematical wordless proofs, all it takes is a close look and some reflection, and you'll see it jumping right out at you.

Posted at 09:37 AM Read More |

Thu - September 27, 2007

Design? Yawn, Ho-hum

Jeffrey Shallit doesn't think "that the question 'is it designed?', in the absence of any candidate for a designer, is particularly interesting." I guess it's a regular yawner. This came as part of a continuing blog discussion with Michael Egnor.

The Panda's Thumb crowd has nailed Dr. Egnor with the deadly, unanswerable epithet of "egnorant." I was labeled with equally deadly, unanswerable labels, like "Gilligan," in grade school. Sometimes they actually do make substantive responses to Egnor's work at Evolution News and Views, as Shallit did here. He cannot be easily dismissed, though, and his answer to Shallit this time is powerful, including this:

Posted at 09:44 AM Read More |

Sat - September 22, 2007

Granville Sewell's Surprise Ending

Granville Sewell posted at Uncommon Descent this morning about his inability to get a laptop to simulate the whole natural history of earth, given a set of initial conditions and physical laws, to see if it can come up with complex, intelligent life, and cities and libraries and the like. If you read it as an ID sympathizer like me, you're going to start off thinking, "Oh, no! How embarrassing! He can't be serious!" If you're an ID opponent you might say the same, except with considerable glee in your voice.

Posted at 09:51 AM Read More |

Thu - September 20, 2007

Expelled, The Movie: "What They're Doing Is Essentially Shelving Their Findings"

Come next winter the Intelligent Design debate is going to have a bomb ignited under it. The film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, featuring Ben Stein, is set for release in February. If the film comes anywhere near the level of the interview Rob Crowther did with producer Walt Ruloff, it's going to hit our culture hard. For all I've been involved in the issue, what Ruloff said about research being cut off still made me catch my breath.

Posted at 09:09 PM Read More |

Tue - September 18, 2007

Almost Brainless? Not At All What You Would Think

This is just fascinating: "Consciousness In the Raw," from Science News Online. For one thing, it puts a different light on the so-called "man with no brain" (HT to Joe Carter), who at age 44 is living a fairly normal life, having a skull filled primarily with fluids, where gray matter ought to be. His is a different condition than the one covered in "Consciousness In the Raw," though. That article is about children born with 80% of their brains--virtually all of the cortex--missing, a condition known as hydranencephaly. It's also about these children enjoying a day at Disney World with their families.

They were accompanied by Bjorn Merker, who had invited them and their families there to observe how they responded to the experience.

"Merker noted that these cortex-deprived, nonverbal children remained alert for much of the day. They reacted to what happened around them and expressed a palette of emotions. A 3-year-old girl's mouth opened wide and her face glowed with a mix of joy and excitement when her parents placed her baby brother in her arms."

Posted at 08:32 AM Read More |

Thu - September 13, 2007

Science and Religion, from Avery Cardinal Dulles

Avoiding the knee-jerk, thoughtless reactions too often displayed on this issue--that's the great virtue of Avery Cardinal Dulles's current First Things article, "God and Evolution." He summarized it well in his closing paragraph:

"The recent outburst of atheistic scientism is an ominous sign. If unchecked, this arrogance could lead to a resumption of the senseless warfare that raged in the nineteenth century, thus undermining the harmony of different levels of knowledge that has been foundational to our Western civilization. By contrast, the kind of dialogue between evolutionary science and theology proposed by John Paul II can overcome the alienation and lead to authentic progress both for science and for religion."

Posted at 01:13 PM Read More |

Evolution is Easy: It Just Takes An Infinite Number of You

Evil and Evolution: The Great Debate Continues!

Dawkins and Determinism

"Your problem is just that you can't imagine how it could happen"

"God of the Gaps" Comments

"Is there anything wrong with 'God of the gaps' reasoning?"

At Last: Responsible Brain-Research Reporting

"Artificial Life Likely in Three to Ten Years"

The Materialism Question, at Victor Reppert's Blog

Catching Up On ID Events

How Well Does Evolution Explain Human Intelligence?