Month: September 2007

September 9, 2007, 11:50 AM

Baylor University Accused of Viewpoint Discrimination in Suppression of
Pro-Intelligent Design Scientist

Baylor University continues to come under fire for its suppression of Professor Robert Marks’ Evolutionary Informatics Lab. Clearly, Marks’ site was removed because it was implicated with ID (not because of any Baylor policy) and there are plenty of labs and groups (some belonging to Marks himself) that have not faced similar discrimination. It seems obvious that his site is being singled out — regardless of what Baylor says. The story was on the front page of today’s Waco Tribune Herald and reported that: . . . at an Aug. 9 meeting, attended by Beckenhauer, Gilmore, Marks, Kelley, provost Randall O’Brien and engineering department chair Kwang Lee that “a disclaimer would be put on the Web site and that it Read More ›

September 8, 2007, 12:49 AM

Is It Really Intelligent Design that has the Great Derb Worried?

The Great Derb, John Derbyshire, has spoken. And again he’s muddled things badly. This time he’s got himself all in a twist over a response by Tom Bethell to his letter responding to a recent column by Bethell about last spring’s ID debate at AEI. (whew!) He still can’t understand the obvious differences between creationism and intelligent design, continually conflating the two and looking like an ill-informed crank. And the meandering rantings don’t help. Derbyshire insists on equating intelligent design and creationism because a judge agrees. “Intelligent Design is creationism. This has been proved to courtroom standards of evidence.” He would be well served to read Traipsing Into Evolution. Even thoughtful Darwinists understand that ID and creationism are simply two Read More ›

September 7, 2007, 4:54 PM

The Spiritual Brain: An Argument Against Materialism

“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 Read More ›